The Column
Motto: girl scout cookies are a treat, boy scout popcorn is an obligation
First, because I never do, here’s a short poem:
Running through the forest.
Dodging trees like a wild beast.
Light on foot.
That’s where he pooped his pants.
That took me 10+ minutes to write.
In my last post I said my next post was going to be a retrospective of 5 years tracking my life. This is not that. I didn’t expect to want to write again so quickly.
Recently I’ve been thinking through the real-world logistics of switching to Apple products. My entire adult life I’ve thought it will happen at some point. I’ll wake up one day and throw my Android phone out the window of my new hot red convertible car (implying that it was part of some midlife crisis or something).
It started with a thought exercise with where I tried to map out all of the use cases commonly covered by consumer electronics, rate (from 0 to 5) how well a bunch of different types of electronics enabled you to meet those uses, then try to find some optimal minified subset which adequately covered all the bases I care about.
There’s that.
The “find an optimal subset” goal didn’t really pan out. Instead, I had a couple more interesting takeaways:
1. Apple is the only company which sells products that covering basically every category.
2. If I could only own ONE piece of technology, I’d pick an iPad.
That iPad thought opened my mind a bit. I started noticing and appreciating how well my wife’s technology compliments the things she does. She’s does thing with her computer that are really cool - things I have no real means to do on my own with my stuff.
So then I started thinking - I have an old Android phone. I haven’t felt like anything in the past 2 years has been worth upgrading to. I am finding Android development surprisingly tedious. I wonder if iOS development is easier? Most mobile development sites say iOS apps come together quicker and easier. I wouldn’t develop on iOS if my daily driver was an Android phone.
What if my next phone was the iPhone Xs (or whatever they decide to call it)?
What if, after my desktop PC craps out, I started using my wife’s iMac?
What if my next laptop computer was an iPad with a keyboard case?
Let’s not get too crazy.
The biggest points of paint would be creating an Apple ID, changing out chargers, redownloading and installing apps, paying for a few that need paying for, and… probably worst of all, redoing the Life Trackers automated fitness imports to whatever.
All that said - I stand firm in my belief that most people don’t need anything beyond a Chromebook. If you aren’t big into music production, complex photo editing, video production, or computer games… there’s no real reason to have a Windows/Macintosh machine.
Top 5: Vowel Swapped Words That I Can Think Of
5. Lat, Let, Lit, Lot
4. Net, Nit, Not, Nut
3. Ban, Ben, Bin, Bun
2. Pap, Pep, Pip, Pop, Pup
1. Bat, Bet, Bit, Bot, But
Surely there’s one of those that works with every vowel, including “y”.
Quote:
“I thought, ‘If Rocky can do it, I can do it’.”
- John -