Setups - page 22

If Apple takes something away, people tend to want it more. We see this in the persistent coveting of space gray peripherals — Magic Trackpad, Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse 2 — that the Cupertino tech giant stopped selling separately last year after the iMac Pro’s discontinuation.

Following the space gray iMac Pro’s launch in 2018 with matching peripherals exclusive to it, owners found they could sell the dark-hued input devices for mad money. So Apple jumped on that market, charging a slight premium over the silver versions, though not forever. But space gray gear still carries a certain cache.

For the first computer setup featured in the new year, we look backward. Not to the recently subsided and mostly loathed 2021, but further back to a controversial Apple product launch from nearly a decade ago. And deeper into Apple’s storied history. Cult of Mac reader Michael De Jong shared some interesting older gear and some iconic imagery with us in his setup photographs.

The new M1 Macs are impressive — especially the newest of the new, the M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBooks. They’re so impressive, we see them replacing even late-model desktop Macs that have years of useful and even impressive life left in them. Such is the case with today’s year-end setup.

In a twist on the old phrase uttered at this time of year, “Out with the (not very) old, in with the (insanely great) new.”

We keep coming across two great secrets of super-clean desktops when it comes to computer setups. As shown in today’s featured setup, they’re both about creating significant amounts of open desk space in different ways — without losing any access to your gear or forfeiting any computing power.

And we’re not just talking about clearing away basic clutter, or even cable clutter, although that always helps. We’re talking about how you can get some of your main equipment up and off the desk so you have room in front of you. Redditor kurtvdpoel demonstrates the two excellent methods in his post, “Home office with Mac mini Apple M1.”

If you’re an avid gamer, or maybe just an aspiring one, it pays to know which displays and accessories will best serve your needs. Not just any display, input device and headset will keep up with today’s graphically rich games. The dual M1 Mac and Sony PlayStation 5 computer setup we look at today demonstrates some good choices you might consider.

Redditor smhppp uses an M1 Mac mini for personal uses, an M1 MacBook Air for work and a Sony PS5 for gaming. They showed their setup in a post entitled, “Current setup, spec in comments for those interested.” It’s one of those one-vertical-and-one horizontal-display setups so many people are trying lately.

It’s Christmas Eve, and all we want for the holiday is a Porsche 911. It could be a gleaming new one, with a base price of a mere $99,200. It could be super-cool vintage one. Or it could even be a Lego one like the one featured in today’s MacBook Pro and iPad Pro-driven setup.

OK, given our paltry income, who are we kidding — we’d even take a die-cast 911, like the Matchbox cars of our youth.

Sometimes when you’re trawling the interwebs for cool computer setups, you learn a lot not just from the person bragging about their gear in a social media post, but also from the folks admiring or lambasting it. Such is the case with today’s iPad Pro and Dell widescreen setup.

Its owner and other folks push the importance of adding a good webcam and good lighting for successful videoconferencing. And other folks make a compelling case for adding a subwoofer to paired HomePod minis if you want any bass at all in your music.

OK, so no 2021 award for Most Fastidious Cable Management, mentioned in this article’s headline, exists — at least not around here. But if it did, we might hand it to the person behind today’s setup.

It centers on a 2020 13-inch MacBook Pro and a 32-inch LG 4K display. And it keeps cable clutter to an extreme minimum.

If you look up “11.11” in the Slang Dictionary, it says, “If it’s 11:11, make a wish! Some people believe 11:11 is a magic number or lucky time of day, good for making a wish … or reaching cosmic enlightenment.” Well, if something’s enlightened, or at least en-whitened, it’s today’s Mac mini-based setup.

It’s all there in black and white, really, with “11.11” writ large on the dual displays — probably via the Fliqlo screensaver, though it could be a clock app — and Nintendo gaming consoles aplenty.

One of the questions you see most in the comments sections of posts about computer setups on social media is: Where did you get that wallpaper? To many folks, the setup may be fine and dandy, but what they really care about is not so much the fancy hardware, but the imagery on the display that they might easily get for themselves.

Today’s setup is a prime example. It made us look back at 10 great wallpaper sources we’ve come across, below. That’s 11, actually, including today’s subject.

With the new M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pro models selling like hotcakes, a lot of people are wondering how to incorporate their new laptops into their computer setups. Is it enough just to use the laptop, or should it be used with an external keyboard, mouse or trackpad, as well as an external monitor? If you’re setting up your Mac and find that Bluetooth is off, you may need to know how to turn Bluetooth on Mac without mouse or keyboard.

Premium computer setups for gaming are known for their eye-popping visuals, of course — but they need great sound, too. Today’s featured setup gets there with a killer display but also a raft of audio gear by companies like Aiyima, Burson, Kanto and Hifiman. The headphones, in particular, may make you green with envy.

Redditor IsTowel is a front-end developer and designer as well as a gamer. Their post about their “Working and listening station” outlines some pretty high-level gaming specs in a Mac and PC, dual-display setup — especially for stellar sound quality.

Some computer setups are remarkably cool for their awesome computing power. Others wow you with incredible displays, with several high-def monitors. And still others blow you away with premium sound. Or, in the case of today’s featured setup, premium audio-visual gear many people would be psyched to get their hands on.

If you’re going to hunker down in a corner of a room and work until you’ve earned an MBA, you might as well do it on an M1 MacBook Air and have a nice view of passing trains. Except both of those things might help you procrastinate.

Not long ago we wrote about a person who fashioned an ergonomically healthy computer setup with little more than an M1 Pro MacBook. At the time, their fancy new display was still to-be-delivered, so they made-do without it. Now all the screens are in place and they make a magnificent workstation, with the MacBook running with one landscape-mode display and two portrait-mode monitors. It took some special connectivity tricks to make it happen.

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.”

Bacioiu Constantin Ciprian, known online as “Zapa,” was born in Buzau, Romania, in 1991, not long after a revolution toppled communist rule there. He loved technology as a kid, but it was expensive and hard to get. And soon enough he realized how much he loved Apple products — especially those around in his youth.

Now a longtime resident of Bucharest, he designs and develops games to run on vintage equipment. And get a load of that retro setup!

Andrew, a customer service experience manager for an internet service provider in Minneapolis, shared his computer setup with Cult of Mac after a big revamp. He replaced a 27-inch 2017 iMac with a 14-inch 2021 M1 Pro MacBook, which he runs alongside his work laptop, a Lenovo ThinkPad T480S. He uses his Apple gear mostly for photo editing and music production.

“With work from home, I needed the ability to use the screen with both my personal computer and my work device,” Andrew told Cult of Mac (he requested we use only his first name). “I had been running Windows on the iMac via Boot Camp and using Miracast to wirelessly extend to the iMac screen from my ThinkPad. When it worked it was great, but it became unreliable over time, and I decided that a monitor with multiple inputs are the way to go.”

Andrew said the Miracast connection with the iMac became unreliable when he got a mesh network. It would sometimes work great, but often fail to connect, despite rigorous troubleshooting. So it was time to do a little shopping.

You see a lot of people busting on each other for “flexing,” or bragging, about their computer setups shown in social media posts. We came across a doozy today with a dual-display setup bathed in a cool wash of color. But it’s not really about the double luxe displays; lots of people have that. It’s about the two expensive Mac Pros tucked under the desk.

I wrote recently about the shameful squalor of my previous “setup” — basically a borrowed PC laptop perched on a pile of junk — and my effort to build something worthwhile around a gleaming new 14-inch M1 Pro MacBook. Well, like a lot of people in the throes of building a computer setup, I found that second-guessing haunted me into buying a whole lot of alternative gear.

You know, for testing purposes. Trial and error. Not because of my apparent shopping addiction. Or not much, anyway.

We see a lot of dual- and multi-display workstations here at Setups Central, but we can’t recall seeing a “dual-display laptop” or a “laptop monitor stack.” Those are terms we made up for a second portable display mounted under a laptop’s screen and on top of its keyboard, as in today’s featured setup.

Not long ago I sold, gave away or trashed most of my possessions and moved across the U.S. Soon after arrival, I found my computer unresponsive. The ol’ HP Pavilion laptop stopped powering on reliably. So I borrowed a perfectly good Dell laptop from my brother and kept on writing, mainly for Cult of Mac. I just happened to be “between Macs” at the time. But now I have a brand new 14-inch M1 Pro MacBook.

Thanks to the swanky new Apple laptop plus a few other bits and pieces I quickly acquired, as of today I no longer wallow in a PC laptop pigsty (yeah, the photo above is genuine, though I swear it wasn’t always quite that messy). I’ve got a proper Mac computer setup for the first time in a while.

Coincidentally, our last Setups post concerned itself with proper ergonomics, and today’s sticks with the theme. On Friday we wrote about a person making a comfortable and productive workstation out of little more than a laptop. This time, someone has gone “ergo everything” on an M1 MacBook Pro rig with a big external monitor and a nice set of peripherals, furniture and accessories.

From time to time, as you work on making your computer setup all it can be, you order new equipment. And maybe it takes a long time to arrive. Perhaps “supply chain” issues intervene. And if that piece of equipment is your workstation’s visual centerpiece — the magnificent display, placed just so for graphical and ergonomic bliss — then what do you do, when you have no external monitor?

Do you hunch over your laptop until your neck and your back and everything else hurts? Not necessarily.