Time to start ditching my Apple apps?

So apple is about to launch its new Creator Studio, essentially a bundle of existing content creation apps (eg. Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Final Cut) now flogged under a subscription model.

So instead of paying a one-off price for these apps (some, such as Pages, are currently free), you will need to pay a recurring (and subject to change) subscription for the whole bundle. The subscription will cost $12.99 USD per month or $129 USD per year, with a free one-month trial.

Apple assures us that the current individual versions will remain available and will continue to be updated.

HATE is a strong word.
But I hate this subscription model that encapsulates the enshittification of major digital platforms. Kindle, Apple Music, Spotify, Photoshop, Lightroom….and on and on. You can no longer own an application, you can no longer own the content it offers. You have to rent it.

The big tech oligarchs want an always on conduit to siphon your cash. And they want to embed this conduit into your life.

The good news is that you can subvert this madness. There are plenty of free (and open-source) alternatives to these apps. They may not offer quite the same functionality (although many are close), and they may look a little less shiny… but they will get the job done.

I am in the process of dumping Pages and have downloaded the Libre Office suite (replacing Pages, Keynote, Numbers etc). Honestly, once you get used to the slightly retro design….it works brilliantly.

#apple #tech #technology

As we establish our co-op, we bring with us our philosophy of technology. Our approach is based upon principles of privacy and sustainability.

The best way to show off our style in the early days of our co-op is to generate a hypothetical scenario (based on upon experiences with clients).

In the future, we’ll hopefully have permission to illustrate actual client makeovers so we can take some nice photos of their setups. Early days!

Hypothetical client

Jamie, 57 is a unionised postie for Royal Mail who hates how our lives have become dominated by U.S. tech corporations.

They own an ancient Android phone that isn’t supported with security updates any more (and has a slightly cracked screen) which they mostly use to stay in touch with friends and family via Signal messenger.

They also have an old slow Windows 10 (also no longer supported) laptop with a terrible keyboard and a dead battery that they use around the house for surfing the web, writing emails and internet. Jamie dreads taking the laptop to union meetings because it weighs a ton and shuts down if the power cable is accidentally unplugged.

Jamie also has a huge TV running Android that has a bunch of crapware and annoying ads on it. YouTube videos play with ads every few minutes and there isn’t an app for ITVX installed, which is where some international football matches are streamed. Jamie finds typing into search bars using their TV remote incredibly frustrating.

Jamie has saved up some money to overhaul their tech but doesn’t know where to start so reaches out to Tech Care Co-op for help and we communicated via Signal voice message to discover what Jamie’s needs were.

Laptop

We recommend using second hand business grade laptops. They tend to be cheap, robust and easy to repair.

Generally our preferred brand is Lenovo Thinkpad. They can be expensive when new but rapidly drop into the sub £400 price range after new models are released and circulated into corporate usage.

With a laptop, it’s best to go light and small. As soon as you have to carry it via backup, you will regret getting that chunky laptop. For Jamie, we would chose a Thinkpad X1 Carbon.

Our preferred Operating System is Linux which is open source meaning it can be audited to make sure it doesn’t have any components that are harmful to our privacy. It can be installed on a wide range of hardware and often costs nothing to buy (though many open source projects invite donations).

Though we are happy to support any variety of Linux, we are currently enjoying Project Bluefin (based upon Fedora) as it self updating and easy to maintain.

We take care of sourcing the laptop for you, installing Bluefin and the applications that meet your needs and migrating your old data.

Budget: £400

£280 on a refurbished Thinkpad X1 Carbon

£120 – two hours labour

Mobile phone

Our preferred mobile operating system is Graphene OS which is an Android based alterative.

What we like about Graphene OS is that it has a ton of great privacy features that work behind the scenes to keep you safe but works just as well as normal Android.

For example, although Graphene OS doesn’t come with the Google Play Store (perfect for avoiding big tech), it is easily installed with one click. We also recommend the F-Droid app store for the best privacy preserving apps.

Graphene OS at time of writing is only available for the Pixel smartphones. The newest Pixels at time of writing are supported for security updates for 5 years which is great for a phone.

We would take care of sourcing a device for you and install Graphene OS.

Budget: £300

£240 on a refurbished Pixel 8

£60 – one hour labour

TV

We love to re-use old hardware. It’s exponentially more sustainable that buying new electronics. We also hate invasive ads and tracking.

We recommend replacing the hard drive in old computers with a new Solid State Drive (SSD), which in this case, we also would install Bluefin Linux onto.

We would then stash the old laptop behind Jamie’s large TV in their lounge, connected to the TV via HMDI.

We would then install the KDEconnect app on Jamie’s phone to easily control the old laptop using it’s virtual touchpad, keyboard and media controls over WiFi.

We also added the uBlockOrigin extension to Firefox web browser on the laptop to block YouTube ads. Jamie can now watch iPlayer, ITV and YouTube on their TV without interferences.

Budget: £40

• £30 – 30 mins labour
• £10 HMDI cable

Summary

Total budget: £750

Our hypothetical client, Jamie is now living the hi-tech life. All their devices are fast, user friendly and sustainably sourced.

They are protected from tracking, ads and have a setup that will last at least five years for less than the cost of an decent new laptop.

Jamie is also able to ask for extra support from us as and when they need it if they get stuck with anything. The entire project cost less than a brand new laptop or phone.

Has this blog post peaked your interest? Contact us via the details on our homepage.

• October 25, 2025

🎓 Memory Card Recovery Success / 記憶卡救援案例 / メモリカード復旧事例

【🇹🇼 繁體中文】
Lexar 128GB MicroSD 讀不到？外籍交換生珍貴回憶救援

對於離鄉背井的交換學生來說，記憶卡裡的每一張照片都是無價之寶。
這次的客戶是一位外籍學生，他的 MicroSD 卡裡面裝滿了在台灣的大學生活照與畢業報告，卻在接上電腦時突然跳出「磁碟需要格式化」的恐怖視窗，完全無法讀取。
這通常是檔案系統邏輯損壞造成的。我們堅持「不通電寫入」原則，先製作唯讀鏡像，再透過虛擬重組技術修復目錄結構。
最終，我們成功救回了 100% 的照片與文件，守護了他珍貴的留學回憶！

💡 提醒：看到「需要格式化」千萬別按確定，資料其實都還在！

【🇺🇸 English】
Saved: Exchange Student's Lost Memories (Lexar MicroSD)

For an international student, digital photos are the most precious link to their journey.
Our client, an exchange student, faced a nightmare: his MicroSD card containing years of university photos and thesis work suddenly prompted "Disk Needs Formatting" and became unreadable.
This is often a logical filesystem error. We prioritized safety by creating a read-only disk image first, then reconstructing the corrupted filesystem virtually.
The result? We successfully recovered 100% of his photos and documents, preserving his cherished memories of studying abroad!

💡 Tip: If you see "Format Disk," click NO! Your data is likely still there.

【🇯🇵 日本語】
留学生の大切な思い出を救出 (Lexar MicroSD)

異国で学ぶ留学生にとって、日々の写真はかけがえのない宝物です。
今回のご依頼は、台湾での大学生活の写真や卒業論文が詰まったMicroSDカード。「フォーマットが必要です」というエラーが表示され、アクセスできなくなってしまいました。
これは典型的な論理障害です。私たちはデータを上書きしないよう、まず安全な読み取り専用イメージを作成し、仮想的にファイルシステムを修復しました。
その結果、写真とドキュメントを100%復旧することに成功。彼の貴重な留学生活の記録を守ることができました！

💡 ヒント：「フォーマットが必要です」と出ても、絶対に「はい」を押さないでください！

🔗 Case Study / 案例詳情 / 詳細はこちら:
2025.data-recover.com.tw/cases…
#tech #technews #technology #DataRecovery #MicroSD #Lexar #Photography #StudentLife #Memories #DigitalStorage#資料救援 #記憶卡救援 #照片救援 #新竹 #鴻華資料救援 #交換學生 #回憶#データ復旧 #SDカード復旧 #写真復旧 #メモリカード #留学 #技術

I put the text below on LinkedIn in response to a post there and figured I'd share it here too because it's a bit of a step from what I've been posting previously on this topic and might be of some use to someone.

In retrospect I might have written non-sense in place of nonsense.

If you're in tech the Han reference might be a bit out of your comfort zone, but Andrews is accessible and measured.

It's nonsense to say that coding will be replaced with "good judgment". There's a presupposition behind that, a worldview, that can't possibly fly. It's sometimes called the theory-free ideal: given enough data, we don't need theory to understand the world. It surfaces in AI/LLM/programming rhetoric in the form that we don't need to code anymore because LLM's can do most of it. Programming is a form of theory-building (and understanding), while LLMs are vast fuzzy data store and retrieval systems, so the theory-free ideal dictates the latter can/should replace the former. But it only takes a moment's reflection to see that nothing, let alone programming, can be theory-free; it's a kind of "view from nowhere" way of thinking, an attempt to resurrect Laplace's demon that ignores everything we've learned in the >200 years since Laplace forwarded that idea. In that respect it's a (neo)reactionary viewpoint, and it's maybe not a coincidence that people with neoreactionary politics tend to hold it. Anyone who needs a more formal argument can read Mel Andrews's The Immortal Science of ML: Machine Learning & the Theory-Free Ideal, or Byung-Chul Han's Psychopolitics (which argues, among other things, that this is a nihilistic).

#AI #GenAI #GenerativeAI #LLM #coding #dev #tech #SoftwareDevelopment #programming #nihilism #LinkedIn

In case you didn’t know, on Zorin (and Debian, LinuxMint, Ubuntu, and many others) you can try different Linux desktop environments without “burning” a live OS image. You can just install the desktop environment with the apt-get install command and remove it with apt-get remove command. Switch between desktop environments by logging out your user, then before logging in again select the desktop environment from the menu in the login screen. The different desktop package names you can try with apt-get install are:

• task-gnome-desktop
• kde-plasma-desktop
• cinnamon-desktop-environment
• mate-desktop-environment
• budgie-desktop
• task-xfce-desktop
• task-lxqt-desktop

This is almost as good as trying the operating system from a live USB stick, if you are just interested in seeing what the UI/UX is like. But of course, if you want to make sure a Linux installation is going to work when you actually install it, you have to test it with a live USB image.

#tech #software #Linux #DesktopEnvironment #CinnamonDesktop #CinnamonDE #Gnome #KDEplasma #MATEdesktop #BudgieDesktop #BudgieDE #XFCE #LXQt #Zorin #ZorinOS #Debian #LinuxMint #Ubuntu

Легендарный DOOM где только не запускали: от тестов на беременность и до кишечной палочки. 🤰👾
Пройти мимо трендовых игрушек энтузиасты тоже не смогли, поэтому запихали игру в лабубу. 🎮🧪
Зачем и для чего? — Это вовсе не те вопросы, которые задают в таких случаях. 🤔🤷

​#DOOM #ItRunsDoom #HardwareHacking #Tech #Retrogaming #RetroComputing #Modding #Gaming #Игры #Технологии #labubu