Back just a few years ago I would take my laptop with me whenever I was away from home for an overnight trip. It didn’t matter if we were going somewhere in the evening and coming back the next afternoon; if I was sleeping somewhere else, I needed my laptop.

I’m currently in a hotel room getting ready for a wedding this afternoon and I’m writing on an iPad that’s tethered to my iPhone. When I was packing I never even considered the MacBook.

It’s not that I don’t like my Mac, I love it! But if I’m not going to be doing one of the following things:

1. Editing video (Final Cut Pro)
2. Editing audio (Logic)
3. Writing code (Xcode, Visual Studio Code)
4. Doing complex image editing (Lightroom, Photoshop)
5. Creating design layouts (Sketch)

Is is really cool because almost anything not on that list is just something I can and prefer to do on iOS. I’m not the first person to suggest this, and it’s not the first time I’ve said it myself, but I feel it bears repeating.

And it’s than a matter of being able to do the same things on iOS, it also make packing a lot iPhone does most of the work, and it’s in my pocket basically all the time. I just make sure u have a Lightning cable with me and I’m good to go. As for the iPad, it’s 10+ hour battery life means I don’t need to bring anything at all for it. My sub-1 pound iPad is a lot easier to pack than a 3 pound notebook plus charging cable with a power brick¹.

So does the iPad and iPhone do as much as the Mac? Nope, but my god is it convenient to manage these devices on the road than a Mac/PC.