Mia, a software developer from Detroit who writes mobile apps, got in touch with Cult of Mac recently to share her MacBook Pro-driven, dual-display workstation.
“I love your setup articles but sometimes they make me feel bad about myself,” she said.
A cool aspect of both Mac minis and the newer Mac Studio are the platform-like USB-C hubs festooned with ports and added storage capacity that third parties have designed for them to sit on. Satechi was quick out of the gate with one for the mini, but there are other such cleverly designed, space-saving hubs on the market. And many of them also fit the Studio.
Today’s featured setup boasts a powerful new Mac Studio perched on a Qwiizlab hub as it drives an LG UltraWide display, among other gear.
Recently we wrote about a PC gamer converting to the Apple ecosystem, happily, with an M1 MacBook Pro-based setup. Now we have a lucky recipient of not one but two recently shipped Studio Displays, freshly arrived to replace a pair of gaming monitors.
There are two types of people in the world. There’s the person who happily tosses a bunch of mismatched gear on a desk and calls it a setup. Then there’s the person with properly placed objects, minimal-to-no cable clutter and careful color choices — down to the charging-pad-and-braided-cable level.
Today’s featured setup clearly belongs to the second type of person.
We love serious audio here at Setups Central. But is it possible for the audio gear in your computer setup to be too serious? For example, can your desktop speakers be too comically oversized, as if you’re making some sort of visual joke about your life being all about the music?
In today’s featured setup, a magnificent 32-inch Pro Display XDR actually manages to look puny in between two monstrously huge Yamaha powered studio monitors. And yet, believe it or not, they may not actually be too big.
Ever show off your painstakingly constructed computer setup only to have everybody race past the gear just to ogle what’s showing on the screen(s)? The desktop wallpaper.
It’s kind of like that with today’s featured setup, the brainchild of a graphic designer.
He put together the dual-monitor setup around a 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro with a lineup of nice touches. And he also made the neato race-car wallpaper that got most of the attention.
The old way of adjusting the brightness level on the Magic Keyboard for iPad stopped working. And good riddance. There’s a new, better way.
Changing the brightness level for the keys on the Apple Magic Keyboard for iPad used to be a hassle, but it’s now about as simple as one could wish. iPadOS 15.4 adds a control to the Control Center than makes this adjustment quick and easy.
Here’s how to set up and use the new feature.
We’ve written about storing a Mac mini in an upright rather than a flat position to save space. It’s OK to do if the machine’s intake and exhaust vents are not blocked. But what about using your Mac mini as a stand for a display, as in today’s featured computer setup?
It’s not necessarily quite as cut-and-dried as the upright mini question. Whether it’s totally fine or a little risky depends a little more on the specific Mac mini and the kind of monitor you use.
Ever had trouble getting your Mac to recognize third-party peripherals, like a keyboard and mouse? Today’s featured setup is built around a brand-new Mac Studio mounted neatly on a pegboard behind a Samsung super ultra-wide display. But the Apple desktop computer refused to pair with a Logitech keyboard and mouse, according to the owner.
He said he had to go and buy Apple’s Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse to establish working input devices. So what happened?
Along with the new Mac Studio desktop computer and Studio Display Apple rolled out on Tuesday, it launched swanky black-and-silver peripherals — Magic Keyboard, Magic Trackpad and Magic Mouse — that go well with the new gear.
They’re similar to options you can choose if you buy a pricey new Mac Pro. But now you can purchase them separately.
Do you have to pay a bit more than you would for the normal options sold a la carte? Yes. But of course you do.
Have you ever seen two big ol’ Apple Cinema Displays mounted vertically, in portrait mode, bookending an iMac? We didn’t think so. Or at least, it seems like a rare sight. But today’s featured setup has that nuevo-retro styling going on, big-time, and folks took notice.
After all, secondary displays in portrait mode seems to be all the rage lately, but not so much back in the glory days of Cinema Displays. Or were they?
There’s something special about old Apple gear. Maybe that’s why it comes up fairly frequently in Cult of Mac‘s Setups coverage. One of the most-beloved classics in Apple’s storied history of beloved products is the Cinema Display. Today’s featured setup sports not one but two 30-inch Cinema Displays, the big stunners Steve Jobs introduced to an absolutely dazzled Worldwide Developers Conference audience in 2004.
So, naturally, questions came up about how to best use them with a newer Mac.
When you spend a third or more of your waking hours all but chained to a computer setup, you might as well make it a pleasant place to spend time. That’s what most of Cult of Mac‘s Setups coverage is all about, really — glorifying both the high-tech performance and the stylish comfort that ease your enslavement to whatever it is you do with tech.
Today’s 14-inch M1 Pro MacBook Pro-based featured setup shows a “before and after” transition. Musician and Salesforce consultant Jon Young said a revamp of his wife’s “nicer and more spacious” work area inspired his changes. “Mine just has more gadgets lol,” he said.
On Fridays it’s fun to focus on computer setups with entertaining features whenever possible. Sometimes it’s seriously vintage gear. Or it could be wacky decor. Once in a while, an exotic location pops up. Today we found one where a brand new M1 Pro MacBook meets a kooky crew of bobbleheads and other figures under a really over-the-top camera rig used as a webcam.
Some computer setups knock your socks off with lighting. It can be tasteful, warm, welcoming and conducive to work without eye strain. It can be bright, inventive and dazzling, like fantastic decorations. Or, as in today’s MacBook Pro-based featured setup, it can be either one of those, depending on both choice of settings and time of day.
The light show in today’s workstation derives from two sources, or schemes. One involves two very different table lamps. The other involves LED light strips.
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?
If your computer setup had three screens, including a MacBook Pro, an iPad and a 32-inch external monitor, would you make the iPad the center screen? Would you put your screened devices on stands, or leave them at or near table level? Today’s setup saw a transition that might actually save its owner from years of physical therapy.
“This is what neck pain would look like if it were a setup,” someone said about the “before” photo, above.
While there are a lot of generic iPad cases, the new BookBook Cover from Twelve South is completely eye opening. It turns an iPad and keyboard into a leather-bound book. While making the tablet look medieval, it’s also protecting the valuable computer inside from bumps and blows.
Unlike the standard BookBook Case for iPad, this version has room to hold an Apple Magic Keyboard.
Gamer and 3D animator Jazinity said she’d been a Windows user for most of her life before M1 Macs caught her eye and she made a nearly wholesale switch, going from a tri-display PC gaming station to a “cozy but productive” M1 MacBook Air situation.
The refurbished Furby in the center of the photo may or may not have been in the previous computer setup, but not much else. She has another Furby at her desk at the office, though she’s working at home for the time being, like many people these days.
Blogger Basic Apple Guy, whom we’ll call BAG, has been an Apple fan since high school shop class, when he convinced the teacher that making an iMovie on the teacher’s iMac G3 should fit into the curriculum. Now, decades later, BAG’s passion lives on. It showed when he recently shared one of his computer setups, the “kitchen edition.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
