Going All In on iOS
Not unlike a lot of Apple nerds, I was a bit underwhelmed by the MacBook Pro announcements a few weeks ago. Touchbar certainly seems like a cool new tool, but something I would almost never use. On top of that, the price increases for something I won’t use just isn’t justifiable. There is an option for a Touchbar-less MacBook, but the specs are so bad I wouldn’t be getting much of an upgrade from my current MacBook Air.
This got me thinking about a workflow I’ve toyed with for a while, an iPad Pro for travel/portability and an iMac for real desktop processing (mostly images in Lightroom and videos in Premiere these days). I debated back and forth, checked prices, checked specs, but I wasn’t quite ready to pull the trigger.
What if I can’t adjust to using iOS? What if I need the full OSX experience while I’m traveling? What if the 12.9" is too big? Is the 9.7" too small? What if they have a huge release in the spring? What if, what if, what if. I tend to over-analyze big purchases like this, which may be a good thing for my wallet. While I’ve certainly never been great about money, I’ve also managed to talk myself out of a few big purchases that in the end weren’t necessary or wouldn’t have worked out the way I thought, unlike say my GoPro that I rarely use.
In the end, it was the terrible noise emanating from the hard-drive in my fiancé’s nine year old MBP that convinced me it was time. Replacing my own Air meant she could inherit that and we could retire the old Pro. It’s certainly served us well, having been rebuilt twice and miraculously still accepting OS updates.
So that’s how I ended up going all in on iOS. I can’t afford an iMac at the moment, especially with the holidays coming up, but the iPad Pro wasn’t quite as hard to swallow. We’ll see how it goes. I’ll obviously continue using my work issued MacBook for development tasks, but for personal use, including my entire photo workflow I’m attempting to live 100% in iOS. I’ll try to provide regular updates on how it’s going.
