February 22, 2021

Once You Go Mac…

On Friday I registered for the BYOD, or “Bring Your Own Device” program at work. With today’s remote work capabilities, we have the option of using our personal devices for business purposes. When we get back to traveling, I’ll have my Mac in tow instead of lugging around two computers, a work Windows 10 PC, and one of my personal devices.

To separate my personal files from my business files I created a second account on my Mac. This helps keep me focused and it keeps my personal data from mistakenly being shared to work folders or something through an errant mouse click. When we move I’ll probably add a second Mac to the stable to segregate the experience a little more and upgrade to something a little faster than my mid-2015 MacBook Pro. For now, things are working great.

Using one platform across my entire computing experience really kicks up my focus. When I’m on Windows some of the day and Mac or iOS the rest of the day I have to maintain two sets of programs and make sure my workflow (task management, etc) is cross platform and think “in parallel”. Getting back to this arrangement helped my brain get organized again; I was very productive at work today and it was a great start to the work week.

I have been using OmniFocus as my task manager for well over a decade. A year or two ago the OmniGroup added a web version for those that had to use Windows at work. Other than the web experience, all of OmniGroup’s software is Apple (Mac/iOS/iPadOS) only. The web experience was adequate but not as cohesive as I wanted it to be. I’m just not wired to quickly add a task to my ToDo list by clicking on a pinned tab in a web browser and navigating around a web page. It’s much easier for me to use the native experience and being able to do this through muscle memory lends itself to my using my task manager reliably and deliberately.

The consistency across my entire computing experience just works better for me. Everyone has their own way of doing things, my way is the Mac way.

Now remember, I make a living using Linux all day long. It’s much easier for me to do this from a Mac than from a Windows machine. Mac OS is based on Unix, Linux’s older cousin.

Anything that makes my day easier is worth celebrating.