Matisyahu's Blog

I’m heading off to bed now but at the moment I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Google – the last time I went into the Google ecosystem I found that the home experience wasn’t all that good but I’ve also realised that the ‘having everything in the one spot’ sure sounds great until you realise that the native experience of controlling ones home applications is better than trying to control them from a single app (assuming that they all implement HomeKit/Matter). Where as HomeKit/Matter provide a common framework so that everything can be controlled the end result is a ‘lowest common denominator’ experience as multiple companies are trying to work together and standardise resulting in some devices falling outside of that – security cameras features aren’t standardised. Maybe I should just get comfortable with the fact that dealing with multiple appliances isn’t going to be as clean and straight forward as I want it and that it is something I’m going to have to accept.

With that being said, much rather prefer the productivity of Google Workspace when compared to iCloud and Office 365. WIth iCloud it is rather limited – I understand it more of a consumer facing platform where complexity is avoided but at the same time it would be nice if Apple offered something like an iCloud Small Business which would allow more aliases for custom domains because the iCloud ‘hide my email’ with random words isn’t exactly up to scratch when you need to provide an email to someone. I’ve used Office 365 but found that the management of it wasn’t as easy when compared to Workspace – the impression I got was that Microsoft dumped all their software onto a server, called it ‘the cloud’ then went home for the day. Features that’ll work on the new Outlook app but not the Outlook.com web app (when you’re added to a mailbox which is visible in the Outlook app but not on the Outlook.com web app). Being told that aliases are supported only to find that they won’t turn up in Outlook.

I’m still procrastinating about moving internet service providers but because I make a decision I did put some questions to a local tech focused forum to hear feedback regarding what their experience – the decision being done with careful consideration given that I work from home and want to make sure that I get the best possible experience since my employer uses AWS, Microsoft, Cloudflare along with many of the work resources residing in Australia. Hopefully after a few days I’ll get some clarification and then make a definitive decision once enough information is collated.