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I’m not really convinced. Going through the authors points:
Focus: Humans can only focus on one thing at a time.
Humans only do well focusing on one task at a time. For me as a web developer, that can mean I’m toggling between my editor, my browser, and my terminal. These are spread across two windows, but I’m still working on one task at a time.
If my email or social media feeds are available at a glance, then I’ll check them constantly.
This is a bad idea, but just because you have two monitors up, doesn’t mean you need to put Twitter on one of them.
As Barry Schwartz explores in “The Paradox of Choice”, decision fatigue is a real problem. Sometimes, more is less. […] With a single screen, I eliminate decisions. I don’t waste time deciding where to drag windows or fiddling with where to place a given window.
For me personally I don’t spend any brain energy on where my windows go. IDE on the left, browser on the right. Even when I’m moving things around to see two browsers side-by-side it is just a non-issue for me.
So I treat virtual desktops like physical screens that reliably present the same content.
That’s great, but you can also just have two monitors to do this.
Same Workflow When Remote
This is the one point that I really agreed with. However for me I find I’m much less productive on a single laptop 13” non-retina screen than I am across two 27” 4k monitors. I wouldn’t want to downgrade my desktop experience so I don’t suffer on a laptop.
When I had multiple monitors, I had to rearrange my windows every time I undocked my machine.
This is annoying, and definitely something Apple should fix.
So why do so many workers demand multiple monitors? I believe it’s a case of the illogical allure of extremes.
I think this is because many workers do tasks that benefit from having multiple monitors. Accountants with Excel are a great example, because the benefit of multiple screens is so obvious.
It’s great that the author is happy with a single monitor, but this seems more like a personal preference than a demonstrable improvement.
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It’s great that the author is happy with a single monitor, but this seems more like a personal preference than a demonstrable improvement.
Yup. As someone who doesn’t care for multiple monitors, I found the author’s argument to be pretty weak. Arguing for the number of monitors is as fruitless as arguing Emacs vs. vi(m). If it works for you, great. Otherwise, stop preaching.
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I agree with all of this.
I’ve used a 21:9 monitor – 29” flat and later a 34” curved – and found that I’m far more productive with two monitors than one. I use Hammerspoon profusely with a 4x2 grid configuration while full-screening just about every app in which I need to focus: Outlook, OneNote, Slack, etc. For the most part, the “center-stage” apps stay on my laptop screen while the browser, code, and other ephemeral things traverse the big screen. It’s lovely to be able to move windows around easily and have 8 readable windows open on my Dell 34” curved ultrawide.
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This is kind of a pointless article. The author doesn’t actually postulate anything of substance.
I can’t see IOS replacing MacOS. There is a HUGE installed base of Automator tasks in all kinds of environments and I can’t see that translating to IOS at all.
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Isn’t Apple getting rid of Automator? I recall a source somewhere that said they removed all of the Automator staff, I think it may have been in the Hypercard discussion. Ive been thru the System 6 to 7 transition, and the 9 to X transition. Its always messy. But I am getting the feeling they want to converge macOS and iOS at some point. Just my opinion.
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Oh I very sincerely doubt that. Some of Apple’s biggest clients are huge desktop publishing houses that have crazy complicated Automator workflows.
I did some googling and couldn’t find any reference to this - don’t mean to be a pain but - got a cite? Curious to see your source.
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This is what I found, but its not the article I remember reading (which was recent),
https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/17/mac-user-automation-sal-soghoian/
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Wow thank you this is profoundly sad. The user sutomation suite is one of the things that keeps me a loyal OSX user. If that goes away I will be incredibly disappointed.
There is an incredible amount of power inherent in being able to control and customize the state of running apps programmatically from userland. It’s a very old idea and I don’t understand why people seem so keen on tossing it into the scrap heap.
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I had no idea, always wondered why they used
wheelfor the sudoers group.I always envisioned it like a spoke on a wheel which gets rotated up to gain privileges.
I always thought it came from driving / ‘you take the wheel’.