Internet, go away. No wait, come back.

[sholio]

I have finally abandoned Freedom (my once-beloved internet-blocking app) for good. It's frustrating because I used to love it - it did what I wanted to do perfectly: blocked the internet for a set period of time with no unblocking option. It was small and streamlined and worked beautifully.

But then I got a new computer and their old Freedom app doesn't support the newer Mac OS. At this point they've gone to a subscription model, which meant I had no choice about downloading updates, and every change they made turned the app into something that was worse and worse for me. The worst thing was that one of their changes a year or two ago implemented a "greenscreen" feature. If you have tabs open, when you're running an active Freedom session and you go to Chrome, any tab that's at the top, or any that you bring to the top, will instantly vanish and be replaced by a bright green blank screen. You were writing a comment in that tab, or had a window open with information you'll need to refer to during your internet-blocker session? Hahaha, it's gone now, sucker. On top of that, when you start a session running, it does it automatically in the background to the topmost tabs, so there goes whatever you had there. It doesn't automatically come back when you end a session, so you have to back-arrow to get back to it.

I complained about this in support chat and never got anyone to even acknowledge that this was a problem, let alone that it required me to change my entire workflow to deal with this fucking thing. (When I was ready to work, I normally would load up research tabs, maps, inspiration images, etc, and then turn the internet off for hours. Now anything that's open in a tab vanishes as soon as you try to view it.) I requested the ability to turn it off through the feature-request option; no dice. I don't care if they let people have a feature like that, I just want to be able to turn the damn thing OFF!

But even that wasn't as much of a dealbreaker as its increasing flakiness. It started crashing a lot, and something in their last update broke it completely - it acts like it's running, but it's not actually blocking anything. I'm not even going to contact support this time. I just went looking for something new. I've downloaded two programs to try - Focus and SelfControl. SelfControl turns out to only block sites individually - you have to add them one at a time - but I think Focus might be my new blocking solution. It blocks the entire internet, you can set it to an unquittable mode (I mean, if I wanted to be able to just turn the internet back on at will, all I'd have to do is turn my wifi off) and it does NOT do that annoying making-your-tabs-vanish thing. The only thing I don't like about it is that there's a running countdown at the top of your screen that I haven't figured out how to turn off, but I'm already learning to tune it out, and my word processor (Bean) also has a fullscreen mode that should block me from being able to see it.

I'm liking Focus enough so far, just from my tests today, that I will probably pay for it when the free trial runs out. I now regret paying for the permanent/forever version of Freedom; sigh. Oh well, live and learn. Sometimes you leave a program, and sometimes it leaves you.

Comments

[yhlee]

Oh gosh, I remember Bean! Haven't used it in ages.

I sympathize with the creep of unwanted/badly behaved features! That sounds so frustrating. I hope Focus turns out to be the right new solution for you.

[sholio]

I love Bean. It hasn't been supported for ages but I will be SO SAD when it stops working. They will have to pry it out of my cold dead laptop running an outdated version of the Mac OS. XDDD

Fortunately Bean saves in a format (RTF) that is almost universally translatable by all word processors. This was one of my key criteria when I had to replace my last tragically outdated and un-runnable word processor - AppleWorks. Everything I wrote from about 2010 and earlier is now unreadable unless I use an older Mac that can still run the program to convert it into a file something else can read. I panicked SO HARD when they phased out AppleWorks and I realized that was going to happen, I can't even tell you. XD No more saving the master copies of my irreplaceable intellectual property into proprietary formats for me from here on out, at least not unless it's something that's so widespread that it will be machine-translatable from now until probably the end of time. I mean, technically DOC and RTF are Microsoft formats, but I do not foresee a time in my lifetime when you won't be able to easily translate a DOC - the text part of it, at least - to something else.

[yhlee]

Oh yeah, I have the same criteria for a WP. I need it to save to either RTF or even plain TXT (or maybe DOC). I used to use and love ClarisWorks, but it saved in some proprietary format and I wasn't going to risk losing all my old files. For similar reasons, while I flirted briefly with Mellel (which is a genuinely cool WP, especially if you need stuff like right-to-left text), I didn't like being beholden to it, so I gave up using it.

Hundred Words saves in RTF natively, THANK GOD. Apparently coding something in Swift to do that is trivially easy, although I had to have my hand held figuring this out anyway. XD

[sovay]

I mean, technically DOC and RTF are Microsoft formats, but I do not foresee a time in my lifetime when you won't be able to easily translate a DOC - the text part of it, at least - to something else.

Agreed, and also amen, with everything becoming so deliberately non-reverse-compatible (a significant source of technological anger in my life).

[sheron]

I still use word 2003 (I prefer that interface, can't stand the later word) and unfortunately it can't open docx files so every time I have to use an online converter. But other than this -- yes. Thank god for backwards compatibility being one of Microsoft's ideologies. They invested enormous time into making things backwards compatible.

[sovay]

I still use word 2003

I made the jump to Word 2004, but hell no further.

[kore]

That is why I still use Notepad for drafting nearly everything, LOL. I know people who love Scrivener but I get really nervous about "but what happens if it goes away?"

[sheron]

Technically in the back of scriv is all rtf text files. Albeit numbered (1.rtf, 2.rtf etc)

[sovay]

(When I was ready to work, I normally would load up research tabs, maps, inspiration images, etc, and then turn the internet off for hours. Now anything that's open in a tab vanishes as soon as you try to view it.)

That sounds amazingly unhelpful! Like every time you got the research materials all laid out on your desk and then stepped out of the room, someone came in and redecorated.

[sholio]

Yes, but even worse - you get them all laid out, and then every time you go to look at one of them, someone snatches that one away from you. And sometimes they randomly steal one behind your back. And when you complain about it, they tell you they're only trying to help, or just ignore you.

It was horrid. I realize that for people who don't work that way and usually have their browsers tab-free and shut down, it wouldn't be a problem. But it threw an entire bucketful of sand into the gears of my usual working process.

[sovay]

But it threw an entire bucketful of sand into the gears of my usual working process.

I do not have a permanently running browser full of tabs. But most of the people I know do. And so I can't imagine that your complaint was unique to their support chat service. And therefore it is really miserable that they couldn't at all adequately respond.

[sheron]

I don't have more than a few tabs open and generally close out all my tabs EXCEPT in one case...when I'm writing and I need the research tabs open for information! Or I'm planning to work on something after and I am keeping the tab up to remind myself. Someone messing with my computer / workflow without my say so is just...argh.

[graveexcitement]

today’s xkcd seems relevant here... (eta: initially hyperlinked but formatting is failing me and i’m on mobile, so here’s the bare-bones link: https://xkcd.com/2224/ )

hopefully Focus works for you in the long run!

[sholio]

Okay, yes, that is highly relevant. XD Thank you for linking!

[abyssinia]

That XKCD comic was literally right under your post on my DW feed - it made me laugh at the almost too perfect coincidence :)

I totally feel your pain on the software changing in bad directions - I'm feeling that way about Apple products right now myself (beyond just the software...)

I've had good luck with LeechBlock as an internet blocker (I use it on Firefox - I think it also works on Chrome?). It does sites individually a lot (which works well for my needs) but it has other lockdown options also. I am not 100% sure it would do what you need, but I think it might?

[sheron]

Oops I linked in my comment too before reading this :D

[sholio]

LOL no worries. It is really astonishingly appropriate to have that cartoon show up just as I'm going through my current frustrations. xD

[leesa_perrie]

So many times they add new features or change things and end up making a great bit of software a pain in the neck. Not always, sometimes the changes are great, but, yeah, it is one of those things that happens :(

Here's hoping that Focus meets your needs.

[sholio]

Thank you! :)

[sheron]

Auto updating software that breaks your workflow is the most aggravating thing of this decade. All blame Google for this model (also how I quit Google Chrome forever after using it since version 0.34).

Today's xkcd is very apropos because believe me you're not the only one suffering:

https://www.xkcd.com/2224/

Also who actually wants to stare at the countdown on their screen when they've specifically asked to not be distracted? Baffling. But not as baffling as the green screen thing!

[sholio]

AUTO UPDATES ARE OF THE DEVIL. AAAAAAAA

I would still be using Photoshop CS2 if I could. Actually, let's be fair, I would probably still be using Photoshop 3.0, but even I realize that's a bit ridiculous. xD

Also who actually wants to stare at the countdown on their screen when they've specifically asked to not be distracted? Baffling.

Amazingly, now that I've gotten used to it, I find that I like it. I used to occasionally check how much time I had left from the dropdown on Freedom, and now I can just do the same thing by looking at the top of the screen. Perhaps more surprisingly, I don't find myself getting constantly distracted by it as long as I'm involved in whatever I'm writing.

This may change, and if it DOES become an issue, I might try to find a solution to hide it. (I mean, worst-case scenario, I can just put a sticky note over that part of the screen.) So far, though, it's working out well - and it's just such an amazing relief to be able to load up research tabs and then have them still be there when I click on them while I'm offline.

[alessandriana]

Oh no! I still use the old version of Freedom (I'm still on Mojave) and that's bad news for whenever I finally have to update. :(