For several years I've been paying for a Family plan with Apple Music for me, my wife, and my son.

I've been willing to pay the $14.99 per month ($16.04 including tax) for this family plan because of the convenience in being able to listen to their vast music library ad-free, on-demand, on a variety of devices.

Last week I received an email from Apple informing me that, starting in November, they are raising the price of this plan from $14.99 to $16.99 per month.

May 2025 update: I have since moved on and have not had an account on Fosstodon for a couple years now.

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Back in January I wrote Why I Use Librem Social. Librem Social is a social media network that is based on a fork of Mastodon. About a month after I wrote that, I decided to migrate to a different instance. Fosstodon is where I landed and I've quite enjoyed my experience there.

When it comes to room, desk, and equipment configurations for my home office, I like to change things around. A lot.

I should have done it a long time ago, but the best time to start is now. Over the past year I've been phasing in rechargeable AA and AAA batteries as replacements are needed for household electronics and gadgets.

Nobody asked for this future. Well, nobody but shareholders.

I recently read an excellent article by Shannon Valor: We used to get excited about technology. What happened?

She starts by sharing an experience she had where she was scrolling through her Twitter feed, but soon realizes she is feeling a heaviness in the pit of her stomach and not having a good time.

My ideal smartphone doesn't exist. It's never existed, really, although a couple of phones I have owned in the past have come pretty close.

Why would something so mundane warrant a blog post? I'll answer that question with a question: who uses an alarm clock anymore?

Earlier this month, I went on a trip with my family to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. We stayed at a campground situated between the two parks. We use an MVNO (Ting) for our cell phone service to save money and, therefore, had no service at our camp. In fact, during the few days we spent exploring that magnificent part of the world, we had little or no service at all.

(And plan to eventually switch to an Android phone.)

Back in May, I upgraded from an iPhone SE 1st Gen (2016) to an iPhone 12 Mini. But after the initial novelty wore off, I realized that, while it might be newer and more sophisticated on papery, it actually provided a worse overall user experience for me than the 6-year-old iPhone it replaced. So when my wife an son needed phone upgrades, I decided to make some changes.