This was cringe even in the '90s.

I think between all the ideas in this thread that I could conceivably pull it off. I’d probably have to stay on iTunes and Windows Office under a VM, but Windows and office licenses aren’t hard to come by.

The 3tb are mainly my music and photo library and the rest of my files. I actually have 2 NAS’. I could use them, but I like having things locally and to keep copies of the most important things in multiple places. So one NAS is mainly for backup of the other computers around the house. The other is for home automation and media server.

The disk is less of a problem than the RAM as I just keep it on an external drive. With the 2018 mac mini I have now, I just bought the lowest RAM and SSD possible and added an SSD RAID externally and then upgraded the RAM. I could concievably keep the RAID for the next computer. But even the base 128gb without any of my actual home folders on it is still to small (it’s criminal that they even sell this SKU as it would be entirely unusable for anyone in it’s base config). I could get by on 16gb of RAM (8 is really shit, I can’t do it), but I have to ask myself why I should when I can get more for so cheap.

More than anything I’m just tired of being screwed, and generally want to move to FOSS for everything at home. The FOSS stuff I do run at home like Plex and Homeassistant serve me so well, so reliably, over such a long time, that that’s just where I want to end up with everything so I’m not constantly having to fight being herded into paying for too-expensive cloud solutions or overpaying for basic computer hardware. I’m tired of having my software and hardware be unsupported and then replaced by solutions that are worse just so that they can attempt to extract new revenue streams from me. I want off the treadmill.

Fair points. But I need 3TB minimum on my desktop machine. I have 2 NAS’ with 6TB and 3TB RAID arrays. Yes I can get by with 8gb of ram but I keep a ton of stuff open. It’s slow. 16gb is probably the right amount but with upgradable ram 8 can get 64 for $200 which is well worth it to me. None of this is possible within my budget on new Macs, whereas on any normal hardware platform it’s pretty affordable. You might want to go back and look at Mac ram and ssd prices and compare them to market prices to see how out of hand they’ve become. It’s like a 10x multiple in some cases. The one area I don’t need to go big is on CPU as nothing I do is compute heavy, which is of course the one area where Apple doesn’t charge an absurd premium.

Plexamp is so close but they don’t allow you to sync your whole music library.

Immich looks nice I will try it out.

If my job weren’t so heavily focused on Outlook and doing things quickly and efficiently there, I wouldn’t be such a snob. I am just quicker on local software and use a lot of local things like many windows, drag and drop between windows, etc. Every time I tried o365 I ran into some sort of major blocker to my workflow pretty fast (like within hours). If workflow and throughput weren’t so important to my job, I wouldn’t mind, but it gets me in trouble at work if things don’t work smoothly. I can probably grab a cd key from my employer or an old laptop, so I don’t see this as much of a cost issue as it is to max out a mac with RAM and HD.

Solid advice, thanks. Winapps looks really promising for those things where there is just no other option. I will have to give that a test run.

I run office for Mac. It’s far inferior to the windows version but it gets the job done for the minority of time I work from home.

I look at vendor lock in more as giving you proprietary file types or other data that simply won’t work on other systems. I’ve been very careful to avoid that by using DRM-free media exclusively for example. Smart playlists and those sort of things are features that can and have been delivered on multiple platforms. The only place where I’d say I’m truly “locked in” is in Echange server integration, but that’s a choice my work made which I have no control over.

It’s the lack of anti trust enforcement in the USA that causes this. There is little to no competition left in many markets.

I honestly couldn’t give 2 shits. IT allows it so I’m sure they have their methods of securing things. It’s not a small company.

I have a company laptop. I leave it at work.

I’m sure this will happen over time, but I need to find some way that I can do my most common tasks first or the migration will never happen.

I forgot about this. Will look into it again, thanks.

Plex amp unfortunately does not allow syncing the whole music library locally. Other than that it looks perfect.

The playlists are the problem for music.

I will look into OnlyOffice. Do they have an outlook replacement?

I checked out onlyprism, it could concievably do the job.

Probably one of the best responses so far, no idea why you are getting downvoted. I will look into it and get back to you.

I run many docker containers at home already so this is no issue whatsoever to throw a couple more on.

I’m not adamant on office, I just need to be able to do work on my device, that means exchange syncing at a minimum. Otherwise I can’t do anything. I have a work provided device but work from my home machines too (totally allowed by company policy).

lol