Back in the day, I had one computer. It was a laptop bought for me by my employer, and at work, I’d attach it to an external display and use it at my desk. At the end of the day, I’d close it up, put it in my backpack, and take it home.
For the last 10 years, I’ve worked at a desk at home, with a desktop Mac as my primary computer. But over the last year or so, I’ve been using my MacBook Air a lot more, whether I’m traveling or spending the winter in a heated room rather than my unheated garage.
So what’s better, the single-Mac life or being a Mac vagabond? As someone who’s been there, and back, and there again, I can tell you that it’s never been easier to live the two-Mac lifestyle–but it’s also never been a better time to just give the desktop up and learn to love a Mac laptop.
The bad old days
In the days of PowerPC and Intel laptops, living this life was rough. Just running a Mac laptop in lid-closed mode, attached to an external display, was fraught with bugs. Today, most Macs are laptops, but for a good many years, the laptop was an oddball and the desktop was the “real” Mac. As a result, laptop bugs abounded, especially if you wanted to do something as outlandish as plug your laptop into an external display and close the lid.
All Macs now let you use an iPad as a second display. But there was a time when simply running any external display on a MacBook was an adventure in troubleshooting.
Willis Lai/IDG
What I’m saying is, there was a lot of unplugging and replugging, opening the lid and closing the lid, and the like, in order to cajole the computer into properly displaying on that external screen. Things got better over time, but it was never perfect.
Worse, though, were the sleep issues. When the Mac went to sleep while attached to an external display, sometimes it wouldn’t come back without help–or with a forced reboot. On many, many days, I’d unplug my laptop, pop it into my backpack, take an hourlong ride on a bus back home, and remove the laptop–only to find the inside of my backpack blazing hot because my MacBook hadn’t gone to sleep after all.
Keeping in sync
Still, the plan when I started working for myself, in my garage, was to use my beloved MacBook Air and plug it into a big display. That plan didn’t survive the release of the 5K iMac, and so began my years-long sojourn as a person who used a desktop at my desk, but a laptop everywhere else.
I hadn’t lived like this for years, and things really had gotten much better for multiple Mac users in the intervening time. The existence of cloud services such as iCloud and Dropbox has really made things so much easier. These days I keep most of my working files in Dropbox, but I also sync my Desktop and Documents folders via iCloud. The iCloud part is sometimes a bit wonky, but it’s so nice to be able to put a folder on my Desktop in my office and then open my laptop and see that the same file is on the Desktop there, too. (And, of course, all those files are also accessible on my iPhone and iPad. Nice!)
When I recently had to wipe my Mac Studio’s hard drive, I did so with no fear of losing data. Not only do I back up daily via Time Machine and make a clone using Carbon Copy Cloner, but all my vital files are in Dropbox or iCloud. It just wasn’t a worry.
While the cloud makes life as a user of many Macs easier, it unfortunately also highlights all the ways in which it’s still hard. While some Mac apps have embraced the cloud as a way to sync settings–BBEdit has let you do it via Dropbox or iCloud for quite a while now–others only do it in a limited fashion. For example, I can sync my Keyboard Maestro macros and my Hazel automations via the cloud, but only after delving into their settings and enabling some specific cloud-sync features.
And that’s the apps that acknowledge the existence of the cloud. Other apps… just don’t. Once I set Keyboard Maestro to sync using iCloud, I discovered that all my podcast-related automations crashed hard against Audio Hijack’s inability to sync either its sessions or its scripts across devices. (It’s even worse: while you can import and export Audio Hijack sessions, I could only move scripts by diving into my local Application Support folder and copying a property list file to the other computer.) My Stream Deck settings also don’t sync, though at least they can be imported and exported. At least Shortcuts sync via iCloud–more or less. (There are occasional reliability issues, but I’ve found that it mostly works.)
Plenty of system-level stuff is also just not consistent. I use the app SwiftBar to put ambient data in my menu bar, mostly from a bunch of Python scripts. SwiftBar is happy to use a bunch of plug-ins from Dropbox or iCloud, which is great! But keeping the version of Python on both systems in sync, at compatible paths, with compatible modules installed, is an ongoing challenge. I recently got a Hazel sync working again via its settings-sync features, only to discover that my scripts were failing because the connected Python script was in an unsynced directory, and therefore my fixes on one computer never moved to the other one.
An M4 Max MacBook Pro offers workstation-like performance in a portable and light package.
Foundry
The big picture is that my files are in the cloud, and that’s awesome. The details, though, are frustrating. Every time I go several days without using either computer, I find I’m spending time getting things back up to current while also waiting for Apple’s push notification server to alert me about everything that’s already been dealt with on other devices.
So I decided maybe it was time to stop the madness.
Things got better
The release of the M4 Macs this fall really made me consider my options. While I decided that an M4 Pro Mac mini wouldn’t be enough of an upgrade over my M1 Max Mac studio, I started to wonder: What about an M4 Max MacBook Pro?
After all, Apple’s newest laptops would be a quantum leap in performance over my formerly amazing desktop Mac. (Gone are the days when using a laptop requires a serious drop in performance.) And if I commit to the laptop lifestyle, I don’t need to worry about syncing all those miscellaneous directories and app settings because everywhere I go, I’ll be using the same Mac!
Still: The fear of the bad old days. But being a laptop user in the era of Apple silicon is so much better than it was in the Intel years. Desktop Macs are awesome, but they’re also outliers. The vast majority of Macs in use are laptops. And in this era, Mac hardware and macOS itself are almost entirely focused on the laptop experience.
My personal experience backs this up. I’d guess that in the last year, I’ve spent more time using my MacBook Air running in lid-closed mode attached to a Studio Display than I’ve used it as an actual laptop. And the experience has been great. I’ve noticed almost none of the weirdnesses that used to plague me. I am still blown away by the fact that when you plug in an external display, it just… turns on. There’s no weird blinking and flashing as everything resets and composes itself like there used to be. It really does just work.
Peripherals have come a long way, too. Thunderbolt and USB-C docks make it much easier to create docking stations for laptops. In the bedroom I use as an office in the winter, I’ve got a Studio display with a USB-C dock attached to one of its ports, allowing me to chain off a microphone, keyboard, trackpad, and Stream Deck. Connecting to this setup requires a single Thunderbolt cable, which provides power and streams out data. It’s fantastic.
Off I go
After much fretting, I decided that I needed to admit to myself that the right decision was for me to become a one-Mac person again. And that means that a laptop is the right decision for me.
Later this month, my M4 Max MacBook Pro will arrive, and I’ll begin the migration. Sure, I’ll probably need to invest in some more docks and cables in order to convert my Mac Studio desk into a MacBook Pro-friendly model. But I’ll also be down to a single computer that I can use anywhere, including when I travel. (I don’t love the extra weight the MacBook Pro has over the MacBook Air, but I’m willing to shoulder the burden–literally. And my daughter will finally be able to replace her Intel Air with something better.)
Ten years as a desktop Mac user was a lot of fun. I had an iMac, iMac Pro, and Mac Studio, and I enjoyed them all. But like almost everyone else, I’ve found the pull of the laptop too strong to avoid. Even when sitting at a desk staring at a big monitor, the MacBook Pro seems like the right choice.