This guy lives without a Mac or PC – iOS only!
What living the vision meant for him

Man, i sure love these baity headlines – sorry for doing it again but it’s just too much fun.
As you might have already guessed, this guy is me. Yes, I’ve sold my remaining Mac Mini and am now „mac-less“.
I am living the vision that Tim Cook described when initially introducing the iPad Pro back in 2015 – the iPad Pro as a desktop replacement.
My current setup:
- An iPhone 6S Plus, 64GB, Silver, Caudabe Sheath Case
- An iPad Pro 1st Gen, 32GB, Space Grey, Smart Keyboard + Silicon Case
- An Apple Watch Sport, Gen. Zero, Space Grey
To be clear: this article is about publishing experiences, telling about shortcomings and advantages i see in the comparison between macOS and iOS. I’m not going to recommend specific apps or workflows i use. If you are interested, feel free to get in touch with me.
Everyday life
For the sake of simplicity I’m going to gather tasks that most of us refer to as „casual tasks“ like browsing the web, viewing some pictures, text with friends, reply to emails, edit a work document etc in this block.
So, everyday life hasn’t changed massively for me as i was already doing most of my casual tasks on my iOS devices.
Why?
Because they are perfect for it. They are mobile, provide an exceptional UI / UX and outstanding battery life.
For someone that is distracted as easily as i am, the iOS UI and windowless environment is perfect.
Why?
Because it lets you focus on the task at hand. No overlapping Facebook window, no Dock, nada.
I’d say you most likely agree with me that an iPad does those „casual tasks“ really well.
Advanced tasks
When I told a coworker that I’ve sold my last remaining mac he said:
Man, i could never live without a device that runs a proper operating system.
In my opinion, iOS can do way more than people think. People have prejudices against it. It’s by no means a comparable operation system to macOS – but it is capable of much more than you might think.
A often-heard complaint is that iOS file-management is poorly implemented, and files have always to be copied from one app to another to edit them.
This is just not true.
A behavior that makes file editing inside other apps possible was introduced with iOS8, that’s 3 years ago.
But I’m not going to discuss file-management under iOS. This is a very exhausting and delicate discussion, and iOS 11 will change it anyways.
What i want to point is that users should approach iOS differently than macOS.
- IOS is a fundamental operating system that provides way less than macOS. Apple has traditionally pushed features away from their iOS dev team to app developers. Think: „It’s not iOS – it’s my app that cannot do this.“
- IOS apps are sandboxed and run in heavily separated spaces. They cant simply use a shared file-system like they would be able to on a desktop environment. Think: „My file is stored in that app – not inside a folder.“
- IOS has matured greatly over the years, but since it’s running on a mobile phone / tablet, people underestimate it. Think: „I should google a functionality before deciding it doesn’t work.“
- There are hundreds of formidable apps that provide massive functionality in terms of power-usage to iOS devices. However, since users see iOS as an „immature“ platform, developers can only charge „immature“ prices, because people hold back on buying a „handy app“ for more than a few bucks. Think: „This is a really big software suite. Maybe the 40$ price tag is alright.“
So far, the iPad Pro is able to live up to my expectations. Of course, this is for my personal use cases. I’m going to list some „advanced“ stuff I’ve done on my iPad (Pro) in the last couple of months:
- RAW photo editing using direct camera import
- GIT source code review and development using full GIT tools
- HTML / Jekyll / JavaScript development
- SSH / VNC / RDP connections
- S3 / SFTP file handling
- Decentralized file syncing via torrent network (not file-sharing!!)
- PGP / S-MIME encrypted eMails
- OpenVPN encrypted VPN
This is just a small list of what comes to my mind right now.
Maybe this way of working works only for the current me, in it’s current situation.
Maybe I’m lucky that my current living circumstances allow me to handle my iPad this way.
But i still think that people should think a bit beyond what they thought is possible using mobile devices only.
Written on my iPad ;)

