Giving up the iPad-Only Travel Dream

Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors:

Every time any of us packs a bag, we are making some very specific tech-focused decisions. It starts with what devices we need (or can live without) and cascades into charging bricks and cords and anything else that will keep us powered up and not feeling regret about having left an essential device behind.

[...]

In the battle between iPad and Mac, I’m a longtime member of Team Both — I use my Mac most of the day at my desk, but when I write elsewhere in the house or backyard, I switch to an iPad Pro in the Magic Keyboard case. And that iPad (in a regular case) is my primary computing device when I’m not in work mode.

I’m not at all ready to declare the “use iPad to get work done” experiment dead. With the forthcoming release of iPadOS 17, Stage Manager has thrown in a bunch of improvements that suggest the iPad’s progression to more functional status continues, albeit at a pace that’s a bit too slow for my liking.

But here I sit at my mother’s dining room table, typing on a MacBook Air. Something has changed in my approach to travel, and I’m trying to understand just what it is and what it tells me about the trajectory of the iPad as a productivity tool.

I've been on team both for a long time as well and can see Jason's points.