My Tumultuous Relationship With Tech
I’m tired. Being a parent to two kids, one an infant and one toddler, sometimes I feel like my life is too chaotic to make a decision on what device I want, let alone have time to use it.
My wife recently got a job, and after selling all of my tech and starting fresh I have been in a prime position to decide what direction I want to go with my tech stack and the gadgets that I want to have and use.
I transferred from Visible, which I moved too from Mint after having such bad service, to AT&T with my wife and got myself a iPhone 15 Pro Max. It is the device I use most in my life, sometimes to a fault. I’m addicted to my iPhone and the 15 Pro Max model is fantastic to use.
My next step was deciding on a “computer”, a term that can spur some silly emotions for me sometimes because I categorize a computer as a piece of hardware that I want to do something on that is not my phone. A Chromebook, iPad, MacBook, desktop, or even a Samsung phone with DeX would qualify as a computer for me.
I have used a 8th or 9th generation iPad, my MacBook Air 11-inch running ChromeOS Flex, a MacBook Pro, and a iPad 11-inch with and without a Magic Keyboard as my computers. Most recently I have been using a MacBook Air and I’m struggling.
I love the MacBook Air, but I’m struggling to use it. It isn’t the MacBook itself, nor is it macOS or any app that I am using, it’s being able to sit at it for longer than 20 minutes at a time to get shit done.
As I mention before, I’m a parent of two young kids and both my wife and I work. So my schedule is insane. Having a versatile setup is imperative for me and is why the iPhone has become my most used device.
The problem is, what I am doing on my iPhone has not been productive for me. I just sent a Thread today explaining that I am going to take a break from social media which is what I have mostly been doing on my phone — I also deleted all those apps.
Even if I were to transform my iPhone into the most productive phone ever, it’s still not the form factor that I prefer to do things like write and work on things. It can be done, I am currently writing this blog post on my iPhone right now, but even the size of the Max isn’t enough for what I want.
So where does this leave me? I think a laptop is fantastic. The form factor makes sense having a keyboard and mouse (trackpad) available all the time connected to a large gorgeous screen. I have now used a MacBook Pro and a MacBook Pro this year, and all I can think about is the few months I used the M4 iPad Pro.
The iPad has become my favorite computer of all time. The form factor, hardware, iPadOS, and versatility are all reasons I keep wanting to go back to the iPad as my main computer. I haven’t decide what I am going to do yet, this is just me throwing out my thoughts but it’s interesting how much the iPad has transformed my mind in what a computer means and how I want to use one.