Back with The Firefox and The Thunderbird

No, I’ve not got Jack Baty Syndrome. (Hi Jack, if you’re reading this. 👋)

I’ve decided to give Firefox & Thunderbird another go because I want to start moving over to apps that will be able to make the (eventual) trip with me out of the Apple ecosystem.

This is not a knock on Safari, which is (shocker, I know) a pretty good browser these days, or MailMate, which has really helped me grapple with multiple years of email detritus. But they are resolutely Mac apps. (MailMate qualifies as a Mac-assed app, Safari perhaps less so since this is Apple we’re talking about.)

I’ve been a long-time user of both Mozilla apps for various periods over the years, mostly during my time on Windows. Back in the 2000s, before Google released the first versions of Chrome, Firefox was a necessity for anyone who didn’t want to dance to Microsoft’s plodding tune. And Thunderbird stacked up pretty well against the other desktop email clients of the time. (Hard to believe now, but doing your email 100% in the browser wasn’t always a thing, because frankly web email was pretty bad prior to Gmail.)

Both apps have been through ups and downs since. Firefox is the underdog browser, again. But they’re both still going… and, as a pleasant surprise to me, they work really well for my uses! Moving over was quick and painless, and I was up and running straight away.

(I should note at this point that I’ve already put in the spade-work to simplify my workflow for both browsing and email handling prior to this move. Changing apps (o hai Jack!) won’t automagically fix any overload you may have.)

It’s a couple of days now since I switched over, and I’ll probably make a few tweaks here and there as I proceed, but I think I’ve found something I can stick with for the long-term. I just have to hope that Mozilla keeps their eye on the ball…