Truth is, for the past week, I’ve been kicking myself over one particular thing: my setup doesn’t feel like it’s working anymore. More specifically, my cell phone–the device I use as a gateway to the people in my life. From personal to professional, the thing in my pocket connects me to them with just a few taps.

And Apple has been increasingly hostile towards anyone who dares use the iPhone like it’s their phone. Not being able to sideload or install whatever app I want, being restricted to Apple Pay, etc. have all done nothing but bother me. The straw that broke this camel’s back? Apple’s changes to the App Store in response to the Digital Markets Act, frankly. Notably, none of the changes apply to the US, where a federal anti-trust suit is ongoing (at least, for now.)

I remembered that the CTO of 37signals David Heinemeier Hansson had Tweeted at some point about a similar thing. So, needing a little bit of a kick in the butt to do something, I wrote an email to David. I detailed the dilemma I was having, along with what I had come up with as potential replacements for the Apple things I rely on, and asked if he had anything to send my way that could be a resource. The guy’s busy as hell–so I did not anticipate a reply. I hit send and decided to take a nap on the couch. Within the hour, I woke up to the Gmail notification sound. He wrote me back.

In short, David strongly encouraged me to follow through on trying something new–in this case, switching away from iOS. He even included a link to a blog post he wrote about it, which I hadn’t seen before. Honestly, it’s really cool that he took the time to write me back at all, and that underscores how much I love email.

So, I’m going to try something new. We are long past the time I should have made this change. But as an experiment: I’m going back to Android for at least the next three months, and I’m replacing the Apple services I use in the meantime. Every so often, we’ll check back in on this experiment and see what I’ve run into. I think it’ll be fun!

Here are my ideas so far, more fleshed out than what I originally sent to David:

• Email/Calendar: I mentioned before that I use iCloud and Gmail (and thus, Google Calendar/Tasks hooked into Apple Calendar). Well, I’ve decided that I’m going to be migrating to HEY. It’s a new take on email–and the last time I actively tried it was 2021/2022. From what I’ve read and seen, there have been a ton of improvements and it seems to work really well on Android.
• Messaging: iMessage will be replaced with RCS, and anyone I know with an iPhone will be encouraged strongly to upgrade to iOS 18 so they’re not only secure with the latest patches, but also have access to this functionality. I don’t really mind iMessage, but I don’t think it’s necessary to my phone’s operation. I’d rather just text you and not think about the protocol anyway–which RCS obviously allows me to do. I’ll also encourage the use of WhatsApp or Signal, with me preferring the latter. Both are more secure than texting and is end-to-end encrypted by default.
• Music: I’ve been using Apple Music for just about a year now in some capacity, but today I ripped out my library and moved it back to Spotify. Spotify’s not perfect, and they really should pay their artists better–but it’s a nicer app on Android than Apple Music is, in my opinion.
• Arcade: I do play a few Arcade games, but I think I can forgo them. Most have alternatives on Google’s Play Pass, which my parents have a yearly subscription to, so I’m just going to play those if I’m feeling a game. With over 700 games in my backlog, having access to the three games on Arcade that I love is not a big deal to me.
• Photos: I store a lot in iCloud Photos, but I can easily migrate into Google Photos. I don’t like that I’d be entrusting my backlog of 15,000 high resolution photos to one big company who could decide tomorrow that the service is no longer worth having, but I haven’t found any decent alternatives yet. Even self-hosted ones.
• Watch: I have had an Apple Watch since 2019… However, I’ve been meaning to (quite literally) deep clean the crap off of it for some time, so I’m going to do that during this break. You have no idea how much builds up on that wearing it every day for five years! Ew.

And that’s what I came up with. Even though I am definitely a little worried about this experiment, I’ve wanted to do it for some time and I’m actually a little excited too. So, let’s wrap this up so I can go port my information over to my Android phone. Wish me luck and stay tuned for more posts on this experiment!