Hidup Sehat

Apple’s also made huge strides over the last few years with the capabilities of apps on iOS, including improvements like extensions and background app refresh, and now true simultaneous multitasking in the form of Split View. We’ve seen great productivity apps arise on iOS, like Launch Center Pro, Workflow, and Editorial which bring advanced capabilities like scripting and inter-app communication. 

But—and yes, that’s “but” number two—at the end of the day, the natural state of iOS is a locked-down system. I don’t believe there’s anything inherently wrongwith that—it’s a perfectly valid choice that’s led to iOS being the most secure mobile operating system around. But that security comes with trade-offs, too. There’s never going to be the amount of flexibility on iOS that’s developed on the Mac over the years. 

And again, that’s fine. If Apple keeps on its current path, allowing everything from extensions to content blockers, then a lot of the low-hanging fruit is going to be accounted for, and it’s really just going to be the more niche—and, arguably, powerful—utilities that don’t find a home on iOS. (Though, to be honest, those utilities are starting to dwindle on the Mac as well, thanks to some of iOS’s improvements—such as sandboxing—coming back to OS X.) 

Those aren’t the only reasons my MacBook isn’t going anywhere any time soon. For example, I’ve written this whole column sitting on my front porch on a sunlit afternoon, with my MacBook living up to its name, perched on top of my lap. It’s a perfectly comfortable position in which to write—and one that’s more or less impossible with an iPad and keyboard. Unless, of course, you end up using one of those cases into which you can snap them both at an adjustable angle...if only there were a word for a device like that. 

So, I welcome the future of the iPad as much as the next person, but I rest pretty confident in the knowledge that I’ll be holding on to my truc—er, MacBook Air for a while yet.