32 thoughts on “Weaning Myself from Microsoft, Google, Apple Etc.

  1. This makes perfect sense for a while until you hit the point where being religious about avoiding lock-in gets in the way of being able to work sensibly.

    At least that’s how it is for me working as a freelance journalist.

    Some examples:
    – There are plenty of good alternatives to Word or Google Docs, but sooner or later an editor wants me to work on a collaborative document or, spit, do that horrible tracking thing in Word. Sticking with Open Source suddenly isn’t an option.

    – A Word document turns up using some weird proprietary feature that an alternative program simply can’t handle.

    – When I work in someone’s office even simple stuff like printing can quickly become tricky if the office system is rigidly proprietary.

    The odd thing is I prefer writing using a good text editor and something like Markdown. OK, I mainly do use Markdown. But if I send a text or Markdown document to an editor I usually get a call back asking for it as a Word document. That’s cool, most tools allow you to save Markdown as Word, but then I get messages back complaining about ugly layout and font choices. Sure, this shouldn’t be an issue, but it is and I get marked as ‘unprofessional’ by people who just don’t know any better.

    • No question about this — my books were edited in Word. I had no alternative that worked well enough or was fully supported.

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