Yah, yah . . . I do most of my stuff with my own domain(s).
Still, I retain some gmail accounts, and they serve their purpose.
Enjoy your (de)crepitude, OldCorpse
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iCloud Need new main/permanent email address; is iCloud good?
- Thread starter theorist9
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Yah, yah . . . I do most of my stuff with my own domain(s).
Still, I retain some gmail accounts, and they serve their purpose.
Enjoy your (de)crepitude, OldCorpse
I’ve been using Fastmail for over a year and I’ve been very happy with them.
I know, I'm sorry, didn't mean to promote gmail. Being a corpse has the advantage that I get to test things looooooong term, and sometimes things surprise you, like gmail working for me.Yah, yah . . . I do most of my stuff with my own domain(s).
Still, I retain some gmail accounts, and they serve their purpose.
Enjoy your (de)crepitude, OldCorpse
Re: privacy. Yep, google spies. The thing is though, everyone spies. I'm not happy about spying, but I have to weigh it against the convenience. Everyone spies, and f.ex. I hate the Amazon spying even more (so annoying to see ads follow you), but I'm not going to give up using Amazon, and even if I do, google or someone else will monitor my shopping. So what's the point of giving up a convenience. Same with gmail, yeah they spy, but gmail is convenient enough for my needs that I'm willing to put up with it. Not saying anyone else should, your needs are likely different from mine, so your calculus of pro/con wil have a different outcome. Someone is always spying. Ultimately, and I'm not going to get into politics, and don't want to here, but various three letter government agencies spy on us wth abandon, including in blatant disregard of the law (when caught, they just say "oops, promise not to do it again", and of course immediately continue the unlawful spying, lol).
I figure it's a lost cause. I take basic precautions, and knock on wood, haven't been scammed so far (probably pure luck), but I have no hope of decent privacy unless you give up all digital activities (and not even then!). So I'm not going to fret about google scraping my data until I have to - so far, convenience wins out (for me!)./shrug/
Ha! You have nothing to be sorry-for; rotting, habitually-retro, bone-spiked-zombie-whatsit !
It's theorist9 who needs to get hir act together, and get a proper domain
I thought about this, and it doesn't work. I need a simple email address to give to people and businesses that's unlikely to be misunderstood (that's why you always want your email address to end in .com, since people mindlessly use that as the default).
Plus I nearly always send my emails as myself (I do have some anoymous accounts, but I only use those under special circumstances). And Fastmail happens to have my last name available. So let's suppose my last name were "Baker". Thus Fastmail essentially has "baker@fastmail.com" available. So all I need to spell out is Baker.
But with theorist9 it's much more cumbersome. Then instead of "baker@fastmail.com" it becomes "baker@theorist9.com", so there's lots more I need to spell out over the phone, plus much more chance of a transcription error.
And I think you get this yourself:
Futher, I can't use theorist9 in any case, since that blows the anonymity of having theorist9 as my online identity--if my domain were theorist9, every time I sent out an email as me, I'd also be announcing I'm theorist9.
So yeah, if [my first name].com or [my last name].com were available, I might go for it, since then I could do "baker@baker.com". But they're not.
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Yes (in all ways).
Still, it's ok to be willing to give-up the idea of .com as your default.
I am Andrew, and also Andy; my Family Name starts with 'H" . . .
. . . I took what I could get (when I could get it).
I now lay-claim to firstname&lastname.net (thankfully), and assorted splifin-whatsits.
As for anonymity, you (and I) have ultimately (and totally) blown our Vernor Vinge 'True Names' out of the water in the past few hours
Truly, 'theorist9' rolls off the tongue just as easy as baker@ . . . your address does not ultimately define your 'You'
I should return the favor for all this pestering, by pestering you to get a proper monitorIt's theorist9 who needs to get hir act together, and get a proper domain
.Your Dell P2715K's are nice, and work beautifully as side-monitors. But for your central display—the one you spend most of your time staring at—a 5k glossy Retina display is so much nicer, particularly if you're mostly doing text work.
I know this, because I'm using a 27" Retina iMac side-by-side with a Dell P2715Q.
Locally, I've seen the glossy ASD used on Craig's List, in perfect condition and with AC+, for $820—which means it could probably be had for $750.
Of course, you should really make at least one of those lazy display engines in your M2 Max do some real work, and get an XDR....
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I should return the favor for all this pestering, by pestering you to get a proper monitor
Your Dell P2715K's are nice, and work beautifully as side-monitors. But for your central display—the one you spend most of your time staring at—a 5k glossy Retina display is so much nicer, particularly if you're mostly doing text work.
I know this, because I'm using a 27" Retina iMac side-by-side with a Dell P2715Q.
Locally, I've seen the glossy ASD used on Craig's List, in perfect condition and with AC+, for $820—which means it could probably be had for $750.
Of course, you should really make at least one of those lazy display engines in your M2 Max do some real work, and get an XDR....
ha! Aye, Man, two of either/each would be heaven . . . re-plumbing and bath remodel is taking a lot of fun out of my extended computing
I have never had a problem with iCloud email. The trick is not not give out your personal address and use alias acconnts most of the time.
Is the idea that alias accounts eventually fill up with junk, and when that happens you just delete them and move on, while you can't do that with your true account?
That is my modus operandi and has worked well. I like the fact that I can also remove an alias and stop further emails on the alias.
EDIT: Apple Support just told me that it is not possible to create general iCloud email aliases--they said that you can only create and use aliases within the Apple Mail app (which I don't use). Thus those aliases wouldn't be usable in Outlook, which is my email app.
EDIT 2: I'm not sure if what Apple Support is telling me is right. The 2nd screenshot seems to say that if I set up the alias in iCloud, that alias will work anywhere on my device (including in Outlook), so long as Mail is turned on in System Settings.
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Well, I encountered one practice from Fastmail (FM) that I don't like. During my testing, I sent four emails from my FM acct to to my work account. Two arrived immediately, and two arrived 11 hours later.
I asked FM to investigate and, after reviewing the headers, they informed me FM does routine spam holds on emails from accounts during the first month to ensure the account is not being use for spam.
That's understandable—but what's unacceptable is they do this to paying customers without informing them of the practice. I only caught this because I was sending the emails to myself. But if a customer sends a time-sensitive email during the first month, and it's held for half a day, there's no way they would know.
I told them FM needs to be more transparent about this practice. At the least, they need to include that info. in the "new customer" email. Further, in the longer term, they should add a notification mechanism where the sender is informed of any emails put under hold.
I asked FM to investigate and, after reviewing the headers, they informed me FM does routine spam holds on emails from accounts during the first month to ensure the account is not being use for spam.
That's understandable—but what's unacceptable is they do this to paying customers without informing them of the practice. I only caught this because I was sending the emails to myself. But if a customer sends a time-sensitive email during the first month, and it's held for half a day, there's no way they would know.
I told them FM needs to be more transparent about this practice. At the least, they need to include that info. in the "new customer" email. Further, in the longer term, they should add a notification mechanism where the sender is informed of any emails put under hold.
I ran into another issue with Outlook: Unlike with Apple Mail, you can't send mail from alias emails, which effectively makes them non-usable. Instead, if you want to create separate disposable anonymous emails, you need a separate account for each.
With iCloud, that's easily solvable: You can create five new iCloud accounts, which gives you a separate free email for each. If you want, you can further invite all five accounts to join your paid iCloud account under Family Sharing, which means my paid iCloud account's 50 GB storage is shared among all of them.
As far as I can tell, you can't do this with Fastmail. Well you can, but it costs money. You can't add free accounts to your paid account. Each of the five (or however many you set up; I could probably get by with two or three) will cost an additional $5/month, for a total of $15-$20/month. Not terrible, but still one tries to keep one's various subscription costs down.
With iCloud, that's easily solvable: You can create five new iCloud accounts, which gives you a separate free email for each. If you want, you can further invite all five accounts to join your paid iCloud account under Family Sharing, which means my paid iCloud account's 50 GB storage is shared among all of them.
As far as I can tell, you can't do this with Fastmail. Well you can, but it costs money. You can't add free accounts to your paid account. Each of the five (or however many you set up; I could probably get by with two or three) will cost an additional $5/month, for a total of $15-$20/month. Not terrible, but still one tries to keep one's various subscription costs down.