The setup showcased in a recent Reddit post consists of just a MacBook Air, an iPad, an iPhone and some peripherals and accessories, but it brings up a puzzling conundrum: Should you use both a MacBook and an iPad, even though their functionality overlaps to a great extent?
According to most of the comments, the answer is yes — even if it makes you feel like a sucker.
After toiling for many months to get it right, Southeast Asia-based Redditor vostok91 finally finished fitting a vibrant computer setup on a small desk in a small room. The result may be a small setup compared to some, but that doesn’t make it a “small setup.” It’s plenty feisty.
A 15-inch MacBook Pro paired with an LG 32UL950 Ultrafine 4K LED Monitor make up the setup’s core.
Sometimes a setup promoted on social media stops you dead in your tracks, and it’s not because you’re excited about the hardware. Sometimes it’s the amazing, hand-built “man shed” where the setup lives that stuns you.
Such is the case with CourseEcstatic6202’s offering on Reddit. The cloud architect — let’s just call him “CE” — works in Amazon Web Services on California’s central coast. He designed and built a beautiful little house for his MacBook Pro-based setup in his back yard.
With the recent arrival of a dual-monitor stand, Oxford, England-based Russ Hicks completed an overhaul of the setup that powers the one-man business he has run for 25 years: Genesis Marketing Services.
He specializes in printing equipment suppliers and packaging services. And his business now runs on a Mac mini M1 and dual curved screens.
Multiple sclerosis has made Hicks’ work more challenging recently, but Apple products have helped him deal with it.
Redditor brazzy2010 has a super-simple setup with a tremendous asset to go along with an M1-powered MacBook Air. It’s a 30-inch Apple Cinema Display from more than a decade ago. Its exact age is unknown, but it could be up to 16 years old.
Not only does the elderly display still work — with the right connectors, it still dazzles.
In theory, you only need a laptop and a table to work from home. But as the months pass, a subpar setup will take its toll on your productivity — and your body. A few choice upgrades can make all the difference.
From dedicated desks to ergonomic mice, here are 11 products that can improve your WFH experience — now on sale for up to 39% off MSRP.
Shad Ahmad was a hard-studying freshman majoring in biology and minoring in history at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
Going home to continue classes for a semester remotely from his parents’ house in Wisconsin may not have been ideal, but Ahmad found a comforting upside. Integrated smart technology makes his life easier, he told Cult of Mac.
David Wilcox is an IT consultant working from home in Bristol, England. His remote work situation means he gets to tweak his setup just as he likes, he told Cult of Mac.
Wilcox’s central command is a 27-inch 5K iMac from 2019. Humming along with it are two 28-inch U2HE850 monitors paired and run together via a Startech Thunderbolt 3 to Dual DisplayPort Adapter.
With that much screen real estate and a plethora of networking gear, he gets a lot done.
“My first computer was a Sinclair [Research] ZX81,” he said, referring to a machine made by Timex Corp. in the United Kingdom starting in 1981. “So this setup is just about a home-computing Nirvana!”
Allan Hagen is a New York-based professional magician and amateur photographer with a serious setup. His favorite part of the setup is the big, stunning Antoccino Desk by RH Modern, which helps him concentrate.
“A big desk with a fairly minimalist setup really lends itself to focusing on the tasks at hand,” he said.
Anthony Ivanovsky is a Toronto-based marketing expert and IT manager who has a knack for gadgets, both big and small. In his setup, an MSI Optix MAG341CQ 34-inch UltraWide Curved Gaming Monitor immediately draws the eye. And at $500, it costs considerably less than other ultrawides on the market.
On the left-hand side of his desk, standing like a monument, is the commanding Mac Pro. He uses this beast of a machine for video editing, photo editing and for his day job working for a tech startup. Aside from the base Radeon 580X, he also has two additional Radeon VII graphic cards, which may seem like overkill until you learn that he also runs three different YouTube channels.
Alex Knoll is a professional photographer with some serious carpentry skills. When he couldn’t find a desk he liked that matched his budget, he decided to just build one himself. He sketched a plan on his iPad with the Procreate app and bought himself a few long slabs of pine and got to work. With a set of $100 table legs he bought from TableLegs.com, the total cost of the materials came out to roughly $300.
The Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse are still some of the best accessories Apple ever developed. These refurbished models offer a great way to upgrade your Mac (or iPad) and save some cheese.
Mark Davis is somewhat of a Renaissance man. He is an author of four novels, an entrepreneur, an engineer and a scientist. He is between startups right now but recently sold a data analytics platform to Dell. In order to perform all of his duties, he needs a setup that can match his tempo. Naturally, he has a dual-monitor setup.
His main monitor is a Samsung U28E590D 28-inch 4k UHD which has a one-millisecond response time that obliterates latency. He pairs it up with a LG 27-inch IPS Monitor which he mainly runs off of his 2018 iPad Pro. A 13-inch MacBook Pro is the backbone of the setup. It is covertly hidden on a Twelve South BookArc behind the monitors. His MacBook is specced out with 16GB of RAM storage, which is important to him “so I can run multiple virtual machines in parallel when needed,” he said.
Ryan Sebastyan is a video editor who until recently was on tour shooting Def Leppard gigs, back when we still had concerts. The tour seems to be on hold now, but he has a nice selection of shots on his Instagram page.
Back at home, he built himself a killer setup. The headliner of this tech festival is the impeccable 27-inch iMac Pro, a beast of a machine. The Grovemade Walnut Monitor Stand makes the iMac its own computer upon a hill. Naturally, he pairs the iMac with the Apple Magic Mouse and Keyboard (with Numeric Trackpad!). The matte black color stands out nicely against the walnut desk and stand.
Jessie Ruane is a New York-based professional actor and interior home decorator so when it came to her home office setup she came to play. Since she last redid her setup, Ruane wanted to go with something cleaner and more minimalist. She said the favorite part of her setup is that it “is super functional to record great audio, hook up hard drives and accessories efficiently, and just perform everything speedy.”
The mainstay of the dual-monitor, MacBook Pro-run rig is an outstanding 27-inch LG UltraFine monitor. The LG UltraFine has a whopping 8 million pixels, more than four times as many as most conventional 1080p HD monitors and works seamlessly with her MacBook.
Connell McCarthy is a senior designer for Shopify by day and moonlights as a musician. His setup was built to handle both of these activities.
He works at a Strucktube table, by Tokyo Desk, which gives him a ton of space to work with. His monitor is the LG 32-inch FreeStyle IPS Monitor which gives him good screen quality without breaking the bank. The nerve center of his rig is a MacBook Pro.
Ben Hess is a professional cinematographer — and he has the gear to prove it. He rocks an iMac Pro that’s hooked up to a 27-inch LG 5K UltraFine Monitor, giving him acres of premium screen real estate.
But the highlight of this rig is not the $5,000 computer or the $1,300 screen. It’s his $27,000 Red Gemini Camera and $5,000 lens. Hess comes to play. The Red Gemini is top-shelf, and an Atlas anamorphic lens gives him the eye of a hawk.
Apple’s newest MacBook Air is $49 more affordable if you buy yours on Amazon right now. Or you can save even more by opting for a renewed previous-generation MacBook Air, which is now available for less than $850.
Renewed stock doesn’t last long, so bag yours before they’re gone.
An ultrawide curved monitor takes any setup to the next level, and Cesar Azaustre’s MacBook-powered rig is no exception. It took a three-year span for the Spanish front-end engineer to assemble this setup — and it does not disappoint.
To control things on his massive $800 screen, he uses the Apple Magic Keyboard and the Logitech MX Anywhere wireless mouse. For Zoom meetings, he leans on a Logitech Pro Stream Camera and a Røde microphone, both top-of-the-line products.
Working from home? Welcome to the new normal. Even under the best circumstances, transitions can be difficult, and a lot of it comes down to good habits. But it can also come down to having the right tools. That’s why we rounded up timely deals on some of the best gear for working from home.
Get ready to save on second computer screens, monitor stands, Mac accessories and more. There’s even a hot deal on a refurbished Magic Mouse 2!
When it comes to Apple computers, the best accessories are also made by Cupertino. But that means they carry Apple prices, so if you want to get the awesome Magic Mouse or Magic Keyboard — but don’t want to make a mortgage payment to do it — refurbs are the way to go. These certified Apple accessories work just like new; they just cost less.
For most computer users, the trackpad is the default control device, and that’s because we mostly use laptops. And Apple’s trackpads are great. If you’ve only ever used MacBook or Magic trackpads, then you won’t know how bad things can get on the PC side of the wall.
Mice, though, are still better in many ways, especially if you have the large screen of an iMac to traverse. Or if you just prefer accuracy: It’s easier to pinpoint something quickly with a mouse. Apple’s Magic Mouse adds a trackpad’s essential swipe-to-scroll features, but lacks other handy abilities, like tap-to-click, and two-finger taps. Today we’ll see how to add those tricks to the Magic Mouse.
As the phrase goes, “build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.” Apple is turning that on its head by seeking to build a better mouse.
Its proposal is for a round mouse that can sense how the user is holding it, so it always performs as the user expects. And rather than moving the mouse to control the cursor, the user tilts it.
This has been a banner week at the Cult of Mac Store, so we’ve rounded up some of the best deals we saw. Below you’ll find massive discounts on refurbished Magic Mouse and Keyboards, 12-minute book summaries, access to vast stock photo libraries, and a powerful personal finance tool. You’ve gotta see these deals …
Whether you’re working on a laptop or a desktop computer, it means being tied to the machine. That is, unless you go wireless with Apple’s Magic Mouse and Keyboard.