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.
In a knock-down, drag-out fight between an Apple Magic Keyboard and one of its most popular alternatives, the Logitech MX Keys wireless keyboard, which would win? Actually, it might be more of a minor dust-up than a brawl. Maybe just a slightly heated discussion among proudly opinionated nerds, even.
Let’s say you get one of Apple’s new MacBook Pro laptops — the 14-inch or the 16-inch with either the M1 Pro or the M1 Max chip. Do you still face the external display limitations seen in the M1 MacBooks (just one external monitor), or something similar? This is bound to be a common question leading to folks struggling to figure out what should work using the dreaded “pixel math.”
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.
Who says an M1 Mac mini and a revved-up gaming PC can’t get along? Macs aren’t known to excel at gaming, so it’s natural for many folks to keep a Mac alongside a tricked-out gaming rig. These days, it’s easy to switch back and forth, as we’ll see in today computer setup featuring a massive TV screen and a slightly more modest monitor.
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.
When you see people online showing off their computer setups with dual displays, you often see side-by-side horizontal monitors (landscape mode). Sometimes you see a horizontal screen and a vertical one (portrait mode). And sometimes you see stacked displays, with one landscape-oriented monitor mounted on top of another.
Sometimes you see the stack because of space issues, where there’s simply no room to either side of the setup. Other times you see a stack when someone wants to run four or five displays. And there are cases where the user couldn’t get one monitor to work in portrait mode, so they had to have both screens in landscape mode.
We see a lot of impressive computer setups in slick home offices here at Cult of Mac Setups HQ, but few of them are nicer than one we just came across. As usual, we’ll share the gear list, below, as well as some of the tricks you can emulate to improve your own home workspace.
Folks often endure work-from-home situations where space is at a premium. Maybe they have a big house full of kids and pets. Maybe they live a tiny studio apartment in a big, expensive city. In either case, sometimes the whole computer setup sits where they eat, and it has to go away at dinnertime. Today’s setup solved the problem by turning a dining table into an easy-stash U.K. office.
A lot of computer setups we run across online look staged. They’re so perfectly, well, you know — set up. They boast impressive equipment. Some exhibit a spare beauty one would almost hate to disturb. Others scream hardcore productivity like the fate of all the companies in the Fortune 500 company rest solely upon them.
Marc Drucker serves as an associate director and technical lead for a pharmaceutical company in Menlo Park, California. Having shifted fully to working from home, he found his computer setup — his WFH rig — running so well and looking so clean, he decided to send it in to Cult of Mac.
Among the words he used to describe his WFH rig were ideal and perfect. We talked to him about what works so well for him in his workstation and included his answers, below.
In the world of computer setups, space is often at a premium. When you’ve got computers, displays, peripherals, gadgets and cables, you need some surface area. But not everyone has a big desk, much less more than one. That’s where certain types of stands and mounting arms come in handy.
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.
The new M1 iPad mini garners rave reviews for its powerful performance and easily handled size. The M1 Mac mini is well-established as a compact but capable desktop machine. The HomePod mini smart speaker has flourished after the demise of the full-sized HomePod. So it’s no wonder to see “all mini” computer setups cropping up.
You’ve got to love somebody bragging about getting their computer setup’s cable management down to one cord, because it’s never really one cord. They don’t mean it literally. It’s just that one cord to a hub or dock helped reduce their previously tangled mess of cables splaying out all over the place.
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.
In the ongoing discussion about whether a gargantuan ultra-wide monitor beats dual monitors or vice versa, some people still chime in favoring one modest display to either of the above choices. Of course, these days, “modest” can mean in excess of 30 inches, plus a lot of bells and whistles.
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.