Hobbies, blogs, writing, iPads, and Macs

Saturday, February 4, 2023

For the last few years 99% of my personal computing has been handled on the iPad Pro. For the most part it was ok. Sometimes I would need to jump through some hoops to do things and occasionally I would fall back on my work Mac. The only item that has suffered in that time has been my ability to work on my personal website.

I tried several times to build workflows in shortcuts to enable me to do what I wanted, but most of the time they were buggy or didn’t quite work how I needed them too. Sadly, the outcome more often than not, was abandonment and my site fell into disrepair and neglect.

At the start of 2023 I decided I needed to revive some hobbies. One of the biggest, longest, and most enjoyable hobbies I’ve had has been running my own personal website or blog. So I’ve dusted off my old MacBook Pro and begun to play around once again. It’s been fun and refreshing and I now find myself wanting to write more as well. Having a thing that I’ve built as a home on the web seems to make a big difference in how much I want to write things to publish.

Sadly, using my MacBook Pro (from 2015) has shown me why I wanted to replace it with my iPad. I like the flexibility of the iPad, I can draw on it, I can write on it, I can do nearly everything I want to on it, except code and build a website. But my Mac is showing its age. It can’t run the latest version of macOS which makes me nervous. It means it will stop receiving security updates and apps will eventually not be able to receive updates. I’ve already experienced a couple having to roll back to older versions because they won’t run.

As a result the Apple website has become a place I visit often. The new M2 MacBook Air looks very appealing, but it’s not cheap, and given the current climate, out of reach at the moment. So I find myself eyeing my iPad Pro again. Then I get frustrated that I can’t do what I want to on it, which, when you think about the fact it has been around for over a decade, is kind of crazy that the device is still so hamstrung.

I know that bemoaning the state of the iPad a common theme at the moment, but I’m genuinely frustrated that the device continues to be held back by software deficiencies and design. It’s more than capable of doing all the things I can do on my old MacBook Pro in terms of hardware, but it remains shackled with one hand behind its back. For now I will continue to tinker with my site on my Mac, and then find ways to write and post to this site from my iPad. While I do that I’ll sit in hope that Apple eventually takes off the chains of iPadOS.