Some time ago I seriously wondered if it was time to move on from the laptop as part of my computing arsenal. I have an iMac 5K which is great, and, really, where I prefer to do any sustained work, especially work involving code editors or database servers or screen real-estate. Do I really need a portable peer for the dining room table, or the couch? Wouldn’t a tablet work just as well, or even a phone?

If I didn’t work on software, even a tablet wouldn’t be all that necessary except, maybe, as a way to watch video while on the treadmill or cooking. In other words, I don’t do that much non-development stuff other than reading (for which an iPhone is pretty good).

Most of what I do involves software development or investigative writing and research. A tablet is too cumbersome for that. Imagine writing a document in Pages based on notes in Notes.app or OmniOutliner, and a browser for looking up stuff on the fly. Easy to do on macOS, difficult to manage on iOS.

Using a tablet is like playing piano on a one-octave keyboard, having to push a button to switch octaves, then discovering the composition requires more than one octave at a time. Damned user-hostile composers!

I sometimes have to run software others have deployed as Docker images. Can’t do that on iOS, or (I don’t think) on the non-Pro MacBooks.

When I upgrade, it’s going to be a MacBook Pro 13-inch.