I was more than a bit concerned about how I would do without a laptop when I went to spend Christmas in Hawaii with my sister and her family.  I was on holiday, what’s the big deal? Yeah, but it was nineteen days with just my iPhone and iPad Pro. I know, I’m not normal. One of my former coworkers, a pretty tech-savvy teacher has no personal technology except her smartphone. I know plenty of people who’s only personal technology is their smartphone, from kids to olds (like me). So, I’m under no delusion that what I feel like I need from my personal technology is at all what my contemporaries might feel like they require. It may not feel like it sometimes, I do a lot more than just cruise social media all day and post creepy comments. 

2023-12-15 My Vacation Work Space – Napili GIF
2023-12-15 My Vacation Work Space – Napili GIF

Back in the summer of 2017 I drove across the country from Las Vegas to San Antonio, then Orlando, then Washington D.C., NYC, Chicago, Madison, Minneapolis, Oklahoma City and back, for 41-days. I brought along a large external monitor to attach to my laptop for when I stayed anywhere longer than a couple days. So at the end of each day, after being out and about, often taking pictures and shooting video, I had the means to organize and store whatever I shot that day.1 Some things I could just shot and post, and I did in 2017 and this past Christmas in Hawaii. But with events or days when I can easily shoot over 500 images, the journalist in me wanted to edit and cut all that down to the best dozen images that told the story of that event, and I tend to need a bigger screen if not multiple screens to be able to do that and post the results relatively quickly.2 There’s a lot of folks out there who can do their social media, share their selfies and check their email and don’t need anything more than their smartphone. More power to ya, that’s not me.

I was surprised how much I was able to do with just my iPad Pro and iPhone to organize, edit and post images from the trip (sometimes using my iPhone as a second screen). Uploading images to my WordPress blog was easier than I’d anticipated and sometimes preferable to doing the same from my computers. Posting blog links to my various social media accounts using my iPad also became my preferred method (over the same on my computers). Creating video slideshows with images was kind of fun. But doing actual video editing on my 2020 iPad Pro was not successful (using Clips or iMovie) and I wasn’t going to jump over to a third-party app to do the deed. I can post short video clips but real video editing wasn’t possible on my iPad Pro.3

2024-03-12 two 27-inch monitors and an iPad with DTNS
2024-03-12 two 27-inch monitors and an iPad with DTNS

The real line in the sand for me is that, because I’m working with decades worth of documents and images and videos, I need a real file system that gives me the power to organize and name my files, folders and drives (direct connect and server drives). I’m just very old-school that way. I mean, that was the dream going back to my first computers, even in the pre-hard drive days, to have easy access to anything I’d ever written was just one floppy-disk and click away. Instead of huge four-drawer filing cabinets (at one point I had two such filing cabinets and dozens of office storage boxes), I had one small container with all of my floppies, which was upgraded to a single hard drive (and backup drives!), and then much higher capacity hard drives and USB sticks. I know that smart folders and cloud storage was supposed to eliminate the need for all of this. Right now my photos library contains 89,987 photos and 3,625 videos and that doesn’t include a lot of the pre-iPhone images and videos that I’ve manually archived on my external drives. Folks, most of whom don’t “organize” their photos on their devices, they’re the ones I see endlessly scrolling to show me some image that they can’t seem to find.

Tablets and laptops might be using the same chips, but the underlying operating systems are designed for different approaches to their tasks. And right now, after using iPads for 12-years and doing a lot of writing on them, I still need a computer (desktop or laptop) with a full-feature file system and preferably lots of monitors to get my work done. Then Apple went and introduced their Spacial Computing device, The  Vision Pro, and that muddied the waters up more than a little bit.  

Here’s something with a different user-interface, virtual monitor space, potential for untether/portable computing, but an iOS/iPadOS approach to file management… and very expensive. Great. When Apple introduced the  Vision Pro last summer, the first thing that I thought was that it was going to eliminate the need to multiple banks of physical monitors (something I’m always clamoring for). And because it was using the same CPU as the MacBooks (and iPads) that it was going to be more than just a headset. Something with the power of an iPad/MacBook with multiple virtual screens seems to be the answer to my computing… except that one issue with  managing my document and media archives (and the expense!). So, I’ve held off on investing in an  Vision Pro and am more seriously thinking that my next tech purchase might be an M3 MacBook, because I need something portable that does all the file management things that I need AND real video editing (sorry iMovie for iPad, you suck). I’m also waiting to see when Apple is going to update their iPad mini, because if I move to an M3 MacBook (trading in my 27-inch iMac), I’ll probably also trade in my 10.5 inch iPad Pro for an iPad mini. But I also have to consider that now that I’m retired I do not have the “disposable” income that I’ve been abusing my whole adult life. So I have to be much more judicious on when and how and whether I upgrade my tech. Ugh.

Also, there was a rumor that Apple is coming out (in 2027) with a foldable MacBook, that generated a post-show conversation on one of my favorite tech podcasts, Daily Tech News Show, about who needs a laptop now that tablets are using the same chips. One of the hosts theorized that a “foldable” MacBook might mean that it’s a two screen device where one of the screens can be a virtual keyboard, but also double the screen real estate when unneeded. That particular design has been proposed a few times and was going to be the form-factor of the OLPC XO-2 using two screen attached with a hinge in the middle and one screen sometimes serving as the keyboard. 

OLPC XO2-book
OLPC XO2-laptop

I’m all about having lots of screen real estate. But as someone who bounces between one setup with two 27-inch monitors and a second with a 40-inch monitor paired with a 27-inch vertical monitor, I’m not sure how a foldable MacBook, even with a 20-inch screen, is going to scratch that itch. But if Apple does it, it’ll no doubt prove to be interesting. Speaking of interesting form factors and tech setups, Federico Viticci at MacStories found a way to utilize the virtual screens of the  Vision Pro, the keyboard/trackpad of a MacBook Air and the portability of a iPad Pro to create what he calls a MacPad .

macpad by federico viticci
macpad by federico viticci

While the  Vision Pro doesn’t require anything else to work, text input is greatly improved by using a physical (bluetooth) keyboard and Viticci discovered that his MacBook Air was the perfect keyboard/trackpad combo that can be paired with the  Vision Pro, which then enables the MacBook Air to utilize the  Vision Pro’s virtual screen to run Final Cut or other apps not currently native to the  Vision Pro. But when you pair your MacBook to the  Vision Pro the MacBook’s attached monitor goes blank and isn’t usable. Viticci found that a bit annoying. Enter Luke Miani , who figured out how to remove the unneeded screen and run his MacBook Air headless. Cool. But what happens if you want to still use your MacBook without using your  Vision Pro? Viticci figured out that he could use the sidecar feature in Mac OS to connect an iPad to the now headless MacBook and use the iPad’s screen as the monitor for the MacBook whenever he wanted to use the MacBook without his  Vision Pro. It’s a bit of a wacky kludge that Viticci knows Apple would never condone, but it ups the production capabilities of the  Vision Pro while leaving open the possibility to use the MacBook without the headset AND still have the portability of the iPad when he wants to use it without any other device. Interesting (and very expensive… unless you get a discounted MacBook Air because it has a damaged screen…). The combination is way more than I’m currently ready to spend but it does allow for having the multiple screens that I require, a full file management systems and portability, while each part retains it’s usefulness (even though the headless MacBook would require the iPad’s screen to be useful). That’s the thing about these devices, one cannot assume how others use their technology and what they imagine that they need to do what they want to do, and how they may augment or retrofit their devices to better serve their needs. Some are quite happy just scrolling on their smartphones and some of us feel like we need either a wall of monitors or googles on our faces. 

VisionBook Air Max Ultra by Luke Miani
VisionBook Air Max Ultra by Luke Miani

Here’s Luke Miami’s video on how he made his MacBook Air headless to work with his  Vision Pro:

 Sources:

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  1. Granted, all these nearly seven years later, I’ve yet to properly edit and post the thousands of images from that trip, but that’s kind’a my point about why I need much more than what is efficiently doable without a full on general purpose laptop or computer.[↩]
  2. When I first got on Flickr I posted everything, full resolution, but I eventually learned that nobody wants to see all that and with online connection speeds, it can slowdown seeing any of the images to a crawl if you post too much… oops.[↩]
  3. or… the video editing that I did do was horribly convoluted and complicated and not recommended. I understand that I have the option to upgrade my 2020 iPad to an M-series and then I could use Final Cut—with an added subscription expense, or try a third-party app. I was just very disappointed that the Clips.app and iMovie on the iPad has become such an unusable pile of crap![↩]