While I write this post on my smallest, most delightful iPad, I’m driven to reflect on how over the last couple of years the Mac has taken it’s old place again as a primary computing platform for me, and to catalogue a few of the reasons for that.
Between 1999 and 2011 I’d hardly ever be without a portable Mac. Beginning with the wonderful PowerBook G3 “Lombard” and it’s delicious mix of old (SCSI port!) and new (dual USB) I’d hauled various PowerBooks (and later MacBooks) halfway around the world. Fearing to leave a laptop in a hotel safe I’d usually keep it with me the whole time, whether working or not, and writing many, many blog posts from bars in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Bangkok.
By the time the iPad launched in 2010 I was using the first-generation MacBook Air for its extreme portability, and letting a 27” iMac take up the heavier lifting at home. The Air’s obvious limitations—a slow Intel processor, low-capacity storage, and a high price—were all bearable in order to reduce the weight of my daily carry, especially when travelling with a DSLR and a few lenses in tow. I’d begun to optimise my workflows for the less-powerful mobile computer, and in certain cases to move them to the home iMac entirely.
It quite quickly became clear that I could be almost as productive on the iPad as I could on the original MacBook Air, and gain another massive leap forward in reducing the size of my on-the-go technology. The all-day battery life of the iPad, along with instant wake-up and the lighter weight of iOS were, again, big wins that easily offset the need to slim-down and rethink workflows.
In the years that followed, as subsequent iPads gained performance, display, and portability improvements, and as software developed to extend the iPad’s functionality (mainly third-party, but also some meaningful updates for iCloud, Notes, Keynote, and Safari), I found myself needing the Mac less and less. I would head to my desk (and maybe a workplace iMac) when I needed to do the occasional bit of design or heavy spreadsheet work, or to prepare a long presentation, but even these things started to migrate to my iPad. Hardware keyboard support meant I could carry an Apple Magic Keyboard alongside my iPad in a small bag and regain screen real estate from the software keyboard; a Lightning to HDMI adapter (and a VGA one, just in case) made my work-supplied retina MacBook Pro redundant for day-to-day teaching, and I started making even long international trips with only the iPad.
This is essentially where I was at the beginning of 2020: iPad for all my main work; iPhone for quick email triage, messaging, and notes; ageing home iMac retired and waiting for old files to be archived; and the very occasional need to boot the MacBook Pro to deliver some design files to a printing company in person. And then everything started to change.
How the pandemic, the subsequent change in my working practices, and Apple’s renewed focus on the Mac flipped all this around will be the focus of my next post here. Stay tuned.