Rubbish drivel. It's a trend nowadays for people to write longform articles purporting to lay bare some great truths but really are just an excuse for the author to regurgitate some recent things they read. It really rubs me the wrong way.
First of all, the unnecessary mention of "mostly white male". I'm So. Bloody. Tired of this trope being injected into every article at every opportunity. I get it. Life unfair. Move on. It's like how every NYT comment section will mention Trump within the first two comments. Give it a rest already!
Then, the vague-at-best connections between minimal art and Minimalism as a response to the excesses of Boomers. It's really not that complicated. Grow up in a house of hoarders, and you're well on your way to embracing minimalism.
Lastly, this whole "Your bedroom might be cleaner, but the world stays bad". Yeah! Minimalism doesn't promise world peace! It's just a way to make your own life more manageable and sane!
Just because a piece is longform doesn't mean it's good. Reading this article was a terrible waste of my time.
You had a desktop computer, which makes life much easier for you. As someone who was (and will soon be again) in the market for my one and only computer, the iPad is a non-starter. It's SO limited.
* Software development, with the best will in the world, isn't really possible on it.
* No quick ways to open up multiple windows, alt-tab between them, snap them side by side etc.
* No mouse support (Admittedly, I tried them a while back, but by all accounts, the mouse support until this update was still bolted on).
* Shitty af file system (Admittedly another thing that is moving in the right direction).
* Woeful stand. The previous folio was a joke, especially at it's price. It was unstable, lacked a trackpad, and personally, I hated the typing feel.
It was all rather disappointing, because I was so tempted by it. A sub-1 kg setup that one could pack in one's bag and forget, with a proper aspect ratio, with touch support, with great battery life, with the Apple quality etc.
Even better, one of the guys involved with the code has a fantastic Youtube series on the Finite Element Method [1]
I used it in grad school, he's a great explainer, and he's addressing the talk to an audience of computer science students. It's long, of course, but it's spot on.
Indeed, paper maps are alive and well in the field of hiking/camping. It is a terrible experience trying to navigate even on the biggest of phone screens. Even the stuff one can print at home is, maybe, on an A3 sheet of paper, hopefully in colour. A vast improvement over the phone, and still not unwieldy. But to me, nothing compares to those huge mapsheets that fold accordion style. You can take in SO much more of your terrain and locate yourself so much better in your surroundings.
One of my favourite things to do while out hiking is to sit with a compass and a map and try to identify peaks and glaciers. I could do it for hours.
ETA: Everything I've heard about CalTopo makes it sound like God's gift to us.
One of the things that really gets in the way of comprehension for me are typefaces with too much personality. These cutesy italics etc. really seem to affect my ability to get on with the job at hand.
This is why, despite trying, I've yet to find something that can outdo Consolas on Windows. I tried Fira this and that, Source code pro and a bunch of others from Google Fonts. They all are inferior to Consolas in my eyes. They'll either be missing the slotted '0', or look crowded in small sizes etc.
First of all, the unnecessary mention of "mostly white male". I'm So. Bloody. Tired of this trope being injected into every article at every opportunity. I get it. Life unfair. Move on. It's like how every NYT comment section will mention Trump within the first two comments. Give it a rest already!
Then, the vague-at-best connections between minimal art and Minimalism as a response to the excesses of Boomers. It's really not that complicated. Grow up in a house of hoarders, and you're well on your way to embracing minimalism.
Lastly, this whole "Your bedroom might be cleaner, but the world stays bad". Yeah! Minimalism doesn't promise world peace! It's just a way to make your own life more manageable and sane!
Just because a piece is longform doesn't mean it's good. Reading this article was a terrible waste of my time.