With all the computer setups showcased on social media, it takes something special to earn the description “dream setup.” Today’s featured Mac Studio Ultra and M2 Max MacBook Pro setup, which hails from Australia, could be a contender.
Why? Well, when you combine two of Apple’s newest and most powerful computers with a Studio Display and put them in a beautifully laid out workstation with great cable management and premium audio, you’ve got a real ripsnorter (to put it like an Aussie might).
People who show off their computer setups often go for a clean, spare look without much, if any, clutter — from cables or anything else. But few have as clean and spacious a look as today’s featured MacBook Pro setup with two Studio Displays.
There are many ways of making a setup minimalistic without simply leaving out the crucial gear. In this case, it has a lot to do with a very cool desk with some interesting features.
Some of the best computer setups look a little boring at a glance. But that’s just because they include only essential gear and they keep it well lit and free of cable (and other) clutter.
Today’s featured M1 MacBook Air setup is a good example. And that’s not to say it’s plain or overly simple. You can see that in the well-thought-out gear list below, which features 19 items.
Leave it to a digital product designer to work their magic in a tastefully pristine workstation with an absolute minimum of cable clutter. “Cable management gets a 10 out of 10,” one person said of today’s featured computer setup. And all that walnut wood doesn’t hurt, either.
But how did they manage to tame the cable monster?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Redditor MacSources, aka Nicholas Calderone, is a photographer, writer, editor and co-founder of MacSources.com. He runs a Mac mini at the center of his formidable dual-monitor computer setup. The workstation’s audio and storage components seem particularly epic.
Basking Ridge, New Jersey-based Edward Wang, Ph.D., is an executive director with Quest Diagnostics. He took some serious time and effort making his setup a clean and powerful tool for health care work and audiovisual play. Once he diagnosed and treated a cable-management malady stemming from several separate pieces of computer and audio equipment, his setup delighted him.
