How far we’ve come! Macs, iPads, and the power to do some amazing things

I was at my sons’ baseball game yesterday and was having fun working on my iPad Pro in between plays when something struck me. I bought my first laptop when I was in college and while I was struggling to find a way to finance my dream machine, I would walk around campus fantasizing about where I could work and what I would be able to do with it. One of those fantasies was inspired by an IBM ThinkPad ad that discussed how John Grisham used his.

The ad talks about all the places Grisham used his ThinkPad. One of them, was at the baseball diamond.

The power to do things and be anywhere while you are doing them was always inspiring and felt freeing to me. The two best machines I’ve ever owned so far—and I’ve owned a lot over the years—have been that IBM ThinkPad I finally figured a way to afford, and my current 2015 15” MacBook Pro.

Neither one of these machines has ever let me down. This MacBook Pro was the first Mac I ever owned and I laugh to myself regularly about why I fought so hard switching over from PC.

I’ve been able to do remarkable things with it and have been quite impressed with how reliable it is. I know many people have been complaining of late about Mac stability, although, the issue generally surrounds the OS, not the hardware.

But it pleased me to read Bradley Chambers recent article about the stability of macOS:

Chambers concluded that the system is just a reliable as the “good old days,” but the appearance of instability is a result of the increased demands we put on our Macs.

This takes me back full circle to my first laptop. There was so much promise that a laptop stood for. But so much of it was unrealized.

Today, I can hand write on my iPad, run my office PC remotely from the baseball field, edit a photo, markup up evidentiary documents, and carry and access my entire workload on a device that weighs less than two pounds, and make calls even when my two-year-old daughter is watching YouTube Kids on my phone in another room. Today, I can make a case-winning presentation while strolling around holding something the size of a legal pad. Today, I have the freedom to leave work early to take my kids to the skateboard park, where they can skate and I can sit on the bleachers and catch up on email, while taking and sending pictures to my wife, and watching Netflix in tiny corner of my screen. Today, I can do so much more with my Apple tools then ever before. Today, I can do most of the things I dreamed about “yesterday” in college.

As much as people feel the need to complain about the state of our tech—and there is great value that comes from constructive criticism—I’m tremendously grateful for the tools I have now, and I’m ever impressed with how great Apple hardware and software is.

Today, we have a lot of power. Tomorrow will be even better.

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