After canceling SetApp, I went looking for a replacement for CleanMyMac. I'd used OnyX years ago and remember it being fine, so I installed it and started testing it by running the application uninstaller on a few apps I no longer needed around.

The first few apps were deleted nicely. Then, one took much longer than the others had, which was weird. When it finally finished, I found that every single non-default macOS app was gone from my computer. I restarted and it came up as if it were brand new. Like, "Welcome to Mac" new. My files were all there, but none of the apps. Plus, all my settings, Safari extensions, etc...gone.

Well that's no fun.

I have no idea what went wrong. Did I fumble-finger something? Is there a bug in OnyX? I've written support and will know more once I hear something from them, I suppose.

In the meantime, I had to rebuild/reinstall everything. Just for fun, here's the list:

• Installed Homebrew
• Installed Signal
• Installed Raycast
• Installed Emacs (brew install emacs-plus@30 --with-savchenkovaleriy-big-sur-curvy-3d-icon)
  • Got same compiler error as before. Uninstalled.
• Installed Emacs For OS X, which works.
• Installed Keyboard Maestro and set up Sync (icloud/Sync/macros (paraphrasing))
• Installed Carbon Copy Cloner
  • Had to rebuild backup tasks from memory
• Installed Capture One
  • None of my export recipes, etc are there
• Installed SilverFast 9
• Installed ProtonVPN
• Installed FolderPreview (not necessary, but I've grown fond of it)
• Installed Find Any File
• Installed Brother P-Touch Editor (for printing labels)
• Installed Kagi for Safari
• Installed SingleFile for Safari
• Installed MarkDownload for Safari
• Installed Tailscale
• Installed Forklift (purchased)
• Installed Wipr
• Installed Epson Print Layout (all settings gone)
• Installed PopClip (brew install popclip)
• Installed ImageOptim
• Installed Ghostty (why? I don't need it but it's cool)
• Installed BBEdit
• Installed Zed (I was testing this when things went awry)
• Installed Claude Desktop

I'm sure there will be more, but I think I've done a good job of keeping it clean so far.

Part of me feels good about the fresh start. I could use the weekend back, though.

At $10/month, SetApp is a good deal, especially if you use more than a handful of the included Apps. I've been a subscriber since early on.

I have two Macs, so the subscription is $15/month. Still a good deal, but I did the math and realized that I could purchase most of the apps I use outright for less than a 1-year SetApp subscription for a single Mac.

This wasn't always the case. For a while there, I had a couple dozen apps installed. My goal this past year has been to whittle that down to the essentials. Here's what I ended up with as of this morning.

Not bad, but after this morning's App uninstall fiasco, I thought I'd see how many more apps I could live without. After all this, I feel like I only need Forklift, and Popclip, so those are the only things I've purchased individually so far.

Eventually I'll probably cave and buy Soulver, because it can be super handy for some things. And I'm sure I'll miss HoudahSpot, but for $6, Find Any File is a reasonable substitute for the way I use it.

So, I've canceled my SetApp subscription. This has already given me the FOMO jitters, but I'm trying to resist the feeling as long as I can.

I wrote the following in 2021 but can't find where I posted it, and I'm feeling it again, so I'm recording it here

It feels like everyone (or at least those in my bubble) is consumed by the “how” of note-taking. Tools, workflows, processes, backlinks, and on and on. Obsidian? Roam? Paper? It’s fun to explore and interesting to read about and there is no end of things to distract myself with.

None if it really matters, though. We endlessly split hairs and wring our hands and gaze at our navels over irrelevant minutiae around taking notes. It’s exhausting.

As an attempt to extract myself from this loop, I think I'll stop taking notes for a while. This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop writing/blogging. Blogging isn’t note-taking. Nor is journaling. I’ll still do that. What I won't be doing is jotting down my recent thoughts about minimalism or digital record-keeping or the details of a conversation I had with a colleague or how much I paid for the printer paper I just ordered. Who cares?

No more Org vs Obsidian vs Tinderbox vs The Archive or what-have-you until I stop obsessing over which is better or more private or more open source or if it uses the right flavor of Markdown. No more worrying about whether I’m taking “smart” enough notes or if this note should be “evergreen” or not. How long should a zettel be, anyway?

There are lots of smart, productive, happy people around who take very few notes and aren’t missing anything. I'd like to be one of those people for a minute.

The past week has been weird for me, blog-wise. Normally, I fire up a daily post every morning because I want to. I then keep my eyes peeled for interesting things to post about. I like posting stuff on the blog. Lately, though, I haven't felt like it.

Examples?

After many years of wanting a Rolleiflex, I bought one a couple weeks ago. I'm excited about it and I have thoughts about it, so why haven't I posted anything?

I've started using Howm (rather than Denote) for most of my notes. This is big, right? Yet as far as blogging about it? Crickets.

I don't know what's wrong with me, but I just don't feel like doing the work. This would be fine if I was doing something else instead. But I'm not. Instead of writing, I'm not writing, is all.

Anyway, I'm sure this is just a phase. At least I hope that's all it is. For once I'm not changing platforms again as an excuse to post something, so that's good, I guess.

As of Sunday, June 1, 2025 at 10:00 AM, all of my sites (including this one) are being served using Caddy on a FreeBSD server from Vultr.

Yesterday everything was on an Ubuntu server at Hetzner. I would have prefered to stay at Hetzner, but they don't seem to offer FreeBSD.

Why have I done this? I don't really know. Many years ago (early 2000s), I ran FreeBSD for all our client's servers. We only moved to Linux because "that's where everyone was headed" at the time. I'd always liked FreeBSD, so I wanted to try it again.

So far, it's as simple as I remember. Everything feels tight, if that makes sense.

Anyway, it was a good excuse to learn something new.