WHY?
I built Spook OS in part out of nostalgia, in part because of frustration, but mostly for fun.
My entire journey with AI — and how I use a computer now versus before — boils down to the moment I couldn't update my MacBook Pro to the latest macOS. That eventually broke Photoshop, or at least broke using the latest version of Photoshop, which was frustrating because to me the computer still worked perfectly fine. Look, I get it: new technologies require new software, and new hardware enables software to do things that weren't possible before. But still — was my MacBook now simply a paperweight?
So in a form of personal protest, I put my 15-inch MacBook Pro in a drawer and installed Ubuntu on a vintage 13-inch MacBook Pro from 2012, with some upgrades: a solid state drive, maxed out RAM, and a new replaceable battery. My forever machine?
Incredible! The latest version of Ubuntu installed seamlessly on the decade-old computer. There was a bit of a learning curve, but ChatGPT helped a lot in the beginning. If I ran into a roadblock, I simply asked. This quickly escalated into building web apps to replace the apps I used on my Apple computer. Vibes were good. But the longer and more complex the LLM conversation got, the more the old hardware began to show its age. That moved me toward Gemini, which seemed to handle browser memory better than ChatGPT, and eventually led to me using the Gemini API from the command line.
Finally I gave in — after my Linux install fried on the MacBook — and bought a brand new Lenovo laptop with Linux pre-installed, making sure I'd be able to replace the battery if necessary. I always thought I'd use an Apple computer forever, but that relationship is over, at least for now.
The most interesting part is that instead of an OS GUI, I now spend most of my time in the terminal or the browser. That's partly because of how LLMs have changed almost all of my workflows. My apps are web apps, designed with the goal of not worrying about accounts or passwords — and maybe more importantly, designed for my specific needs. Which leads to why Spook OS exists.
It's the bridge between my apps, my iPhone, and my Linux laptop. Between Spook OS and https://notewordly.com (another vibe coded web app), I'm free from the threat of hardware obsolescence. My systems are built on a single premise: I just need a web browser to work.