Gmail is simple (albeit not necessarily easy) to replace, it’s just an email service and there are tonnes out there. I’ve heard great things about Tuta, but I use Proton. With hindsight I would’ve chosen Tuta. Proton has put money into developing some BS cryptowallet and has LLM features I don’t care for.
Adobe is a bit trickier, I admit, at least if you need it in a professional capacity. Some would suggest Affinity, but I won’t. They were bought up by Canva, there’s a bunch of AI bullshit there now, and while it’s free, you should expect enshittification. I’m not putting time and effort into learning a tool that’s going to be yoinked away.
Adobe is also trickier in the sense that they have a fuckton of products. If you don’t need any of their products in a professional capacity there’s always that alternative.
For Notion there’s also a lot of alternatives. Logseq, Appflowy, Affine, Obsidian.
I think the important thing to remember is that when changing a tool you’ll also often need to change your workflow. Some tools have similar workflows, others work completely differently, and some might give you tools you didn’t know you needed. It’s always going to involve a bunch of work though.
I’m personally in the process of trying to get away from Adobe’s Substance Painter. I was never particularly fond of the application, it’s honestly quite shit, but it’s also decently unique in what it does. Yeah there are tools similar to it but none that match fully.
Notion, Adobe, Gmail, etc. every commercial service seems to push AI features more and more.
Gmail is simple (albeit not necessarily easy) to replace, it’s just an email service and there are tonnes out there. I’ve heard great things about Tuta, but I use Proton. With hindsight I would’ve chosen Tuta. Proton has put money into developing some BS cryptowallet and has LLM features I don’t care for.
Adobe is a bit trickier, I admit, at least if you need it in a professional capacity. Some would suggest Affinity, but I won’t. They were bought up by Canva, there’s a bunch of AI bullshit there now, and while it’s free, you should expect enshittification. I’m not putting time and effort into learning a tool that’s going to be yoinked away.
Adobe is also trickier in the sense that they have a fuckton of products. If you don’t need any of their products in a professional capacity there’s always that alternative.
For Notion there’s also a lot of alternatives. Logseq, Appflowy, Affine, Obsidian.
I think the important thing to remember is that when changing a tool you’ll also often need to change your workflow. Some tools have similar workflows, others work completely differently, and some might give you tools you didn’t know you needed. It’s always going to involve a bunch of work though.
I’m personally in the process of trying to get away from Adobe’s Substance Painter. I was never particularly fond of the application, it’s honestly quite shit, but it’s also decently unique in what it does. Yeah there are tools similar to it but none that match fully.
I agree with Affinity. It’s going to enshittify for sure. But at least it’s free, unlike Adobe.
And I bet people will “crack” the last current version the day it enshittifies completely.