I have four top tips for Mastodon users after spending a few months on the hot new social media platform. There’s a healthy community of Apple writers, developers, creators and fans — even Phil Schiller — who have all jumped ship from Twitter.

I’ve previously written a detailed guide to getting started. I’ll start with some brief advice on picking an instance and move on to the pro tips I’ve picked up.

On what would have been Steve Jobs’ 68th birthday, the Steve Jobs Archive shared a favorite photo from 1984 — along with the promise of more content to come.

“We have so much to tell you about, but I want to start by sharing one of my favorite images from our collection,” wrote Leslie Berlin, the archive’s co-founder and executive director, in an email newsletter. “It’s Steve in 1984, spotting a new Macintosh in the wild.”

How refreshing it must be to make over your computer setup and, while you’re at it, gut and refresh your whole home office. That’s what Michael De Jong did recently. And he shared his transition with Cult of Mac.

First, he tinkered with the setup, going with dual displays and adding a soundbar and a slick gaming chair. Later he gutted the whole office and added a whole raft of upgrades. Take a look at his photos and gear, new and old, below.

The new Mophie Powerstation Pro AC is for anyone who has multiple devices they need to charge on the go, and not just phones and tablets. The 27,000mAh external battery includes four charging ports, including an AC socket.

Mophie also introduced updated versions of its more basic Powerstation and Powerstation XL offerings on Thursday. These pack 10,000mAh and 20,000mAh, respectively.

Apple’s powerful M2 and M2 Pro Mac mini are available with their first-ever discount since launch. Depending on your configuration, you can save between $19 to $49 on the 2023 Mac mini.

Amazon is providing a modest $19 discount on the entry-level M2 Mac mini. On the more powerful M2 Pro Mac mini with 512GB storage, you can save $49.

If you’ve got one of Apple’s wonderful iPads, you need a case to keep it safe. And the cool thing about iPad cases and folios is that they often serve as both protective cases as well as stands. Some even store your Apple Pencil.

And right now you can take 20% off every SwitchEasy iPad case in the Cult of Mac Store. That gives you a choice of 12 different products and a savings of up to $10 each. The sale goes through Thursday, March 2.

The earliest Macintosh models used an iconic design — one that many longtime Mac users like me feel nostalgic about. The Shargeek Retro 67 is a salute to those early Macs that’s useful, not just decorative.

It’s a palm-size wall charger that pumps up to 67 watts through a trio of USB-C ports. With it, you can make a Macintosh juice up your iPhone and MacBook.

As someone who still has a Mac from the 1980s, it was a delight to test the Retro 67.

The OWC Thunderbolt Go Dock was designed to be taken on trips, which is unusual for a hub that uses this extremely fast connection standard. While portable, it still has room for eleven ports in a range useful types, including Thunderbolt 4 (of course), USB-A, HDMI, USB-C and more.

I put the dock through a series of real-world tests to see how well it performs.

Apple’s 2022 11-inch iPad Pro is available with massive discounts of up to $200 on Amazon. The deals are on the 1TB and 2TB variants, with the 512GB configuration seeing a sweet $50 discount.

Amazon is discounting both Wi-Fi and LTE models of the M2 11-inch iPad Pro to record low prices.

The main gear in a computer setup might be perfectly impressive, like the Mac Studio desktop machine in today’s featured setup. But that’s not what everyone looking at the workstation notices and talks about on social media.

Instead, the coveted items in this particular setup are a Bose speaker system folks are having a hard time finding, plus a Belkin Continuity Camera mount that helps you use an iPhone as a webcam.