Learning to love the cloud(s)
Back in early 2008 I bought a black Macbook which basically became my repository for everything. Â A few OS upgrades ago it no longer was supported by Apple, but then these last few new OS have seemed remarkably similar to the MS bloatware of old, so that didnât bother me too much. Even when the battery died it still made a great desktop (the battery for that model is no longer available. From anyone.)
But a dead battery, plus an incessantly clacking and slow hard drive, were signs it was time to move and and buy something new. Â But what? I have an iPhone and an iPad but I canât say Iâm in love with Apple products or services (especially services) anymore. Â And theyâre so damn expensive!
Could I really go back to Windows, though? I mean, sure, I have to use it at work, but I dunnoâŠand then Iâm faced with an even vaster array of choices to make than if I stuck with Apple!
Like most Apple owners, I use a lot of Google apps and services. Â Could I survive with just a Chromebook?
On a whim, I bought one to find out.  That night, my Macbook committed suicide. Everything is up to date on my backup disc, but of course I need a Mac to access the filesâŠ
Oddly enough, I was amazed at how much of my âstuffâ was already on various clouds - Evernote, Tumblr, Blogger, Kindle, Dropbox, Google Drive, email file attachments, bank and brokerage accounts, even my music (though not in the way I thought or expectedâŠ).
I have tons of music in iTunes, some I can get to through an old iPod that serves as my car cloud, some on my phone, but a lot (all the stuff I ripped from CDs) is sitting on that little silver âcloudâ that was my Mac backup drive.Â
Yet between Amazon Prime Music, Spotify, and Pandora I have access to nearly all my old music plus a lot more - and Iâm listening to more music now, too, as a result.
Iâm also able to play with Google Docs, Office Online, and even Appleâs Keynote and Pages to my heartâs content as I try to decide what works best (and what doesnât) for me and the way I work.
Sure, I âlostâ a novel, a ton of stories and ideas for stories and articles, but you know what? Probably for the best.  A clean start is good every few years. Iâm kinda enjoying the freedomâŠ
PDFs are a bitch (gotta find a good app for those), and there are some weird quirks that make it impossible for certain financial sites to remember me from session to session without requiring a code being sent to my phone, but these are just minor annoyances. Setting up my printer to be on the cloud was a breeze. Because I used Chrome as my browser on my Mac, the transition was nearly seamless - every bookmark right were it always had been.
Eventually I know Iâll need to buy a ârealâ computer, but for now Iâm enjoying exploring just how much I can do with my head in the cloudsâŠ
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