{"id":25325,"date":"2019-05-21T15:52:48","date_gmt":"2019-05-21T19:52:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=25325"},"modified":"2019-06-14T16:19:01","modified_gmt":"2019-06-14T20:19:01","slug":"beyond-the-tablet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/21\/beyond-the-tablet\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the Tablet: Seven Years of iPad as My Main Computer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Federico Viticci<\/a> (tweet<\/a>):<\/p>\n

My iPad journey began in 2012 when I was undergoing cancer treatments. In the first half of the year, right after my diagnosis, I was constantly moving between hospitals to talk to different doctors and understand the best strategies for my initial round of treatments. Those chemo treatments, it turned out, often made me too tired to get any work done. I wanted to continue working for MacStories because it was a healthy distraction that kept my brain busy, but my MacBook Air was uncomfortable to carry around and I couldn’t use it in my car as it lacked a cellular connection. By contrast, the iPad was light, it featured built-in 3G, and it allowed me to stay in touch with the MacStories team from anywhere, at any time with the comfort of a large, beautiful Retina display.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Today’s MacBook Air is easier to carry around than an iPad Pro with a keyboard, and it has an even larger Retina display. Inexplicably, Apple still hasn’t added a cellular option.<\/p>\n\n

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Today, the iPad Pro is my laptop, the iPhone is my pocket computer, and the Mac is the third device that's better at specific tasks.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

At a fundamental level, after seven years of daily iPad usage, I believe in the idea of a computer that can transform into different form factors. The iPad is such a device: it gives me the freedom to use it as a tablet with 4G while getting some lightweight work done at the beach, but it becomes a laptop when paired with a keyboard, and it turns into a workstation when hooked up to an external display, a USB keyboard, and a good pair of headphones. For me, the iPad is the ultimate expression of the modern portable computer: a one-of-a-kind device that morphs and scales along with my habits, needs, and lifestyle choices.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

It doesn’t seem like Mac hardware is on track to be able to do all the things iPads can do (cellular, transformable, pencil, fast displays), but neither does it seem like iPad software is on track to be as powerful and flexible as Mac software.<\/p>\n\n

Previously:<\/p>\n