Some computer setups on social media are like highly functional art, beautifully curated and seemingly permanent, like museum pieces. Others are just weird, wonderful and fleeting. Today’s example is more the latter case, featuring a “spec’d out” M4 Mac mini used with an iPad Air and a tiny touch screen as external displays, plus a Magic Trackpad and a crazy split keyboard.
People questioned the lack of a MacBook, but other commenters rose up in defense of the oddball setup.
So many of us sit at a computer all day peering at a screen, it’s no wonder eye strain is a common problem. But only some of us — like today’s featured MacBook Pro and Studio Display user — really attack the problem beyond taking more breaks. They offer tips to reduce eye strain below.
Today’s featured Mac Studio setup may win the external display arms race — for bigger monitors and for more of them. A 4-display setup displayed on social media is not super rare, but one sporting such large screens is. This one pushes the limit of too much screen space with two stacked 57-inch curved ultra-wide Samsung displays bookended by two 32-inch Samsungs in portrait (vertical) orientation. Yikes, that’s a lot of screen.
Guess what, it’s time for another installment of Dave’s Setup Upgrades. Only about six weeks after I last wrote about my own computer setup instead of everybody else’s, here I go again. An M4 Pro MacBook Pro driving a pair of 5K touchscreen displays remains the core of my rig. But I’ve gone a little nuts lately with computer input devices as I strive for a more ergonomic workstation. I’m up to four, with backups for most, and that’s got to be some kind of record.
And I added a webcam because my current external displays don’t pack one. And my laptop, with its only-pretty-good webcam, sits hidden away on a vertical stand. I don’t want to have to pull it out for video calls.
Apple’s beautiful, high-resolution Studio Display is notoriously expensive, starting at about $1,600 — so dual Studio Display computer setups are pretty rare. I also see Studios Displays paired with other options for external displays, as in today’s great-looking Mac Studio setup. And it turns out there are reasons beyond identical resolution to choose the LG 5K UltraFine display the users selected and loves.
And another cool item in the setup hides behind the displays. Bower & Wilkins’ aged-yet-still-awesome MM1 computer speakers make a rare appearance.
Today’s featured setup sports an M1 Max MacBook Pro still going strong, but the user posted the workstation on social media to show off a newly added Mchose mechanical keyboard — an unfamiliar but solid-looking brand. And I couldn’t help notice the stellar audio gear in the mix, including excellent Yamaha studio monitors for focused sound in the room, plus a surprising array of great headphones and audio interfaces.
A growing number of people rely on iPad tablets — particularly iPad Pro — as their main daily driver. And with iPadOS 26 software currently in beta testing and available to all in September, this will become even easier to do. Today’s featured iPad-Studio Display setup doesn’t abandon Mac — in fact, it includes a hidden M4 MacBook Pro — but it makes the most of iPad Pro and looks damn good doing it.
In Setups world, the struggle continues over display preferences, in terms of those who want bigger and those who want more. Today’s MacBook Pro user dwells on the “bigger” side an an ultra-wide monitor user, but they actually want to downsize from a mammoth 49-incher and get something with a higher refresh rate. Meanwhile, they’re thrilled their M1 Pro MacBook Pro still runs like a champ. And they conceived a way to have Touch ID while hiding the keyboard it comes with.
Today’s MacBook Pro setup so excels at saving space it fits more into its little nook under a staircase than many people, including me, fit in setups without that constraint. In addition to the usual, they’ve even got multiple game systems, two printers and a book collection in there. And the user still rocks a version of my previous laptop, the great M1 Pro MacBook Pro. No doubt it’s still good for a few more years.
While plenty of people find Apple’s Studio Display a bit too expensive, many owners of Mac setups love it. Today’s MacBook Pro user justifies the expense because they use Studio Display for photo editing. But others disagreed that the $1,600 monitor is all that great a display for photo editing, with one person calling it “less than ideal” and backing that up with several technical points, below. They might not worry casual users much, but could be worth considering for pros like graphic designers.
With all the mousing and typing people do, you’d think products designed for ergonomic comfort — and to help avoid repetitive-strain injuy — would crop up in more computer setups. Well, today’s MacBook Pro and Mac Pro rig answers the call. The user, a smarty-pants undergrad at Harvard, relies on a Logitech MX Vertical wireless mouse setup plus a Logitech Pop Keys Mechanical Keyboard for data input.
Designer Basic Apple Guy, known for nifty wallpapers for Mac, iPhone and iPad screens, dropped his annual Apple Product Tier List Monday. The Apple product rankings give letter grades to everything the iPhone giant released in 2024. He considers M4/M4 Pro Mac mini the best of the best, by the way.
“For the third year in a row, I am once again painting a target on my head and releasing my tier rankings of the products Apple released in the 2024 calendar year,” he wrote. Undoubtedly, not everyone will love his choices, particularly those he grades in the low D and F tiers, but he takes care to explain them.
In most MacBook-based computer setups people put together at home or in offices, an external keyboard stands in for the laptop’s own. That’s typically because the laptop sits open or closed on a stand, where reaching the keyboard is either awkward or impossible. Today’s MacBook Pro setup relies on a pricey and cool Realforce R3 TKL mechanical keyboard used in combination with a Magic Trackpad.
Monitor light bars are commonplace in computer setups for good reason. They often do a better job of cutting monitor glare and lighting up desks than overhead lights or simple desk lamps. But what if a desk lamp worked more like a monitor light bar? That’s what so-called architect desk lamps do. They’re often called double-headed LED lights. Attached to their own stand or clamped arm, they can arch right over a display, providing tons of light, control options and physical flexibility.
Not everyone would consider a well-equipped M4 Pro Mac mini driving a pair of 4K external displays a “budget” computer setup, but today’s user does. After suffering a job loss, they replaced an M1 Mac mini with the tiny new powerhouse and a nice array of peripherals, including data and power hubs and solid input devices.
There are supposedly 12 days of Christmas and at least that many ways to fix a computer setup. If your workstation features a MacBook Pro and two big external LG UltraFine external displays sitting on a desk, plus a Magic Keyboard mini and a Magic Trackpad, it’s pretty much good to go, right? Well, maybe. But today’s user with that rig asked on social media how to improve it, and they got a ton of advice.
Most of the comments concerned the dual displays, but they ranged pretty far afield, and anyone can learn from it.
★★★★☆
The new Apple Magic Trackpad with USB-C still holds the crown for the best Mac peripheral. It’s the best trackpad in the world and the best input device for macOS.
I was hoping for a little more out of this update, like built-in Touch ID or multi-device pairing. I also wish there were a neutral silver color, not just black and white.
But even without either, it has features that are still unparalleled anywhere else. Force Touch and Apple’s perfected multitouch gestures make the Magic Trackpad the king.
Keep reading or watch our video review.
Apple’s new Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad finally ditched the Lightning connector to become USB input devices Monday when they rolled out alongside color-matched versions for the new iMac, the first in this week’s M4 Mac announcements. The input devices, expected to ship October 31, are among the last of the iPhone giant’s accessories to make the change to USB-C.
When one commenter saw today’s Mac Studio workstation, they said “Setup so clean it looks AI generated. I like it.” Well, we also like the Mac Studio and custom PC setup, especially for its innovative use of a portable display alongside its main external display, which is a killer gaming monitor we’ve never seen before.
Mechanical keyboards are all the rage for folks who love their nuanced typing feel, customizability and all that clickety-clackety noise.
Today’s featured Mac Studio and dual-Studio Display setup boasts a great mechanical gaming keyboard, the NuPhy Halo75, with custom keycaps.
Dual Studio Displays are a popular-if-pricey choice among Mac users. In addition to making a case for going with the configuration in the first place, today’s Mac Studio setup offers some helpful tips for creating synced dual Studio Displays.
It suggests third-party tools to help sync audio and brightness levels across the two monitors.
Trend alert: We’re seeing more computer setups cutting down from dual apple studio display setups — or sometimes a few — to one external display. This is no scientific survey, but today’s setup looks like another example of several we’ve seen popping up on social media lately where a user wants to simplify and focus in that way.
And commenters compared the choice of display that remained — a Dell 4K gaming monitor — favorably to Studio Display.
Isn’t it great when someone on social media humbly displays a well put-together and complete computer setup that makes yours look like random debris? Well, at least it’s a good learning opportunity. And today’s MacBook Pro setup is an exceptional example, as it doesn’t look like “all that” — even though it is.
At a glance you might not guess that it packs about two dozen components, and the user is happy to explain how he uses most of them.
Apple’s sleek and colorful all-in-one desktop computer, the iMac, appears in Cult of Mac‘s setups coverage less often than other Macs, but not for lack of trying. It seems people don’t flaunt iMac setups all over social media all that much. But judging by today’s warm and inviting pink-iMac setup, maybe they should.
The cozy little office space also benefits from smart lights we don’t see all that often, either.
Sure, you can buy a computer monitor and set it up on the stand that came in the box. But what if you want to easily move the external display around? And what if you want to have multiple screens and move them around?
Keeping monitors up off the desk and mobile can really improve your setup. And the best way to do that is to mount your screens on arms. It takes some effort, but as today’s user points out below, it’s worth it.