Exercise your vote in the market. Choose products that reflect your values. Build towards a future you want to experience. When you can, don't use anything made by these people. I say this as I write from a MacBook.

Some of my alternatives are aspirational. I plan to / hope to move to them in the future. I will mark those as such.

Hardware

Laptop

Currently on a MacBook Air M1. I love the thing. I'm willing to use macOS but am interested in Nix. I never want to look at Windows again.

For my next laptop, I am looking at the Framework 13. I can get storage and memory for a better price than what Framework sells. Otherwise this is my desired config.

https://frame.work/share-my-laptop?token=f419e7aca2e External Link • frame.work

Phone

Again, I am ok with using Apple hardware but stay away from depending on their services. I am on the iPhone 14 Pro. The Fairphone 6 is looking pretty decent. Probably want to own a camera if you go that route. These days iOS gives a lot of the customization I would want out of Android anyway, and I love the Shortcuts app. I find Apple more benevolent than Google in aggregate.

E-reader

Kindle Touch. Got it out of a drawer at the in-laws place. It's so old it doesn't connect to wifi but the firmware is too new to jailbreak, so I just plug it into my laptop and push books to it from Calibre. Works a treat.

Machines

Bambu makes the best appliance-tier 3D printers right now. I got the combo with the AMS for automatic material switching for a great deal from Microcenter. I use it in local mode and Orca slicer so there is not communication with Bambu services.

https://bambulab.com/en-us/a1-mini External Link • bambulab.com https://cricut.com/en-au/cricut-explore External Link • cricut.com https://epson.com/For-Work/Printers/Inkjet/EcoTank-ET-15000-All-in-One-Cartridge-Free-Supertank-Printer/p/C11CH96201 External Link • epson.com

Software

Browser

Arc is dead, long live Arc. I loved the Arc browser dearly until Josh Miller decided his core user base is unimportant. Zen is a great successor built on Firefox by just a couple devs. They've replicated all of the differentiating experiences from Arc. It's a good time.

https://zen-browser.app/ External Link • zen-browser.app

I don't have a replacement for Arc Search yet. It's a fantastic UI that nobody has copied yet in a mobile browser.

https://arc.net/search External Link • arc.net

Search

Google-schmoogle. Want an easy way to not participate in the search advertising economy? Pay for search.

https://kagi.com/ External Link • kagi.com

Chat

https://signal.org/ External Link • signal.org

iMessage and RCS.

Discord. This is one I desperately want to get away from. It's a data mining scheme with gotcha monetization. I still have communities on there while alternatives are on the path to viability.

Slack. A bunch of communities talk there, including my FIRST Robotics teams I mentor.

Email

https://proton.me/mail External Link • proton.me

Calendar

Fantastical is still the best calendar app.

PKM

https://obsidian.md/ External Link • obsidian.md https://www.notion.com/ External Link • notion.com https://clay.earth External Link • clay.earth

Todos

https://todoist.com External Link • todoist.com

Media

I’ve finally cancelled my Spotify Premium subscription. I prefer supporting artists over funding attack drones and ICE adverts. My replacement is a combination of Qobuz for streaming and a self hosted Navidrome instance with my personal library. Arpeggi is a great iOS client for Navidrome, although it is still in TestFlight. I purchase music for my library on Bandcamp.

https://www.qobuz.com/us-en/discover External Link • qobuz.com https://bandcamp.com/ External Link • bandcamp.com

On the reading side, I’ve gone fully off big tech. I get all my news from Bluesky feeds and RSS. NetNewsWire clients on all my devices pull content from my FreshRSS instance on my server.

https://sill.social/ External Link • sill.social https://netnewswire.com/ External Link • netnewswire.com https://freshrss.org/index.html External Link • freshrss.org

Entertainment is a combo of YouTube Premium and independent creator platforms.

https://nebula.tv/ External Link • nebula.tv https://www.2ndtry.tv/ External Link • 2ndtry.tv https://www.dropout.tv/ External Link • dropout.tv

Creative

Affinity suite. These are made in the UK, recently purchased by Canva who are based in Australia. Perpetual license. One filetype for their whole suite of tools.

https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/publisher/ External Link • affinity.serif.com https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/ External Link • affinity.serif.com https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/designer/ External Link • affinity.serif.com

For video, I use Blackmagic Davinci Resolve. It's free, and quickly becoming favored in the professional industry over Adobe Premiere Pro.

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/ External Link • blackmagicdesign.com

Penpot. The open source self hostable Figma alternative. Features are still a little early (they just added component variants), but all the files are non-proprietary. Why do I prefer an alternative to Figma? Any monopoly is bad. I'd rather pay no subscription and control my software and files. Also, donate to open source 🫶🏻.

https://penpot.app/ External Link • penpot.app https://excalidraw.com/ External Link • excalidraw.com

Code

Cursor. Been playing around with Zed too. I'm not a developer by trade. I did pursue a CS minor while in school, bailing after a few useful classes when I realized I take 5 prerequisites for 2 minor courses. Not worth. With the help of robots I can get my ideas to a works-like-ish prototype.

https://cursor.com/home?from=agents External Link • cursor.com

For Git I am between GitHub and Tangled. GitHub is the incumbent monopoly, not ideal. Tangled is built on the AT Protocol, awesome!

https://tangled.org External Link • tangled.org

Utilities

https://raycast.com External Link • raycast.com https://github.com/jordanbaird/Ice External Link • github.com https://mac-stats.com/ External Link • mac-stats.com https://linearmouse.app/ External Link • linearmouse.app

Self Hosting

I converted my PC to a home server a few months ago. I only ever used it for infrequently playing Risk of Rain 2. Now I host a bunch of services on it as I trudge towards digital independence.

https://www.zimaspace.com/zimaos External Link • zimaspace.com https://www.home-assistant.io/ External Link • home-assistant.io https://immich.app/ External Link • immich.app https://www.navidrome.org/ External Link • navidrome.org https://jellyfin.org/ External Link • jellyfin.org https://nextcloud.com/ External Link • nextcloud.com https://pi-hole.net/ External Link • pi-hole.net

I'll add or update if I realize I missed something later. Wouldn't it be cool if this were all organized in a native AT Protocol lexicon where you could share your stack and compare with others? I think so too. See that idea and many others in my blog post.

https://blog.tynanpurdy.com/3lwgzk2ovnk2c External Link • blog.tynanpurdy.com