Tynan Uses

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.

Configure Framework Laptop 13 DIY Edition (AMD Ryzen™ AI 300 Series)

Choose from AMD and Intel system options, select your preferred memory and storage, operating system, and more customizations. Available in DIY and pre-built configurations.

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.

Bambu Lab A1 mini

Ultimate performance in compact build volume, Bambu Lab A1 mini offers ease of use 3D printing with features once found only in high-end models for beginners.

Cricut Explore® 3 | Cricut.com

Cricut Shop

EcoTank ET-15000 All-in-One Cartridge-Free Supertank Printer | Products | Epson US

The EcoTank ET-15000 wireless all-in-one offers Cartridge-Free Printing with easy-to-fill supersized ink tanks. Save up to 90 percent on ink with low-cost replacement bottles — as little as 1 cent per color ISO page vs. 20 cents with ink cartridges1. This all-in-one delivers vibrant prints up to 13 x 19 (through rear-feed tray) and scans up to 8.5 x 14 (via the ADF). Print for up to 2 years with each included or replacement ink bottle set2 — each replacement set includes enough ink to print up to 6,000 pages3. That’s equivalent to about 80 individual cartridges4. And, there’s zero cartridge waste. The ET-15000 features a 250-sheet front tray paper capacity and rear specialty-paper feed, plus a 2.7 color touchscreen and hands-free voice-activated printing5.

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.

Zen Browser

Beautifully designed, privacy-focused, and packed with features.

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

Arc Search — A fast, ad-free mobile browser

Arc Search is a new AI-enabled, default mobile browser by The Browser Company — designed to be the fastest way to search, and the lightest way to browse on mobile. Available on iOS and Android.

Search

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

Kagi Search - A Premium Search Engine

Better search results with no ads. Welcome to Kagi (pronounced kah-gee), a paid search engine that gives power back to the user.

Chat

Signal Messenger: Speak Freely

Say "hello" to a different messaging experience. An unexpected focus on privacy, combined with all of the features you expect.

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

Proton Mail: Get a free email account with privacy and encryption | Proton

Proton Mail is the world’s largest secure email service with over 100 million users. Available on Web, iOS, Android, and desktop. Protected by Swiss privacy law.

Calendar

Fantastical is still the best calendar app.

PKM

Obsidian - Sharpen your thinking

The free and flexible app for your private thoughts.

The AI workspace that works for you. | Notion

A tool that connects everyday work into one space. It gives you and your teams AI tools—search, writing, note-taking—inside an all-in-one, flexible workspace.

Clay - Be more thoughtful with the people in your network.

Clay is a beautiful rolodex and CRM for iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help you manage your personal and professional relationships.

Todos

Todoist | A To-Do List to Organize Your Work & Life

Trusted by 30 million people and teams. Todoist is the world's favorite task manager and to-do list app. Finally become focused, organized and calm.

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.

Affinity Publisher (Adobe InDesign replacement)

Affinity Photo (Adobe Photoshop replacement)

Affinity Designer (Adobe Illustrator replacement)

Affinity Publisher 2

Affinity Publisher has everything you need to design spectacular layouts ready for publication. Get a free trial of the top page layout software today.

Affinity Photo 2

The first-choice photo editor of millions of photographers, artists, and other professionals around the world – try Affinity Photo for free today!

Affinity Designer 2

The best app for creatives and other professionals looking to create high-quality designs, concept art, illustrations, mock-ups and more. Get a free trial!

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

DaVinci Resolve | Blackmagic Design

Professional video editing, color correction, visual effects and audio post production all in a single application. Free and paid versions for Mac, Windows and Linux.

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 🫶🏻.

Penpot: The Design Tool for Design & Code Collaboration

Penpot is the open-source free design software that connects designers and developers with no handoff drama. Prototyping, UI design and code - all in one app.

Excalidraw — Collaborative whiteboarding made easy

Excalidraw is a virtual collaborative whiteboard tool that lets you easily sketch diagrams that have a hand-drawn feel to them.

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.

Cursor: The best way to code with AI

Built to make you extraordinarily productive, Cursor is the best way to code with AI.

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

timeline · tangled

tightly-knit social coding

Utilities

Raycast - Your shortcut to everything

A collection of powerful productivity tools all within an extendable launcher.

GitHub - jordanbaird/Ice: Powerful menu bar manager for macOS

Powerful menu bar manager for macOS. Contribute to jordanbaird/Ice development by creating an account on GitHub.

iStat Menus

The ultimate system monitor for your menu bar, with CPU, GPU, memory, network, disk usage, disk activity, temperatures, fans, battery info and more.

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.

Proxmox Server Solutions

Proxmox develops powerful and efficient open-source server solutions like the Proxmox VE platform, Proxmox Backup Server, and Proxmox Mail Gateway.

TrueNAS: The Home of Open Enterprise Storage

Scalable Enterprise storage up to 30+ PB with block, file & object support across NVME, HDD & hybrid arrays.

The Free Software Media System | Jellyfin

The volunteer-built media solution that puts you in control of your media. Stream to any device from your own server, with no strings attached.

Nextcloud - Open source content collaboration platform

The most popular open source content collaboration platform for tens of millions of users at thousands of organizations across the globe

Home Assistant

Open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first. Powered by a worldwide community of tinkerers and DIY enthusiasts. Perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server.

Home

You can run Pi-hole in a container, or deploy it directly to a supported operating system via our automated installer.

Immich

Self-hosted photo and video management solution. Easily back up, organize, and manage your photos on your own server. Immich helps you browse, search and organize your photos and videos with ease, without sacrificing your privacy.

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.

A running list of ATproto ideas - Tynan's Leaflets

Updated when the brain has more