do you have any more of these types of thoughts regarding the last sentence written up somewhere? i've fluctuated over the years wrt which operating systems are primary -- in recent times, i haven't felt that windows' updating has been that good (never really liked it actually), while i have rarely had problems with the macs i've used. may be that's symptomatic of not much change on the mac side as more being done on the windows side?

@UG1C3AD5Z Microsoft is doing a lot more work out in the open. The whole bash on Windows thing -- they managed all the beta testing via GitHub and the ability to run multiple Linux flavors with deep integration between Windows and the Linux shells is very nice. The new terminal they've built is all open source. They've open sourced large chunks of .NET etc. They just released a new open source PowerToys for tweaking Windows 10. They're really focusing on developers these days -- whereas I feel Apple is not (they're focusing on consumers and designers, it seems to me). Microsoft has great "Insider" programs for prerelease access to a lot of things (I've been running Insider builds of Windows for years, and Insider versions of Bing, Edge, and Cortana). Cortana is a lot better than Siri -- partly why I run Cortana on my iPhone. Apple has made integration with their services very difficult for other vendors -- trying to use iCloud mail/calendar/etc from non-Apple apps is a horrible experience: my wife & I have both switched completely to shared Google email and calendars because of that (much as I dislike Google!). It's sort of "death by a thousand cuts" -- I've just gradually gotten more and more annoyed with Apple and less and less annoyed with Microsoft... until I hit a tipping point last year.

thanks for the details! very informative.

@U04V70XH6 What about security and privacy? Out of Google, Microsoft, and Apple, Apple seems to be the only one with a genuine concern for privacy. The other two talk about it, but have such obvious conflicts of interest that it rings a bit hollow.

For the same reason, I’d highly recommend Fastmail over Google for email and calendar.

@U06B8J0AJ Of the three, I actually find Microsoft to be the most transparent about the data they collect and your access to it. Apple talk a good game but seem very opaque. Google, I just don't trust at all at this point.

When MS dropped the new privacy/data tools for users I will admit to being shocked at just how much data they had on me -- but it was also reassuring to see that I had such easy access to it, and tools to deal with it. Neither Apple nor Google has provided that level of transparency or those tools.

I'll take a look at Fastmail -- thank you for the recommendation.

I love Fastmail. Best money I spent getting away from Google.

Heh, I have a grandfathered free business account with Google...

So did I :)

random trivia: iirc, fastmail founder also started http://fast.ai :)

Yeah, regardless of the rest (I also have a free business account with Google), I’ve been a happy FastMail user for years now. The only thing I’d consider switching to is ProtonMail, once they get their usability in order.

FWIW, Apple won’t have the same kind of data on you since they go out of their way to do stuff on device rather than on their servers etc. Computers are one thing, but I’d be very hesitant to switch to Android at this point in time, even if I might be inclined to for other reasons. It’s sad that Microsoft dropped the ball on that one, a duopoly isn’t ideal.

I’ve been using ProtonMail for a few years now and while it’s a little rough around the edges, it’s been solid for me. Does everything I need and little that I don’t.

I try to make a point to never be too loyal to any one company\product, especially code editors. For phones, I went from iPhone 2 -> iPhone 4 -> Windows Phone Metro (2010–2012) -> Android Moto X (2012–2019) -> iPhone XS.

@U8WFYMFRU How do you go about migrating your contacts (and your music) from device to device?

(I ask because I have built up about 1,000 contacts and 62GB of music over the years and they were always on Macs and sync'd to whatever device I owned -- but I'm about to switch to Android and to Windows so migration to those is uncharted territory for me)

For iOS and Android I happened to have my contacts/email/calendar associated with my google account so it was never more than just signing into Google.

There’s a Google Play app that can sync music from your computer to your account as well.

I really like how interconnected apps feel on Android. It’s also nice being able to swap out default browsers and email clients as a global pref. What I didn’t like was how independent each service was at the system level as sometimes the widget service or the launcher would get stuck in a crash loop.

I've tried to avoid Google for a lot of stuff but I guess I'll just shift all my iCloud contacts over to Google since my email is based there... 😞

Hmm I wonder if other services can provide that synchronization? A quick search points to being able to sync contacts with a ms live/exchange account using the outlook app.

macOS Contacts can import my 1,000+ contacts from MobileMe/iCloud into http://corfield.org (Google) apparently so that's what it is currently doing 🙂

My Google account now has 1,207 contacts. Yay! Thanks. I hadn't even thought about doing it that way... doh!

Sean, i have a feeling that you can use and bare at everything that microsoft can offer, because you're a man that have passion for what you do, and you do it by looking at things one by one, without any rush, i feel that you actually read documentations and what things out there has to offer. Microsoft has a ton to offer if you're willing to put the work into it i believe. Anyway, what i'm saying is that i see you everywhere in clojure community, every topic or every discussion i go, there you are, you do a great service to us my friend, i'm proud of being part of a community that has people supportive and active like you. Thanks!