Month: March 2018

Addendum to the “I Carry Too Much Crap” post: The Rest Of The Stuff

Since the focus on the last article was just the iPad and MacBook Pro conundrum, I thought I’d also summarize the rest of my daily carry. This is mostly what I leave the house with for work. Items with (in a small bag) are in a bag I can throw into whatever larger bag I am bringing if I need them. Here goes:

The Main Load-out:

  1. My main bag is an Ogio Tribune.At some point, I want to get a Goruck, but this fits my needs. I wanted something I could store a few things, like my access badge for work, in a secure, yet easy to get to spot. I also wanted drink holders for my coffee thermos.
  2. My work access badge
  3. A microfibre cloth (in a small bag)
  4. A USB A-USB-C adapter (in a small bag)1
  5. A lightning to audio adapter (in a small bag)
  6. A set of lightning EarPods (in a small bag)
  7. A few lens cleaning packets for cleaning glasses and screens (in a small bag)
  8. USB-C to HDMI adapter (in a small bag)
  9. A Belkin Rockstar with two Lightning Ports (in a small bag)
  10. Advil
  11. Deodorant
  12. A small notebook
  13. Two pens
  14. Hand Sanitizer
  15. Altoids
  16. An Apple extension cable for charging

The Minimal Load-out:

My secondary bag is a Tom Bihn Ristretto. I will use it for when I am not going to work, but need to bring either the MacBook or iPad with me, but not both. The MacBook and iPad are each in their sleeves. The sleeves have the charging brick and cables. If I am just running out to the coffee shop, or something non-work related, I just grab the sleeve and a smaller bag. The Tom Bihn also has a tin of breath mints and hand sanitizer in it.

  1. This only gets used at work, so I might just keep it there. ↩
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The “I Carry Too Much Crap” Edition

From Ben Brooks:

My rule here is very simple: take a phone and one other device. Unless you have a major reason why you need three devices, take only two. For me the second device is my iPad Pro, and before that it was my MacBook. If you need a Mac, take a Mac and use your phone for anything else. But decide if you even need that second device — I take mine strictly because if I can squeeze in writing time, it is worth having the iPad Pro. But I could do it all with my iPhone if I wanted

I’ve been in a weird state where I’m straddling a few tech lines and as a result I’m leaving the house frequently with both my iPad Pro and my MacBook Pro. The short version of a long story is I can’t really go iPad-only, but, I also can’t really go MacBook-only at the same time. My primary, non-day job, yet productive, tasks are: writing, drawing, photo editing, and security analysis. I’m oversimplifying here, but the iPad is best at drawing and the MacBook is the only platform I can do security analysis with. The other tasks I can do close to equally as well on either platform.

Ben’s post helped illustrate a growing frustration I have with my daily load-out: I routinely leave the house with my iPhone, MacBook Pro, and iPad Pro. That is one device too many. I’ve made my peace with the fact that I need a powerful Mac, an iPad Pro, and an iPhone as part of my technological setup. What I struggle with is why I feel I need to bring both the iPad and MacBook Pro with me. Core apps I use (Ulysses, OmniGraffle, Affinity Photo) are reasonably feature complete between iOS and macOS1. The iPad-only apps are Procreate for drawing, and the macOS-only apps are my security toolsets.

The practical answer is to just go back to a MacBook Pro. It’s a more flexible platform and the walls I hit are fewer than on iOS. Drawing is the least-performed of my activities. Even today I ran into a weird iOS limitation. I needed to export a multiple-canvas Omnigraffle document to png files. On the Mac, there is a checkbox to export the entire document. On the iPad, no such checkbox exists. [UPDATE: I have since learned there is a workaround] Practicality is not the only driver, though. I really like using the iPad Pro. Typing on the Smart Keyboard is a dream and I love the portability of the device. As with creative work, security work when away from my home is also a rarity.

Since I can’t decide, and impulse and emotions aren’t good points to base decisions on, I’m falling back on my analyst mindset. I created a spreadsheet where I will record on a high-level my device usage. Three columns: Date, iPad, MacBook. The value will be Date (obviously) and for each device row I am using a 4-point grade: 0, did not use the device; 1, used the device lightly; 2, used the device heavily; 3, did something I can only perform on that device. As an aside, this is only for when I leave the house. I don’t care too much right now about my day-to-day usage at home. I will also take care and not cheat the data. If I brought my MacBook, have it on the desk, and the thing I want to do can be done on either the Mac or iPad, unless necessary I won’t drag out the iPad just to give it a checkbox for the day.

  1. There are edge cases on things like some filters for Affinity Photo, but for the purpose of this article we can call them feature-compatible and not get too far down in the weeds. ↩