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by chewz 2962 days ago
I couldn't stand anymore the stream of mistakes that macOS had become so I had installed ChromeOS as main OS on MacBook Pro.

This is excellent combination. Mac is still superior hardware wise and ChromeOS is really nice graphical environment for web browsing, HBO Go, Spotify, YouTube, Google Play Music, Google Photos, Google Drive, Inbox etc. Anyway most of the time I spent inside terminal - crouton - Debian stretch - Vim - gcloud.

I am enjoying the screen real estate of Mac's Retina display, touchpad, keyboard, battery life etc. On the other hand I am free from half-baked Apple software...

I have a backup ChromeOS install on at least 6 years old x230. I have also wiped out Windows and installed ChromeOS on my Mom's i3 Lenovo laptop.

So far so good..
1 comments
PascLeRasc 2962 days ago
How'd you do this? Couldn't you just use Chrome on OS X as a ChromeOS of sorts?
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chewz 2961 days ago
I had used Neverware build of ChromeOS[1] - no dual-boot anymore so I had to make a choice.

Well, it had been a process - I had been growing dissapointed with lack of quality of Apple software, each iteration beeing of lower quality and plain dumber then competition (iCloud, Siri, Apple Music etc.) High Sierra had been the final straw.

Over time I have stopped using iCloud, Apple Photos, Mail, Safari and replaced them with Google Photos, Google Drive, mutt in Terminal, Chrome etc.

At some point I have realized that I have only single app comming from AppStore on my computer. The rest is either free software (paid for but dowloaded from the web not from Apple's walled garden) or from Homebrew.

At that stage jumping out of Apple's garden had been quite painless for me. I am not missing iMessage even. And I have started using Sony XZ Premium instead of iPhone at more or less the same time (better screen resolution, better bluetooth music quality with Sony MDR-1RBT headphones and at quarter of the price of iPhone 8).

Some time ago when still on macOS I have started using dnscrypt-proxy 2.0 on my router which disables most of call home capabilities of Google, Apple, Facebook etc. And also I have my own extension for Chrome which keeps my Google Search and Youtube activity transparent to Google. Not industry-grade but I am enjoying enough privacy on ChromeOS.

[1]: https://www.neverware.com/freedownload

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