For some reason my family has phenomenally crappy luck with Macbooks. Our second one in three years just died, right as my wife was needing to put together some slides with it. The thing is completely and utterly unresponsive, suffering the same mysterious fate as its predecessor three years ago.

But that’s a story for another day once I have a chance to dig more into it. The main thing is that we were down a computer and my wife still needed something to get work done on. I decided to test out an idea.

We have a Steam Deck we both use a lot. I booted it into its desktop mode, connected it to a laptop dock with a display and peripherals, and that was pretty much all there was to it. It may as well have been any other ordinary computer that you could get real work done on.

I love that this is possible, but it’s a little lame that it feels special. With as many devices and gadgets that we have, so many of them are held back by seemingly arbitrary limitations. Why shouldn’t I be able to use my game console as a desktop PC? Or my phone for that matter? Or my car? My fridge? If everything is a computer, why is hardly anything something I can actually use as a computer?

I’m joking of course. But only a little.

— JP