The frustration of a perfect setup

No matter how I look at the list of apps I currently use, whether first-party or third-party, I can’t find anything to change, not a program to replace, not a service to swap for another. I think I am happy with my setup. It feels strange to admit, but somehow, I can’t quite believe it; I must be missing something, something surely can be tweaked. What happens after peak setup?

This frustration comes from the fact that looking at new apps, digging into settings, trying new online services, working on how each of these things operates with the others, is one of my favourite hobbies. I mean, a quick glance at the archive of this site will tell you that, not only do I love writing about apps and digital tools, but I love playing with their configurations; I’m like a kid with Lego bricks, building things, taking them apart, and building them again, with a huge smile, in a slightly different and improved way.

Now that my application setup appears to be “final”, it feels as though all my toys and Lego bricks are neatly stored away in their respective drawers, sorted by colour, by type, and by size. It’s perfect, and seeing my beautiful collection all nice and tidy like that is a very satisfying sensation, except I’m looking at it seated on the empty floor of my childhood bedroom, alone and bored.

What is there to do when nothing needs to be improved?

I recently wrote about my HTML and CSS “explorations” with this blog. Satisfied with the results, I think this job is done. The same goes for how Eleventy works on my machine: everything has been optimised, refined, future-proofed (especially Node.js): nothing to see here! Even the hosting is something I’m very happy with. My only gripe with xmit is that there is no possibility for me to pay for it.

The other apps on my Mac — the ones that don’t live in the Terminal like Eleventy, Node.js & npm, and xmit — are also perfect at what they do, and I can’t think of anything better to explore, let alone to use. If this is not your first visit, you already know how I feel about BBEdit. Well, I feel just about the same about NetNewsWire, which is as close to perfection an app can get as far as I’m concerned. It feels part of the OS (even more so than current system apps if I’m being honest), it is stable, it is simple to use, and it runs smoothly on my soon-to-be six-year-old MacBook Air.

Being happy with Safari is by far the strongest proof that my setup is final. Using StopTheScript to block JavaScript on most media sites, along with the performance and privacy benefits of using a DNS resolver like Quad9, has proven to be an efficient way to keep Safari light and responsive, even if my web experience is getting a little more interrupted than I would like, due to all the crap websites throw at first-time visitors these days.

Yesterday, I had a look at apps like Yoink, Karabiner Elements, Hazel, and also got a taste of Mullvad Browser, and News Explorer. Some of these apps were tried purely out of curiosity, to see if they would fit right in my “workflow”, others were basically reassurance that my current system and choices were the best I could have made.*1

Among all the parties involved in this setup, the obvious candidate for a replacement is my Intel-powered MacBook Air. Yet, this old computer is currently in great shape: the recent factory-settings reset I had to do surely helped. But its best feature is not being able to run MacOS Tahoe: stuck to MacOS Sequoia, it’s protecting me from Liquid Glass on the Mac and the “icons in menus everywhere” experience. My personal laptop is a breath of fresh air after spending hours on my work computer running Tahoe.*2

So, what will be able to make that itch go away? When nothing is broken, don’t fix it, as they say. But surely, there must be something that I’m missing, surely there is a program, somewhere, that would delight me, that would put a smile on my face. I want a new box of Lego bricks, I want to empty my drawers on the floor and see if I can do better.