It’s been about 5 years since I updated core devices, and even longer since I talked about those choices so I’m probably overdo for a brain dump. What I’m using, how I’m thinking about it, and what I’m carrying around vs leaving at home. I also thought I’d touch a little on some things I’d considered but then ultimately decided against.
You may have noticed that over the past year (or more) I’ve been asking about some of the new minimal / dumb phone options available. Primarily the Light Phone, Minimal, and Kompakt. I was really hoping for a future where I had my camera, a FLAC/Mp3 player and a super simple phone mostly for texting. In the end, I decided not to go that route. Used to be a time when I’d just buy all the new tech and then start using it and find problems along the way, but eventually I got sick of things breaking or not working when I needed them to so these days I’m happier being a few steps back from the bleeding edge and having devices that work the way I need them to, reliably.
So in place of road testing everything myself I spent a lot of time checking reviews. First of all, almost everything being talked about was comped, very few people are reviewing things they paid for themselves and I’m just too jaded to think those reviews are objective. Secondly even with that bias basically everyone ended with some version of “cute, good for weekends, but not actually usable.” Across the devices people loved the idea (and battery life) of an e-ink screen, but found them painfully slow and cumbersome to use. They work great for ebook readers because you spend a lot of time on each screen between updates, but that ends up being way too slow for texting/maps/searches/etc.
My last phone update was to the iPhone 13 Pro Max and I’ve been using that for years. I got it because of the camera and at that time I was excited about a larger screen. It was nice, but also came with its own problems and I found myself often wishing it was a little bit smaller. I’m glad that the 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max have the same optics, so this time I went with the smaller body. Finding a case that doesn’t add a ton of bulk, but also protects and actually looks good is always harder than it should be. The entire market of iPhone cases is mostly garbage. I got spoiled living in Shibuya because the shops there prided themselves on having a really nice curated offering and I might end up just waiting until my next Japan trip rather than try and order something shitty online.
The other two devices I use daily are my laptop and iPad, increasingly the latter. I’ve been using the first gen 11” iPad Pro and a 2020 MacBook Pro. A few years ago I realized that when traveling I’m mostly writing, emailing, or doing light image work which I can do just as easily on my iPad without the weight & bulk of the laptop. I consciously stopped taking my laptop out of the house and increasingly find my iPad more than capable for what I need to do. There’s still a few things that I prefer to do on the laptop, not the least of which is posting to my blog. I can do the writing anywhere, but using the WordPress interface is still 1000% easier on laptop than mobile. Vibecoding is also laptop only, though I imagine with the likes of OpenClaw it’s not going to be long before a simplified chat interface (like through telegram) or straight up voice to agent is going to be the norm. I don’t want to sideline here but given the speed jumps with new ai models, I think assuming anything will work tomorrow the way it works today is probably wrong.
So I’m using the iPad more, and that was also older so I decided to keep my current laptop for now and get the newest iPad Pro as my daily driver. At a distance they look the same, close up and with the new keyboard, it’s shockingly different.
The perhaps controversial thing I’m doing this time too is I’m not porting anything. Both new devices are starting from scratch, only installing things as I need them. I decided that my digital drawers had gotten a bit cluttered and chose to skip the easy “restore from backup” and start fresh. I do this maybe every other update and always find it both helpful and painful. Amusingly, with a restore you are off one device and onto the next, but with my “as you go” method I find myself carrying around both for weeks while I decide if I actually need this or that app.
There’s also a way of thinking where people put everything on everything, so no matter what device is within arms reach they can do anything they want. And I see the value in that of course. But going back to my thinking at the beginning of this, I sort of don’t want to be able to do anything at any time with any device. I want to be more thoughtful and choose when I want to do somethings, and more importantly when I don’t. So the iPad has a lot more “work” type stuff, but the phone is intentionally lighter on the apps. I fantasized about one page, apps only and no folders but that was shot to hell right away with just the very very basics. I conceded that ok, maybe I’d need two pages, but still no folders. But no. You don’t realize how many different apps you need to use all day until you start from scratch. Here in Vancouver I need 5 different parking apps to pay for parking around the city depending on who manages that specific lot. So there’s a few gotchas on the “I want it super minimal” that you don’t realize until you try it out in the world.
That said, I’m still aiming for one page of apps and one page of folders and trying to stick to that as long as I can, and I gotta say it’s really nice to have the smaller phone. If you’ve been on the “get the bigger model each upgrade” like I have been, highly recommend trying a reduction.
As for the laptop, I could see a very real possibility of replacing that with a dedicated desktop instead next time, but I guess we’ll need to see how things progress in the coming months.