back to mac

after using an ipad pro 12.9" as my main computing rig for a year in the field, i finally threw in the towel this past november and got a macbook.

this isn’t my first go at this. i tried to make the og ipad pro my main machine back in 2016.¹

much has changed since then. the magic keyboard is infinitely better than the original smart keybaord that was available at the time, for example. unfortunately, much has also stayed the same.

in my first attempt, iOS was extremely limiting. switching apps with ALT-TAB was flakey, mobile safari was basically unusable for desktop versions of websites compared to desktop safari, and iOS’s aggressive background app suspension made it difficult to maintain a solid SSH session with my mac at honme.

in this attempt…iOS is still extremely limiting for actual computing.

i knew i would need to ssh into my mac mini at home for any real work and accepted that (well, mostly; more on this later). but the inconveniences extended beyond this.

first, ios has a file explorer, but it’s not a real file explorer. it’s a sandboxed app that can be a huge pain for other apps to access as well as a gateway through which other apps store external data through. this is a real problem with apps like google drive or blink that don’t behave well with Files at all and require you to restart your ipad after a few minutes of being unable to see or interact with your files.

second, mobile safari still doesn’t cut it. while more desktop versions of websites render properly now, many sites don’t understand what to do with a stylus-like cursor hovering over an element.

finally, window management. you’ll never miss overlapping windows more than trying for the 247th time to make stage manager work and failing because, sorry y’all, it just sucks. while windowing within iOS was a death by a thousand slow cuts situation, the best way I can describe the experience is this: traditional windows adapt to your workflow, whereas you need to adapt your workflow for stage manager. i’m pretty sure i tried to switch spaces at least once daily while owning the thing.

what finally did me in was the main exception that made this work for me in the first place: coding/testing/building remotely.

you’ll need to ssh into another computer to do any real computing work. there’s no real way around this².. of course, most folks won’t just expose their main computing rig to the internet like that. they’ll want ot set up a vpn for the mac, and potentially only the mac, to connect through.

the issue here? say goodbye to your mac’s awesome battery life.

every single vpn implementation will use significantly more energy than working locally due to per-packet encryption/decryption. i used tailscale for a long while during this experience, and even they are struggling with getting battery life under control. i often had to make sure i had my charger on me, which is precisely what i came to the ipad to avoid.

meanwhile, the m2 macbook air I’m writing this on is estimating ~19hrs of battery life on 100% state of charge. and that’s with docker running! shockingly, it’s also way thinner than the iPad with the smart keyboard attachment and feels much highter.

i’d love to try this again once iOS gains virtualization capabilities and allows me to run a Linux box on iOS. however, until then, it’s the macbook life for me.

Footnotes