Love it or hate it, the LG DualUp and its odd 16:18 aspect ratio — nearly square — has found a lot of fans among Mac users, including the owner of today’s M4 Mac mini setup with dual Studio Displays.
It’s easy to get addicted to using Touch ID whenever you need to gain password-restricted access to anything. But not everyone is a big fan of Magic Keyboard with Touch ID (not the function, the keeb itself). Today’s MacBook Pro setup user found an odd but practical solution. They use a Keychron Q1 mechanical keyboard as a daily driver and Velcro a Magic Keyboard with Touch ID to the edge of the desk so they can reach the Touch ID button.
Believe it or not, today’s magnificent featured setup includes five computers — each with a job to do, even the ol’ trash-can Mac Pro — and one absolutely huge computer monitor. It’s a 57-inch curved ultra-wide Samsung. What, 49 inches wasn’t big enough for ya?
And the workstation includes other great features. Those include a Rode PodMic, the same great open-back Sennheiser headphones I own, and powerful Klipsch bookshelf speakers paired with a subwoofer that I wish I owned.
The best desk cable management seems like magic because it makes things disappear. Today’s M4 Mac mini setup with dual 4K displays shows that off beautifully, hiding most of the workstation’s gear underneath an elegant desk.
“That cable management is art,” said one appreciative commenter.
In this case, the user made the cable-management parts using a 3D printer. But you can achieve the same effect using a few inexpensive products that aren’t difficult to install.
Careful mounting of devices is a hallmark of light and clean computer setups because it lifts most of the gear up off the desk, making room for other gear or simply creating clean, open space. In today’s setup, the MacBook Pro sitting open on a stand is just one of three small screens, including a portable monitor, that nicely complement and expand the Studio Display.
“Everything starts with a dream,” goes an old saying — and it even applies to computer setups. Today’s attractive and highly functional M4 Pro MacBook Pro, Mac mini and Studio Display setup amounts to a dream for its owner. But in expressing that dream on social media, its owner found commenters had plenty to say about their versions of “an Apple fan’s dream setup.”
OK, today’s MacBook setup doesn’t actually live in a camera and Lego museum like the headline on this post suggests — but close enough. The user is clearly a collector. The sheer number of cameras on display is impressive, and the Lego Star Wars spaceships flying up high on a shelf in the photo inspire some awe, too. And it’s not every day we see a dual-MacBook setup with both mounted open on stands, either.
Today’s featured computer setup pretty much has it all in terms of enviable gear, though it could use better lighting. Its M1 Max Mac Studio may not be the latest Apple M-series desktop, but it’s still formidable. And it drives a Pro Display XDR, perhaps the ultimate external monitor. And the setup even excels at the little things, including great audio gear and a pair of illuminated pegboard stands I’ve never seen before.
Anyone who follows along with my Setups coverage for Cult of Mac probably knows I’ve got a soft spot for great audio. And while my own setup and its surroundings bristle with solid audio gear, today’s M4 Mac mini workstation makes me twitch with envy. You can’t go wrong with KEF speakers — complete with subwoofer under the desk — as long as you have the cash to acquire them. And I’ve wanted Bowers & Wilkins headphones for years.
If you work with visual media in some way — like as a graphic designer or video editor — you know how important color accuracy on external monitors can be. Today’s M4 Pro Mac mini user relies on a pair of BenQ monitors specifically calibrated to match Mac colors. They’re actually made for MacBook Pro and MacBook Air, to reproduce the rich colors on the laptops’ Liquid Retina (Air) and Liquid Retina XDR (Pro) displays.
And that’s not all. The sleek and deceptively simple setup actually packs in a surprising amount of cool gear. See below.
The turf war between standard displays and ultra-wide monitors continues — sometimes within one computer setup. Today’s M4 Mac mini user went back and forth multiple times before their Samsung ultra-wide OLED display retook the crown from their Studio Display, which is now “gone.” And that’s the case despite their acknowledgement that “Studio Display is the best monitor for Mac, no discussion.”
This Mac mini and iPad Pro setup shows off a great cable management effort, complete with “before” and “after” photos. And yet all commenters wanted to know about — and I don’t blame them — are the cool knick-knacks. Mostly mood-lighting-related, they’re functional decor. And maybe everyone should have these three items in their setup!
Have you ever run multiple displays with different resolutions? Today’s featured Mac mini setup sports older Apple Thunderbolt Displays (2.5K resolution, aka 2560 x 1440p) flanking a newer Studio Display (5K, or 5120 x 2880p). Seems like that might cause a touch of seasickness looking back and forth between them all the time — or maybe a sticky mouse cursor — but it doesn’t bother the user at all. For them, it’s all about the excellent color reproduction across the board.
Every so often a computer setup on social media throws me for a loop with some odd visual — and it’s often related to desirable gear. Today’s M4 Mac mini workstation looks like it keeps a pair of walkie-talkies in the mix. But they’re actually computer speakers with tall, stick-like Govee light bars for gaming sitting right behind them. The way the light bars stick up makes them looks like antennas.
Few things take a computer setup up a few notches more than a good monitor mount — especially when it features dual arms positioning dual displays well off the desk. Today’s M4 Mac mini setup enjoys a pair of solidly affordable 4K Asus displays mounted on a Huanuo Dual Monitor Stand with two highly adjustable arms for optimal positioning.
Sometimes a computer setup showed off on social media demonstrates just how easy and affordable it can be to add a nice set of audio gear for podcasting, streaming, Zoom meetings and more. Today’s M4 iMac workstation sets a good example. It not only includes AirPods Max, Apple’s premium over-ear headphones. It also features one of the most popular USB microphones mounted on a boom arm, plus a capable audio interface. And it’s all pretty much plug and play, so the user can start broadcasting or recording in minutes.
This setup is simple but effective. The MacBook Pro workstation user added a Dell display that brings the setup to a whole new level, with a spacious screen sporting 4K resolution visuals.
Hooray for (super-) simple solutions. Today’s MacBook Pro and MacBook Air user runs both laptops with Studio Display. But how does he switch between them? Sure, he could employ cabling and software fixes to run both at once, but in this case simple hardware in the form of a dual vertical laptop stand comes to the rescue.
I love a solid setup featuring Apple’s killer Mac Studio desktop computer — and all the more so if some of the peripherals look fantastic and are completely new to me. Today’s compact workstation, for example, features a cool Wobkey 80 mechanical keyboard. But I was even more distracted by a fascinating set of relatively affordable open-back headphones — Aune AR5000.
When I think at a glance that it’s a pair of $2,000 headphones, but they only cost $300 despite having premium features, I get excited.
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.
The M4 Mac mini comes with a built-in speaker, but it’s more for alert sounds, calls and the like rather than high-quality music streaming. So today’s M4 Mac mini user does the necessary thing and adds an external sound system. This one includes nice Kanto speakers on rising stands and a powerful Kanto subwoofer under the desk.
When I came across today’s M4 iMac setup on the interwebs, I realized how rarely they come up in Cult of Mac‘s setups coverage. Out of 616 articles I’ve written about setups to date — over more than 4 years — this is only the 11th one to feature an iMac (plus a few others from before I took over the setups beat). And that small number doesn’t come from any hatred of iMacs on my part. It’s just that users seem to flaunt them much less on social media than other hardware. And they’re not top sellers for Apple.
In my lengthy travels among computer setups displayed on social media, I saw a cool Mac mini case a while back that made the compact M4/M4 Pro desktop computer look like a little Mac Pro. I wondered if it’d catch on as a cool, must-have accessory, but then I never saw it again — until now. Today’s featured M4 Pro Mac mini setup sports one of the snazzy and functional cases in a dual-display workstation.
Today’s M4 Mac mini setup jumped out at me not because of the powerful little desktop or the gorgeous-but-distracting display wallpaper, but because of all you can see riding on top of the monitor. It features a typical monitor light bar with a pronounced webcam riding on top. But look to the corners and notice something I’ve never seen: two separate LED light panels — Ulanzi lights — mounted there to make the user look better on video calls.
For people who have only used membrane keyboards in office and at home, whether Magic Keyboard or similar wares from the likes of Logitech, mechanical keyboards can be a tempting world to check out — especially for gamers (because mechanical keystrokes hit at the same time won’t cancel each other out). And mech-keeb customization can be fun. But where to start? Today’s MacBook Pro and gaming PC setup puts forward an excellent candidate for an affordable mechanical keyboard.