[A nostalgic piece on a 30-year-old Mac from The Atlantic](https://apple.news/ASVFqVlrvROWcYiWVzcWQ9w):

> Now that laptops are ubiquitous, working on a computer at a desk is an ergonomic misery. At coffee shops and co-working spaces, people hunch over them, staring down toward screens perched at table level.

And

> Laptops are even common in offices now, because their portability allows workers to take the job into the field with them–or more likely, to bring it home.

I’ve gone back to a desktop for my computing needs and use my iPad Pro with a Brydge keyboard usually. In some ways iOS with it’s single modal window harkens back to computers that could do less and made you focus on the thing at hand.

[In other ways, they’re distraction machines if you don’t turn off notifications](https://curtismchale.ca/2019/08/02/how-many-apps-can-interrupt-you).

As iPadOS 13 has been buggy with Trello and I’ve been forced to us my Mac Mini to get client work done, I’ve continued to miss my single small window that forces me to focus on the task at hand. My hours of focus per day take longer to get with my Mac than they have in 18 months with my iPad.

This article also made me think of a recent article by [Craig Mod on fast software](https://craigmod.com/essays/fast_software/). Here he laments how bad software has become regarding speed. It seems insane that on my new Mac Mini I ever see a wait cursor, and yet I regularly do when I type longer articles. Yet vim on a cheap server still opens up 100,000 word manuscripts or deal with 5000 files in a directory without any hiccups.