Sometimes you just can’t help taking a wholistic approach to a computer setup, taking in the whole room. That’s what happens when the user makes their home office a veritable museum like that which surrounds today’s featured MacBook Pro setup.
Three themes set it apart: The Beatles, the variety of RGB lighting and the concrete blocks holding up the Ikea countertop and the retro Thunderbolt Displays sitting on it.
Today’s featured M1 Pro MacBook workstation has a new Studio Display with bias lighting, illuminating the wall behind the display. It comes from three strategically placed Philips Hue Play bars that really make that corner of the small apartment “pop.”
Graphic designer and illustrator Terry Smelker’s workstation includes many interesting elements, like a specialized drawing tablet and a multimedia controller he uses along with his tricked-out MacBook Pro. But even if you’re not curious about his setup proper, get a load of that Apple gear collection! Fortunately, he provided plenty of photographs.
“I’ve always been a huge fan of Apple’s design aesthetic,” he told Cult of Mac. And that started him on his collection of vintage Apple products, which complements the rest of his gear.
Photographer and writer Chris Denbow puts an interesting twist on his computer setup. He credits its “Dark Mode” — which is obvious in the photographs of the desk and the room, but extends to the machines and the software he uses — for boosting his focus and creativity. He said the dark theme gives him a “space dedicated to creativity.”
“Introducing ‘Dark Mode,’ a minimal, monochromatic home office/workspace that helps eliminate distractions, [and] allows focus and productivity,” Denbow told Cult of Mac.
Mia, a software developer from Detroit who writes mobile apps, got in touch with Cult of Mac recently to share her MacBook Pro-driven, dual-display workstation.
“I love your setup articles but sometimes they make me feel bad about myself,” she said.
Recently we wrote about a PC gamer converting to the Apple ecosystem, happily, with an M1 MacBook Pro-based setup. Now we have a lucky recipient of not one but two recently shipped Studio Displays, freshly arrived to replace a pair of gaming monitors.
There are two types of people in the world. There’s the person who happily tosses a bunch of mismatched gear on a desk and calls it a setup. Then there’s the person with properly placed objects, minimal-to-no cable clutter and careful color choices — down to the charging-pad-and-braided-cable level.
Today’s featured setup clearly belongs to the second type of person.
I’ve misplaced my AirPods case. It’s in my house … somewhere. Fortunately, I can use the Find My app to locate it, as though it were a lost AirPod or AirTag.
Ha, ha, ha! No, I can’t. AirPods cases don’t offer Find My support. Just as the feature is missing from far too many other Apple accessories.
This needs to change. Find My is amazing, but limited by not being on devices that need it.
Update: In autumn 2022, Apple built Find My support into AirPods Pro 2, a sign that the tracking system might be coming to more peripherals.
Ever had trouble getting your Mac to recognize third-party peripherals, like a keyboard and mouse? Today’s featured setup is built around a brand-new Mac Studio mounted neatly on a pegboard behind a Samsung super ultra-wide display. But the Apple desktop computer refused to pair with a Logitech keyboard and mouse, according to the owner.
He said he had to go and buy Apple’s Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse to establish working input devices. So what happened?
Along with the new Mac Studio desktop computer and Studio Display Apple rolled out on Tuesday, it launched swanky black-and-silver peripherals — Magic Keyboard, Magic Trackpad and Magic Mouse — that go well with the new gear.
They’re similar to options you can choose if you buy a pricey new Mac Pro. But now you can purchase them separately.
Do you have to pay a bit more than you would for the normal options sold a la carte? Yes. But of course you do.
There’s something special about old Apple gear. Maybe that’s why it comes up fairly frequently in Cult of Mac‘s Setups coverage. One of the most-beloved classics in Apple’s storied history of beloved products is the Cinema Display. Today’s featured setup sports not one but two 30-inch Cinema Displays, the big stunners Steve Jobs introduced to an absolutely dazzled Worldwide Developers Conference audience in 2004.
So, naturally, questions came up about how to best use them with a newer Mac.
When you spend a third or more of your waking hours all but chained to a computer setup, you might as well make it a pleasant place to spend time. That’s what most of Cult of Mac‘s Setups coverage is all about, really — glorifying both the high-tech performance and the stylish comfort that ease your enslavement to whatever it is you do with tech.
Today’s 14-inch M1 Pro MacBook Pro-based featured setup shows a “before and after” transition. Musician and Salesforce consultant Jon Young said a revamp of his wife’s “nicer and more spacious” work area inspired his changes. “Mine just has more gadgets lol,” he said.
Some computer setups knock your socks off with lighting. It can be tasteful, warm, welcoming and conducive to work without eye strain. It can be bright, inventive and dazzling, like fantastic decorations. Or, as in today’s MacBook Pro-based featured setup, it can be either one of those, depending on both choice of settings and time of day.
The light show in today’s workstation derives from two sources, or schemes. One involves two very different table lamps. The other involves LED light strips.
Leave it to a digital product designer to work their magic in a tastefully pristine workstation with an absolute minimum of cable clutter. “Cable management gets a 10 out of 10,” one person said of today’s featured computer setup. And all that walnut wood doesn’t hurt, either.
But how did they manage to tame the cable monster?
If your computer setup had three screens, including a MacBook Pro, an iPad and a 32-inch external monitor, would you make the iPad the center screen? Would you put your screened devices on stands, or leave them at or near table level? Today’s setup saw a transition that might actually save its owner from years of physical therapy.
“This is what neck pain would look like if it were a setup,” someone said about the “before” photo, above.
Blogger Basic Apple Guy, whom we’ll call BAG, has been an Apple fan since high school shop class, when he convinced the teacher that making an iMovie on the teacher’s iMac G3 should fit into the curriculum. Now, decades later, BAG’s passion lives on. It showed when he recently shared one of his computer setups, the “kitchen edition.”
Ever wonder what to do if you damage your laptop’s screen? If you have no insurance or warranty coverage, is it simply time to lay that laptop to rest? No. Not necessarily. The rest of that laptop’s body can be reanimated like the creature from Frankenstein — only more productive, as you would expect from a Mac whose time has not yet come. Call it a “SlaBook” or maybe “MacStein.”
Jazz great Miles Davis probably never imagined one of his classic song titles, “All Blues,” would end up in a headline about an M1 iMac-based computer setup. And it’s not every day you see a completely color-coordinated workstation that’s not just “Kind of Blue” (to drop another title), but drenched in blue hues.
These are strange times.
These days, you can find computers and monitors with pretty good speakers. Or you can set up a pair HomePod minis or some other nice little Bluetooth speakers for solid computer setup sound.
But some people aren’t happy unless they have massive audio power on the desktop, complete with perfectly positioned speaker stands for maximum balance and clarity — and all of their speakers’ impressive wattage pointed right at their face.
There’s nothing like toiling over a computer setup until you get it just how you like it. Of course, that can mean many different things to different people. Some folks’ setups are as austere as a monk’s workbench while others look like Mission Control on steroids.
Redditor PlaZma64 recently drew attention to their newly completed setup with a post entitled, “Finally got my setup how I like it.” It’s centered on a MacBook Pro, an iPad Pro and a slew of Apple peripherals.
Finland-based student and photographer Lauri Rämä pores over finance and accounting texts in hopes of getting a Master’s degree. He uses his spare and simple MacBook Pro computer setup mainly for studying and editing, he said.
When you travel the online highways and byways in search of cool computer setups, you start to notice certain patterns. One is that lots of people seem to love Apple’s Magic Trackpad. Another is that plenty of folks hate the Magic Mouse. And a third seems to see a growing number of people absolutely love using a Magic Trackpad + mouse combo — which some onlookers find mystifying.
Sometimes on a Friday — or really any day of the week — we like to go back in time with an old-school cool Mac computer setup. That is, when we can find something on the retro side to feature. Luckily, today we found one.
Redditor Doyniish runs a Mission Control-looking workstation, thanks a gargantuan monitor in between a substantial 24-inch iMac display on the left and a MacBook Pro on a stand to the right. In the shot, they’re all festooned with open windows, making it look like all the work in the world is in progress at that particular desk.
Redditor baby-yoda-stan — Stan for short, let’s say — posted pics of his home office computer setup, which features dual Dell displays and a couple of Intel-powered MacBook Pro laptops. He credits the clean look to built-in cable management in some of his setup’s components.
