• Migrating From Gmail

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    I’ve been using my gmail account since a few months after the beta started. I’ve moved a dozen times since then, but my email stayed the same.

    However, over the years Google has lost my confidence that they’ll do the right thing and do no evil. It’s for this reason I don’t use their apps, don’t invest in tweaking gmail, or even (especially) sync my contacts.

    As a Mac user for almost 20 years, I’d like to use iCloud for my email, but I can’t use custom domains with Apple. While I don’t foresee Apple losing my trust and confidence, I can’t be sure.

    Tying my email to a third party domain will lock me in to their ecosystem, for better or worse. Moreover, I could lose it all in an instant by the whim of an algorithm with little to no recourse.

    With Gmail, I’m not the customer, the advertisers are. And because our interests are not aligned, I have no idea how my data will actually be used.

    What to do?

    The obvious answer is to move my email to a domain I own. Then find a provider that supports open protocols and that I pay at a regular interval.

    I’m leaning towards Fastmail. They’ve got a nice detailed migration guide, I’ve been a customer on the business side for a number of years, it’s time to renew, and most importantly their systems behave in ways that I expect.

    The main blocker isn’t even money, it’s updating each account that uses my gmail as a login to my new address. Lock-in, albeit defacto and of my own doing, is a bitch.

  • by

    Using my spare 15 - 20 minutes in the morning to ease back into macOS/Obj-C development. It's fun.

  • Checkin to 境川橋梁

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    in Kanagawa, Japan

    Post work stroll.



  • by

    If data is the “new oil”, that means you have to deal with oil spills (data leaks) ruining the environment (Internet). No thanks.

  • Dropping SaaS

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    The mantra in bootstrapping circles for the past while has been “charge more”. And the best way to charge more, over time, is a SaaS. So it’s natural that most bootstrapers default to a SaaS pricing model when starting their new projects and companies.

    I’m no different. I build web-apps professionally and have for the past 10 years. Web apps are my bread and butter.

    But when I compare my successful SaaS projects to my successful desktop app projects, no matter the metric, I’ve always made more when I charge less and charge it once.

    And since I’ve been so focused on SaaS and this charge more mentality, I’ve automatically dismissed ideas that I had that weren’t SaaS.

    After attempting to build a number of web apps independently I’ve mostly stopped midway through. The slog of getting the basics perfect, managing servers, dealing with recurring payments, it’s too much like my day-job.

    And so I find myself considering going back to my old bread and butter for side-projects: native apps for the Macintosh.

    So far I’ve got a few ideas for small utility apps. The ones I’m most interested in are the ones that fit in the open web and apps that can help increase privacy for its users.

    It’s been a breath of fresh air and I’m excited to be having fun making things again.

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