I was an Apple fan girl for a long time, deeply into the Apple ecosystem. I still use some of there services, but if Apple stopped all there services today, the only thing I would miss is Email, and that is going to be moving once my free Apple One subscription is up. Here is what I have done.
Cloud Storage
Some of the most important things you can have on your devices is your photo’s. They are irreplaceable memories of your life so you would want them safe. I currently use 2 services to back up my photos, Apple iCloud and Nextcloud. iCloud as I have the Apple One subscription, and a Nextcloud server that is running on a mini PC that I use as an application server.
Why both Nextcloud and iCloud? While Nextcloud is brilliant, it is still in my home. Although it gets back up every night to my NAS, if something happens to my house like a fire or burglary I could loose it. You should ALWAYS have a backup of important data off site.
What will I do when the Apple One subscription runs out? I am planning on migrating to Proton Drive. The reason why I have not done so already are 2 reasons.
- I still have an Apple One subscription for another year.
- Proton Drive doesn’t currently have a client for Linux. They are working on one however and when my Apple One subscription is finished I am hoping that the client will be ready.
Office
I don’t use an office suite as such, I use Markdown. Markdown is simply a text file with characters for formatting.
An example is * for bold and for italic.
This means the files are not tied to any one application, though I do use a commercial app called Typora. I use this as I like the interface, it is cross platform, and cheap for 3 installs. I could however just use something as simple as Notepad on Windows, Textedit on Mac and exd on Linux to do the same thing. A good free alternative for Typora is Obsidian. For Apple Mac’s I would strongly recommend iA Writer as your editor of choice as it is a very good markdown editor, though the Windows version has a lot to be desired.
Another advantage is file size. For every blog post on this blog, the total file size for all the files (that’s 73 posts in total) on my SSD is 374kb. I wouldn’t even be able to do one document in Microsoft Word, Libre Office or Apple Pages for that amount of disk space.
If I need a spreadsheet or a proper word processor then I use Nextcloud Office. This is based on Libre Office and fully compatible with that office suite. So you can either use the web based version that comes with Nextcloud or install Libre Office on your machine and use that with Nextcloud Drive.
Currently I have a custom domain for my email that works with iCloud mail. Again this will be migrated over to Proton Mail when my Apple One subscription comes to an end
Notes
For notes I use Nextcloud Notes. Again this is fully cross platform, they have native apps for Android and iOS. The notes again are stored in Markdown, so have all the advantages I mentioned above. You can use Nextcloud Drive to sync your notes to Windows, Linux and Mac. Linux users can also use iotas to sync notes to a native app, and QOwnNotes is available for Windows, Mac and Linux that can also sync to the Notes app on Nextcloud.
Music
As an Apple One Subscription I have access to Apple Music, and I do use it. I do however also have a Plex server with a lifetime licence at home, and I plan on using only that when my Apple One Subscription runs out. I already own a lot of music and you can by MP3’s from multiple sources legally these days. The music player app for Plex, PlexAmp is an excellent music app for iOS and Android.
Movies
Again as an Apple One user I have access to Apple TV, though I don’t watch a lot of it. I do again have a plex server that I have ripped all my DVD’s too. I do however mainly watch YouTube these days so this is not a big deal for me.
Calendar/Contacts
I currently use iCloud to store my Calendar and Contacts, but this is also backed up on my Nextcloud server and can be easily switched over as and when I want to.
Passwords
A password manager is essential these days, and I used to use Apple Passwords, These days however I use Nextcloud Passwords. It has plug ins for all the popular browsers, native apps for Linux, Windows, iOS and Android. You can also use it’s web interface. The only downside is it doesn’t support passkeys, though you can get a physical device these days that is a lot more secure.
Backup
As you can see, I do use a lot of services that uses my Nextcloud Server, so how do I back this up? Well one of the reason why I use 2 servers at home (A Mini pc that runs the Nextcloud, Plex and other services and a separate NAS) is the Nextcloud instance automatically backs up onto my NAS every night.
I also back this backup onto an external HDD every day and once a week I give this HDD to my neighbour once a week and rotate between 2. One of those HDD is always off site. The same goes for my DATA drive that is on my NAS that has things like my Software Archive, Music and anything else that is irreplaceable. All the data on my Nextcloud Server is encrypted.
For Plex, I already own all the DVD’s. The data is stored on my NAS, not my Application Server and the HDD’s in the NAS are stored in a mirror configuration.
I also back up the Plex data to an external HDD when I add new media to the server.
My NAS does not have access to the internet.
Then there is the machines that the data is synced, like Notes, Photo’s and Nextcloud Drive. If it comes to it and all other options fail, the data synced to my machines is last hail mary option.
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