Little Tech (Premium)

I often highlight the changes I make to the apps and services I rely on. But the events of the past year have triggered an even bigger shift. With enshittification scrambling the value proposition of so many Big Tech solutions, I find myself drifting away from those abusive monopolies and seeking out products from smaller, independent companies that protect the privacy of their users while meeting their needs, and at no or low cost.

This is a shift to what I think of as Little Tech.

I didn't come up with this term, of course, but I was surprised to see that I had written a story about Little Tech practically begging the U.S. Congress to take on Big Tech's many abuses over 5 years ago. (I write so much, even I can't keep it straight.) But that's an interesting starting point. Since then, regulators around the world have finally started closing in on the most egregious and predatory behaviors at Apple, Google, and Microsoft, especially. And the companies mentioned in that article--Basecamp, PopSockets, Sonos, and Tile--are good examples of Little Tech companies, though I have many more to discuss.

To be clear, this isn't above dropping Big Tech entirely. Like you, I will do what's right for me and for my loved ones. And that still includes Big Tech offerings, though perhaps in a reduced capacity or as backup. But I will also continue to be clear-eyed about the predatory behaviors that Big Tech companies exhibit in their apps and services, and I will reject those that are either too abusive or do things that I can't work around or fix.

I'm not sure where this goes, or even how to frame this discussion, really. But I assume most know by now that my professional career paralleled the rise to dominance of Microsoft in the 1990s. And that as the quality of its products, starting with Office, improved in that period, my loathing of the company was gradually replaced with respect. By the end of the 1990s, my support of Microsoft--really, my support of Microsoft's customers--was pragmatic. Microsoft was personal computing, and it was unavoidable.

This changed throughout the early 2000s. As Steven Sinofsky describes and laments in his epic book Hardcore Software, Microsoft by that point had evolved beyond focusing on individuals to focus on businesses and then enterprises, the biggest businesses of all. That this shift paralleled my own professional shift--I started writing for and then working for the company that published Windows NT Magazine, which went on to be renamed several times, in 1999--is interesting, but also coincidental. But it's fair to say that by the time I left that company, in late 2014, I had had it with enterprise computing. I want to focus on personal technology again. And pretty much only personal technology.

This presented a curious problem. I had spent the previous 15 years covering mostly Microsoft, ping-ponging between its consumer and business offerings. But this was also the period in which Microsoft...