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The iPhone 7 Plus is my only computer
3 min read

The iPhone 7 Plus is my only computer

OK, that’s not entirely true — my non-work MacBook Pro is an amazing machine for backing up my pocket computer.

Yes, I’m being sardonic, but not entirely. I really don’t use the MBP for much of anything these days, and frankly, I’m not sure I’ll ever buy another “big” machine. (I’ve actually gone a couple months without so much as touching the MBP.)

I have a high-profile job at a high-profile company and need to use my work MBP (nearly) every day, but I’m at the point now where I’m averaging 8–12 hours a day on my pocket computer (thanks Moment!), and jump onto the MBP only when absolutely necessary.

I’ve long wanted to get to this point, and being (mostly) here now feels pretty damn good.

Much of what makes this possible is that I can delegate in one way or another most of what I think of, and can get away with being extremely terse in my emails. At this stage of my career my day-to-day job requires minimal work-product; if I was coding all day, designing websites, or researching, I probably wouldn’t be able to leverage my pocket computer the way I do, but I wouldn’t want to either.

The latest Macs

For almost 15 years I’ve pre-ordered every MacBook (Pro) and Mac Pro Apple announced, and have never not watched the keynotes or read voraciously every “hot take.”

The new machines that were launched a couple of weeks ago did absolutely nothing for me. And I do mean nothing. I didn’t watch the keynote, read nothing about them other than the hardware specs, and perhaps most tellingly, laughed at the idea of the Touch Bar.

Relatedly, my fully spec’d work MBP is long overdue for an upgrade (according to our IT policy), but I can’t even be bothered. For what purpose? I can reply to email and read documents only so quickly, and I can’t even add more RAM. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

RAW photos

If you know anything about me you know that photography may be my biggest passion these days. For a long time iOS couldn’t handle the RAW output from my “real” cameras, but now with iOS 10, Snapseed, and the SD-to-Lightning adapter, it’s totally doable. It’s not quite a breeze yet, but the process isn’t terrible either.

I love knowing that I can shoot freely with my Leica Q (or Fuji X-T1), ingest the photos into my pocket computer, post-process them there, and finally publish them to Instagram…all without touching a “real” computer.

Also, with support for wide color gamut I no longer feel guilty doing all of my post-processing (and a lot of my actual shooting) with the pocket computer.

Fuck hardware buttons

The removal of the home button on the iPhone 7 couldn’t have been more welcomed by me. It’s well known (in the tiny circles that give a shit) that I’ve had some, uh, issues with the home button over the years, and have been quick to have Apple replace multiple phones in one sitting.

I love this new home “button” — it’s solid and the feedback is consistent no matter how hard or where you press on it. Plus, you can choose how hard it needs to be pressed to activate it.

This faux-mechanical stuff needs to come to the rest of the phone. There are three buttons and a switch remaining, and they of course are prone to failure and manufacturing defects too. It’s infuriating when you have to return a pocket computer because a power/volume button doesn’t click properly. How many of these buttons have they made now? 30–40 billion? Why aren’t they perfect 99.9% of the time? (That said, kudos to Apple: they never don’t let me walk out with a new machine, and I can be…picky.)

The selfish and romanticized truth is that I want just a sheet of glass, and we’re getting close!

iPads Pro

I’ve owned both of them, and both are incredible machines. I currently have the smaller of the two, but haven’t turned it on in months (and obviously need to sell it soon) . The reason for this effectively is the same as what I said above regarding my MBP — I simply don’t have much use for it these days.

Kindle Oasis for books, pocket computer for everything else. ✌🏼

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