Setups - page 4

What do you think, does today’s featured setup photograph, above, look the product of artificial intelligence? Something too neat and maybe a little off about it? Lots of people thought so. But the user insists only the desktop wallpaper showing on the Thunderbolt monitor is AI-generated. And the MacBook Pro user finds BetterDisplay sharpens text on his external display, a 32-inch BenQ 4K screen.

Ah, the age-old debate: mouse or trackpad? Well, how about both? Many setups choose that more-inclusive path when adding input devices to use along with their chosen keyboard. And it’s typically for good reason. A mouse for many cursor movements and a Magic Trackpad 3 for gestures really does the trick for most users (even if some prefer one or the other, not both).

In today’s featured setup from the Pacific Northwest, Polk Audio boosts Mac mini sound with bookshelf speakers on the desk as well as a subwoofer under it. But that’s not the extent of the user’s devotion to Polk, an admired longtime brand we rarely, if ever, see in setups coverage. The Mac mini setup is just one part of a magnificent man shed. The other part is a home theater festooned with more than enough Polk Audio hardware for stellar surround sound.

You’ve got to love a computer, gaming and TV setup with a big external display that’s so efficiently arranged it barely even takes up any desk space. Today’s featured MacBook Pro workstation manages the feat by mounting a big smart TV as a display on the wall, along with a pegboard for peripherals storage. But the MacBook setup with wall-mounted display took some pretty serious DIY skills, described below.

I’ve seen a few amazing man caves and she shacks while covering cool computer setups for Cult of Mac, but not many can compete with the home of today’s M4 Mac mini setup. The user converted a backyard shed nestled in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. So now the man shed M4 Mac mini setup doubles as a home theater sporting a gargantuan screen. You can find all the gear in the links list below for both the computer and home theater setups.

In today’s M2 MacBook Pro setup, the user stores one of the best-reviewed sets of wireless, over-ear headphones of all time on a stand over to the side. The cans are almost easy to miss in the photograph, but well worth noticing. AirPods Max competitor Sony WH-1000XM5 headphones, in a Mac setup, make for a relatively rare sight. But they’re often at or near the top of “best of” lists — not just for great sound and a comfortable fit, but especially for their vaunted noise cancellation.

For about as long as MacBooks have existed, confusion, questions and angst over how many external displays can run with them have plagued users. But at least some of the guesswork can be swept aside with a capable USB-C dock. In today’s M2 MacBook Pro setup, the powerful Ugreen Revodok connects multiple displays — three, to be precise — and other peripherals.

Wouldn’t you love to have half a dozen M-series MacBooks in your computer setup? One second thought, maybe that’s too much of a good thing. And it might only come up if you had to use most of them for work, like in today’s featured setup. A mobile device management (MDM) engineer does a lot of MDM testing on MacBooks for his job. If you use a Mac for work, he’s the guy who makes sure it keeps working efficiently and securely.

No matter how delightfully small and incredibly powerful the new M4 Pro Mac mini may be, it’s helpless without an external display of some sort. Today’s Mac mini setup pairs the tiny beast with a gigantic pal — a curved ultra-wide display from Dell spanning 40 inches. And the mini shares the monitor and Logitech input devices with a Windows laptop.

From time to time in computer setups coverage I come across a first-time Mac user, and their delight at having switched from Windows to Mac is often obvious. And that’s true of today’s M4 Pro Mac mini user, but they still need to work on a Windows laptop regularly. So they installed a Mac-Windows KVM switch in their setup to easily use the same peripherals with either machine with just the click of a button, as described and shown below.

What do you do if you need to operate a network of video cameras and store all the footage? Today’s power user not only runs an astounding trio of Mac Pro desktop computers, he piles up stacks of high-capacity UniFi Network Video Recorders — known as UNVRs — for video recording-storage from multiple cameras, plus routers and switches galore.

As your Mac computer setup grows with newly added peripherals and capabilities, keeping it all connected and powered becomes a greater challenge. Enter multiport Thunderbolt 4 hubs. They offer high-speed data transfer, great options for high-resolution external displays and power for connected devices. Today’s featured MacBook Pro setup with dual displays and more takes great advantage of a cheap Thunderbolt 4 dock — the 13-port WavLink Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station. On sale currently, it goes for just $170.

As good as some speakers built into computers and monitors sound these days, it still often pays to use external speakers on the desktop. Today’s setup features a powerful M4 Pro Mac mini — with an improved built-in speaker, no less — but the user still opts for Creative Pebble Pro speakers in the computer setup.

Today’s dual-display MacBook Pro setup sits on a desk up against a mirrored wall. In the photograph above, that let’s us see the nifty ring of colorful monitor RGB lighting built into the back of the LG UltraGear display — a decorative and functional touch included in an aging but still formidable external display for serious gamers.

This holiday season, give yourself or someone else the timeless gift of better cable management. Today’s MacBook Pro and LG DualUp display user shows us one way to make a small but significant improvement in the look of a computer setup. You can use cables with 90-degree connectors rather than straight ones for a cleaner look (or get USB-C cable adapters with right-angle or vertical ends for your straight cables). Check out the “after” photo above and the “before” photo below.

And seriously, if you’re hard up for stocking-stuffer ideas, a USB-C adapter kit might be just the thing. See below.

When you run a ton of peripherals with your Mac, how do keep it all connected and running smoothly? Well, today’s featured M4 Pro Mac mini user drives a pair of 4K external displays, runs a power hub and input devices, and keeps backups on portable storage devices. And they keep it connected without a hitch using the well-regarded CalDigit Thunderbolt 4 hub named “Element.”

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.

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.

Today’s featured M4 Pro Mac mini user drives a pair of 4K external displays with the tiny new powerhouse desktop. And they keep an array of budget peripherals, including data and power hubs and solid input devices. And in addition, for physical backup, they like portable storage solutions in addition to cloud backup — in this case, fairly affordable hard drives from Samsung and La Cie (and the Samsung is deeply discounted right now — see below).

A university student calling themselves a “broke Harvard undergrad” while showing off a computer setup loaded with older and newer Apple hardware is bound to take some ribbing from social media on various levels. But today’s data-science number-crunching setup makes impressive and thrifty use of newer and older gear, including a 2023 M3 MacBook Pro, a 2013 “trash can” Mac Pro and a 2018 Intel MacBook Pro, plus a 2021 iPad Pro and a PlayStation 5 console.

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.

While I’ve focused on my own workstation just a few times in several years of handling Cult of Mac setups coverage, it’s hard to resist an opportunity to extoll the virtues of my favorite over-ear headphones while they’re deeply discounted for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. I added the headphones to my workstation recently, and right now you can pick up Beats Studio Pro at Best Buy for $159.99. That’s about $10 less than the discount I nabbed on Amazon for the normally $350 cans (although you should not pay that full price because you usually don’t have to).

Update: This fantastic Black Friday deali s still in effect for Cyber Monday!

Today’s M4 Mac mini user was once devoted to MacBook Pro. And he still owns two of the laptops, for work and personal use, but he recently added a new M4 Pro Mac mini, and he absolutely loves it. He’s into gaming, so he added cool gaming peripherals like a mechanical keyboard and microphone from HyperX and a light-and-speedy mouse from Corsair. Check them out, along with all the rest of the setup’s gear, below.