Olivers Blog

Bits & Bytes

My default apps starting 2025

There have been many lovely events in the Internet over the years and one to cherish especially is the one where users simply blog about their favorite standard apps they are using.

Musik

My music albums of the year 2024

At least one guitar is good, a little nostalgia is always nice, two guitars are better and the extreme is not always the best choice: My (metallic) taste is omnipresent, but also has occasional outliers into the one or other “more leisurely” realm.a

Bits & Bytes

OpenCore Legacy Patcher: A self-experiment on the Mac Pro 2013

The OpenCore Legacy Patcher is a separate tool that enables devices long since discontinued by Apple to be operated with newer versions of macOS.

Bits & Bytes Featured

The electronic patient file - the expected failure with an announcement

I have objected. For myself, my wife and also for our daughters. I smelled the rat months ago: The “advantages” of the electronic patient file ("ePA" in German), which was driven through the health insurance village like the new proverbial pig, were so obvious!

Bits & Bytes

The Mac Pro 2013 - when nostalgia finally catches up with you

It's a self-experiment paired with a hefty dose of nostalgia. My first Mac was the iMac G3 in Bondi Blue, I always wanted the iMac G4 (the “lamp”) and found the silver PowerMac G4 instead, with which the Mac journey then continued.

Bits & Bytes Featured

Data retention - the next round begins

The troublemaker FDP in the so-called German “traffic light government” is gone, and SPD Interior Minister Nancy Faeser wants to take advantage of this opportunity and is going straight back into the thick of things when it comes to “data retention”.

Musik

Everything back to zero - LINKIN PARK - “From Zero”

Letting go is sometimes hard and I'm a quite nostalgic person. The return of LINKIN PARK seven years after the Chester Bennington tragedy was therefore initially a sacrilege for me.

Bits & Bytes

Playlisty for Spotify: Migrate Apple Music playlists to Spotify

Switching from one service to another is often less of an ideological issue than a technical one: when you switch from one music provider to another, for example, your playlists can fall by the wayside.

Bits & Bytes

Apple acquires Pixelmator

There is software that does not come from the respective manufacturer of the operating system and can definitely be described as “essential”. On the Mac, for me this is Pixelmator (Pro) and Photomator, which have now found a new home at Apple.

Bits & Bytes

Bluesky: Blockchain investor joins, where is the journey heading?

There's news from Bluesky. After I shed some light on the service last year, the new financing round and the term “crypto” don't bode well.

Bits & Bytes Featured

Signal Proxy — a way for people experiencing censorship to communicate with Signal

While most of us have free access to the Internet and its services, certain states and authorities still practice censorship. Recently…

Blog

Stopping for a moment

A bit of sentimentality from one of the most beautiful countries in the world - Norway! In everyday life, we often forget who we are and what makes us who we are.

Fediverse Featured

The Fediverse — A vivid and modern approach to today’s Social Network-landscape

When I once discovered Mastodon, the Fediverse was already a nice approach in helping to rebuild the polluted Social Network-landscape.

Blog

Every year again: The blog reboot

New game, new luck - or: Another start for a new blog with thoughts that have matured over the years!

Not all those who wander are lost

50 km on a single weekend, two stages. 935 metres in height in total. Enough time to re-focus once again for a short amount of time, pulling the plug for two consecutive days and think about encountering and mastering obstacles.

How to deploy your own Joplin Server-instance with Docker

Using your data on any device is standard these days. Controlling where this data is stored is another story — in terms of Joplin, you can…

The European Union must keep funding free software

Since 2020, Next Generation Internet (NGI) programmes, part of European Commission’s Horizon programme, fund free software in Europe using…

The condemned live longer — welcome back, Network Utility

Once upon a time, MacOS (or Mac OS X) installations came with a nice GUI for basic networking tasks like traceroute, ping or nslookup…

How to skip the ChatGPT for Mac waiting list and get access now

This month, OpenAI has released the native ChatGPT-app for macOS alongside GPT-4o. Anyone can install this app yet but your account will…

Little Snitch 6 released, taking Mac-privacy to the next level

Four years ago I blogged about Little Snitch 5, a software firewall-like product from Austrian company Objective Development, which…

VMware kills Players, makes Pro free for personal use

While Broadcom still does Broadcom-things after acquiring VMware and turning pricing and portals upside down, at least the question what…

Tusks — Make posting to Mastodon feel like posting to a blog

Sometimes I come across apps that I would never have missed. Apps that come out of nowhere and still find their niche — Tusks by developer…

Bitwarden launches new MFA authenticator-app

The use of a second factor to secure online accounts has become a must over time, long before the triumph of passkeys. Although there are…

Apple locks users out of their Apple IDs without explanation

“Security” and “big tech” are two terms that don’t go well together at the moment. After ongoing security issues at Microsoft, Apple seems…

Microsoft adds recommended apps to the start menu in Windows 11

Microsoft is currently battling a lot of bad press but as if that wasn’t enough, there’s still something else to add: According to a recent…