I’ve been on a bit of a tear recently, switching to new apps and services. What triggered this recent stint was the upcoming renewal of my Cloudron subscription. I was on their Premium plan, which costs $180 per year. If I was running a business or had more demanding needs, I suppose I could justify the expense. But with how I use the server, it felt like it was a little much.

Cloudron does offer a free plan, but with some limitations ­— the only one that would impact me is that it’s limited to two apps installed at a time. When I started exploring alternatives, I only had five apps installed and I was pretty confident I could get it down to just two — Mastodon and Pixelfed — without much trouble.

With the help of my Umbrel Home, which is an excellent home server solution, and its integration with Cloudflare Tunnels, I was able to downgrade to Cloudron’s free tier fairly easily. The following are the migrations I made that allowed me to do so:

Homer to Heimdall

Homer is handsome selfhosted dashboard. And it’s a great option if you want something that’s static, but it becomes tedious to manage if you’re adding or removing services on a regular basis.

Homer doesn’t offer a slick frontend for managing anything, it’s setup through configuration files. So if you want to add or remove a service, you have to grab your existing configuration file over FTP or the like, fire up a text editor, add or remove as necessary, and then upload the new configuration file.

Heimdall, on the other hand, can be configured right from your web browser and even offers support for a number of self-hosted services. No need to hunt down an image to use for each link’s icon, there’s a good chance Heimdall already includes one.

Heimdall also offers built-in authentication, which is nice for dashboards that are accessible on the open web.

The biggest downside with Heimdall is that the default design is a little rough. But luckily, it has support for custom CSS, which can be used to customize the design to your heart’s content.

Miniflux to FreshRSS

I’ve used FreshRSS in the past and actually migrated to Miniflux from it because I was experiencing some issues with feed refreshes. After spending a bit of time with both, I probably prefer Miniflux.

In order to downgrade my Cloudron subscription to free, though, I needed to get down to just two apps — I had to make some cuts. So I decided to simply move from Miniflux on my Cloudron to FreshRSS on my Umbrel.

Although I prefer Miniflux, I don’t actually spend much time in the web interface. Instead, I’m using it as a backend to sync RSS apps on my devices — Reeder Classic on iOS, NetNewsWire on macOS, and NewsFlash on Linux.

Wallabag to Linkwarden

Wallabag worked quite well for what it did — saving links for later. But the design feels incredibly dated, regardless of what theme you choose for it. In contrast, Linkwarden is a relatively new project and sports a refreshingly modern design.

Linkwarden also offers some features that Wallabag doesn’t, most notably the ability to save archived versions of webpages in a number of formats — screenshot, PDF, Archive.org snapshot, and more. I have mine setup to save an HTML copy of each webpage I save to it.

There is already a browser extension available for Linkwarden and the project’s developers are also working on a mobile app. For now I’m using a third-party client — My Links. The app has some occasional visual bugs that I’ve noticed, but it’s a fairly competent client and it’s better than the options available for Wallabag.

Non-Cloudron Migrations

Those three migrations got me down to just two apps on my Cloudron, which allowed me to cancel Cloudron Premium and downgrade to their free plan. That extra $180 each year would be better spent on additional payments toward our mortgage principal or something.

I will say, Cloudron is an excellent piece of software, though. And I would have continued paying for their Premium subscription if I had a need for more apps on a virtual private server. It does such a great job of simplifying the installation and management of selfhosted software.

While I was in the process of exploring alternatives to my Cloudron apps, I also found myself looking at other software I was using and whether I could make some switches there as well. I ended up making the following migrations:

iCloud to Dropbox for Ulysses

Every time I’ve tried to fully lean in to Linux and utilize apps and services that I could use seamlessly between my iPhone and Linux machine, Ulysses was a massive blocker. The app is just absolutely incredible to use and I’ve built my entire writing and publishing system around it.

I’ve tried dozens of other writing apps, but nothing was able to match the fit and finish of Ulysses.

The solution I came to is actually quite elegant, though. Rather than moving off of Ulysses entirely, I would simply swap out the backend service I was relying on for sync. For years I was just using iCloud — it’s the default for Ulysses and worked like a charm.

Ulysses offers native Dropbox support, though. What I’ve done is move all of my existing writing to Dropbox as markdown files. I can create new documents and edit them from Ulysses just as I’ve always done, but I can also access them from my Linux desktop using Dropbox’s desktop app.

This piece you’re reading right now was primarily written in Apostrophe on my Framework 13 and then edited on my iPad in Ulysses. The sync was just as smooth as it was when using iCloud, but I can access and edit from all of my devices now, not just those that were manufactured by Apple.

This will also, hopefully, make it easier to migrate away from Ulysses if the need were to ever arise. As long as the app I’m moving to supports syncing to Dropbox.

iCloud to Dropbox for File Storage

After migrating to Dropbox for my writing, I was pretty impressed with the service. I thought it was worth giving it a try as a cloud storage provider, in place of iCloud.

Dropbox offers 2GB of storage on their free plan, but I must have acquired some additional storage on my account back when you could do so through referrals. My account has 3GB of storage available on it, which is more than enough for my needs.

I migrated everything from my iCloud Drive’s Documents folder to Dropbox and haven’t looked back. What’s nice about using Dropbox is that it offers excellent integration on iOS and Linux. I can favorite a folder for quick access in the iOS Files app and bookmark that same folder in Gnome’s Files app on my Framework laptop.

There is a limitation of three devices connected to your Dropbox account, but that only applies to their application. The Ulysses integration I mentioned above and any other third-party integration does not count toward that limit.

Luckily, three devices is plenty for me — I can have my iPhone, iPad, and Framework laptop connected.

1Password to Vaultwarden

Switching password managers was, by far, the most daunting migration I made. Access to every account I have relies on a password manager. It needs to be secure while maintaining ease of use to ensure it gets utilized effectively.

I’ve tried Vaultwarden in the past, but ended up bailing on it because I wasn’t ready to tackle migrating myself and my wife, Becky, to a new password manager. We had a shared vault in 1Password with a bunch of passwords that we both need access to. Migrating myself is a big enough task, migrating both of us is even larger.

But this time, I decided to buckle down and just make it happen.

I could have exported my login credentials from 1Password and imported them into Vaultwarden, but instead, I chose to migrate each login individually. This gave me an opportunity to prune some accounts, update some account email addresses, and just generally audit the whole lot.

An unintended consequence of migrating my data in this way is that I became much more comfortable with the software. Something that wouldn’t have occurred if I just did a normal import from 1Password.

After the migration was complete, I ended up with about 12% less logins than I started out with — some of those were eliminated because the service had closed down and some of those were accounts I deleted myself.

I was able to cancel our 1Password subscription, saving us $60 each year, and I’m pretty happy with the whole setup. Since Vaultwarden is the selfhosted version of Bitwarden, we’re able to make use of their great suite of client applications. We have the Bitwarden browser extension and desktop app on all of our computers and the Bitwarden mobile app on our iPhones.

The design of Vaultwarden/Bitwarden overall isn’t quite as nice as 1Password, but it’s not that much of a dropoff. The overwhelming majority of the time we’re interacting with the software through AutoFill on our iOS or the Autofill feature of the browser extension. And those interactions don’t involve much user interface from the app/extension, so it doesn’t feel like much of a change at all — especially on iOS where we only see Bitwarden for a second or two while Face ID authenticates.

Overall I’m very happy we made the move and I’ve even considered opening up our server to close friends and family if they’d like to make use of it as well. Although, I’ll probably want to live with it for a while first, just in case there are any unexpected snags.

I’m a little late to the party on this, but this is excellent news.

➝ Source: macrumors.com

Juli Clover, writing for MacRumors:

An ‌iCloud‌ Shared Photo Library can be shared with up to five other people, and each contributor has equal access to add, edit, favorite, caption, and delete shared photos.

To prevent accidentally shared photos, there are smart setup rules that can be implemented. You can opt to share all past photos or just photos from a specific start date. You can also choose to share photos that have only specific people, such as your family members.

Photos can be added to the Shared Library automatically, but there are also options to share based on Bluetooth proximity. Sharing suggestions will continue to pop up in For You as well.

My wife and I have been using Google Photos for years specifically because of their partner sharing feature. But I look forward to kicking that to the curb and using Apple’s offering instead.

➝ Source: macrumors.com

I don’t expect they’ll be making any changes or implementing extra precautions to ensure privacy. I think the feature will ship as originally described as soon as they feel like the heat has adequately died down.

It’s awful. Once this door is open, there’s no closing it. And there’s nothing we can do but trust that the image hashes are what they say they are. I have a hard time with that knowing how governments have a habit of infringing on people’s rights when the opportunity arises.

➝ Source: theverge.com

A great collection of thoughts on Apple’s recent CSAM-related announcements, put together by Michael Tsai. The common theme I’ve seen among the reactions overall is that the privacy conscious are concerned about what this could become, while Apple and some others are defending what it is currently.

If this system stays as it is today, I don’t think many people would protest — obviously child sexual abuse material is objectively wrong. But there are very real concerns about how the system could be abused by authoritarian governments, nefarious actors within Apple, or groups/individuals targeting others by tricking them into adding an image to their iCloud Photo Library.

I don’t really know what could be done about any of those things beyond simply taking Apple’s word for it. But as time goes on, I’m finding it more and more difficult to trust that Apple is always going to make the right decisions.

➝ Source: mjtsai.com

John Gruber, in reference to The New York Times’ piece on Apple, China, and user privacy:

It’s a big report, but the above is fundamentally true and gets to the heart of the conflict: physical access to the hardware in the facility is game over. But what’s missing from the whole piece is any serious discussion of what else Apple could do. Apple has no option other than to comply with Chinese law, or else stop selling products in the country.

Option A: Apple does what it did — store all Chinese users’ iCloud data on servers in China, under the ultimate control of the Chinese government.

Option B: Apple refuses to do so, and the Chinese government shuts down iCloud in China and probably bans the sale of Apple devices.

Is there an Option C? I don’t think there is.

There’s a very clear and obvious Option C — build Apple products that are less reliant on iCloud.

If access to the physical servers is the biggest privacy issue, then give users the tools to effectively opt-out of it entirely and take control of their own data.

Why can’t the iPhone backup to a shared Time Machine drive on the local network? Macs have been able to do this for years. It’s not as if iPhone’s have some sort of hardware limitation — the iPhone of today is significantly more capable than the Macs of 2008, when Time Capsule was first introduced.

Backing up your device to iCloud is actually the biggest point of failure of iMessage’s security. Despite the fact that iMessage is encrypted end-to-end when sending messages, Apple can access and view your messages within iCloud backups. If Apple offered a more convenient way to backup your iPhone locally, it would give users the option of better security if they prefer it.

Reintroducing Time Capsule would be the best way to do this, as it would be an easy, single-purchase solution for users that want to own their data.

But it could go beyond just device backups — Apple could pitch the Time Capsule as “iCloud at Home” and mimic many of the services that iCloud offers on a box that you physically control.

iCloud Photos, iCloud Drive, Notes, and any other service that syncs or stores data in iCloud could be stored locally on a Time Capsule. Apple’s servers would just be there to tell the device I’m using how to connect to the Time Capsule on my home network. In other words, Apple facilitates the connection and then my devices talk directly with the Time Capsule using end-to-end encryption.

This would seemingly eliminate offsite backups, leaving you vulnerable to data loss if there was a fire, flood, or something else that physically damages your Time Capsule. But this could be solved too. Apple could develop a system where you could pair a Time Capsule in your home with a Time Capsule in a friend or family members home giving them the ability to backup data to each other. Synology already offers this, actually.

But of course, there’s always the possibility that China pulls the rug out from these endeavors — enacting policies or practices that hamper these types of services or outlaws the sale of Time Capsules outright. But at least Apple would be making more of an effort. And a rising tide raises all ships — I imagine a lot of iPhone users would jump at the opportunity to buy an “iCloud at Home” Time Capsule to take greater ownership of their data.

And then there’s the issue of censorship in the App Store. This one is simple and I’ve advocated for it a number of times, even outside of the discussion of China — open up the platform to apps from outside the App Store. Make it more difficult to police iOS software by decentralizing.

This would almost certainly introduce the possibility of spyware on the platform, but given China’s relationship with large tech companies, one could argue that this is already happening. The difference is, if there was an app that the Chinese government didn’t want their citizens to have access to, instead of it simply being banned from the App Store, they would be be able to install it. Albeit through underground channels. But even that would be tremendously empowering.

We all know backups are important, but they’re not as flashy and interesting as the next Apple Silicon Macs or nifty new piece of software. So they don’t really get discussed as often as they should. But in honor of World Backup Day, which I didn’t know existed and just happened to conveniently take place while I was already working on this piece, I thought I’d share my current backup strategy.

Macs

We have three Macs currently in use in our house — my work MacBook Pro, my wife’s MacBook Air, and our Mac Mini home server. The Mac Mini has an OWC ThunderBay 6 connected with a handful of drives inside — an SSD boot drive, a couple of 4TB drives for storing media, and a couple of 8TB drives for storing backups.

The Mac Mini shares the backup drives over the network as Time Machine destinations. And every Mac in the house backs up over Time Machine to these drives. So all of our local backups and media are stored in a single box — the ThunderBay.

We use TimeMachineEditor to have a bit more control over when our Time Machine backups take place. I have the Mac Mini setup to backup in the middle of the night and the MacBook Pro setup to backup at lunch time on weekdays.

The Mac Mini and my MacBook Pro are also setup with Backblaze to continuously backup all relevant data to the cloud. We will likely setup Backblaze on my wife’s MacBook Air too, but she only recently started using it again and we just finished the initial Time Machine backup.

iOS Devices

I pay for a 2TB iCloud storage plan that is shared with my wife. Our iPhones and iPads all backup to iCloud nightly. We store all of our documents on the service too.

We don’t use iCloud Photo Library, though. Instead, we use Google Photos — the primary reason being their excellent Partner Sharing feature. The feature automatically shares each photo and video to each other’s library. This means we don’t have to worry about who took a given picture or where the full version is stored — we both have access to all of the.

And seriously, Apple, get that feature figured out so I don’t have to maintain an additional service.

But Google Photos doesn’t give us the option to store local copies on the Mac, so a few times each year we manually backup photos from our iPhones and iPads to the Mac Mini server using the Photos app.

So every single photo we take and video we record is stored in six locations — the original device, Google Photos, the iCloud device backup, the Mac Mini’s media drive, backup drive, and Backblaze. It might seem like overkill, but our family photo library is almost certainly the most important data that we have and I’d rather be safe than sorry.

Overall

The pillars of my backup strategy are Time Machine, Backblaze, iCloud, and Google Photos. As I mentioned above, it would be nice if Apple finally introduced a solution for family photo libraries. Then we could eliminate Google Photos from our setup and we’d no longer need to manually backup photos to the Mac Mini, since the Photos app offers the option to store full size local copies of everything in your iCloud Photo Library.

But in terms of locally stored backups, I’m pretty happy with the setup. Since everything is stored inside the OWC ThunderBay 6, if there was ever an emergency, I could grab my iPhone and the ThunderBay. Those two items contain all of the important data in my life.

There will no longer be a differentiation between Apple Store gift cards and gift cards that are used for iTunes, App Store, and iCloud purchases. Going forward, all Apple gift cards can be used to purchase items through any of their marketplaces.

➝ Source: apple.com