I am Brian Stucki. I live in Las Vegas with my wife and 2.6 kids. (We’re due in April with our first girl.) I’m a fan of history, travel and golf. Though, I’m so bad that my golf game probably deserves to be history. Most of my stuff is located at BrianStucki.com and I’m @BrianStucki.

I enjoy starting new projects, building them out, and then selling them for funds to invest in something else. My first time was my golf club cleaning business when I was 11. I had 6 customers that would golf then leave their clubs with me to clean up and have ready for them. More recently it’s been blogs about software, TV show fansites, and even a successful iPad app. The projects have all been great reasons to learn new technology and improve business acumen.

I own Macminicolo, which is my main work focus. We’re turning 7 years old soon. When we first introduced the company, there was quite a bit of doubt (Hi, slashdot friends) but now thousands of minis later, the little machines roll on more powerful than ever.

What is your current setup?

I work from my home office nearly all of the time. I have other locations to be “more business official” but the truth is that seeing my wife and kids often is really important to me. In my home, my office is at the end of a long hall where I can close the door and have quiet. (There is usually James Taylor playing to keep me focused.) However, I’ll regularly step away from the desk to play some catch or color the super-hero of the day. I think this balance is critical.

When I’m in my office, I’m working on a black-brown Galant Desk from Ikea. By design, there is a lot of desk space, and it’s nearly always clean. I really, really struggle to think when surrounded by clutter.

For office hardware, I use a Mid-2011 27″ iMac with 16GB of RAM and a 2TB SATA Drive+256GB SSD combo. Sitting beside the iMac is a 27″ Cinema Display, an iPad 2 16GB+3G, (AT&T because coverage is quite good in Las Vegas). I use an iPhone 4S (AT&T). I use an Apple Wireless Keyboard, An Apple Magic Mouse, and have a Magic Trackpad stuffed in my drawer that I used for twenty minutes and haven’t touched since. I use an Airport Extreme to spray wireless throughout the house. I back up to a media Mac mini that’s hard wired to the router, making up one-third of my tri-approach to backups.

For the Macminicolo data center, it’s minis, minis and more minis. Within the next month, there will be one thousand operating Mac minis in the data center. We have some minis that have been here since day one serving for seven continuous years. (1.25 G4 with 256MB of RAM and a 40GB hard drive). And of course, the new i5/i7 machines have been very popular. (1.5TB disk space, 16GB of RAM.)

While in the data center, I use a Mid-2011 MacBook Air. It’s the base version with 1.6 GHz Intel Core i5 processor and 2GB of RAM.

Two non-Apple hardware items that I use all the time for work and couldn’t function without are a ScanSnap S1500M and a base Kindle. I document all of my travel in the Field Notes County Fair Box Set of all 50 States and keep a good supply of my favorite pen.

Why this rig?

iMac

I love the HDD/SSD combo. Nearly all of my everyday stuff is on the SSD (Mail, Apps, iPhoto, etc.) and then I symlink to the HDD for the large data items (iTunes music, iMovie footage, software disk images.) But the best use of the HDD is a nightly place to clone the SSD boot drive without having to have a hard drive plugged into the back of the iMac. It keeps things clean, and keeps me with a bootable backup.

I purchased the 27″ iMac and 27″ Cinema Display because I think any cost in desktop space is proportional to increase in productivity. The iMac screen is showing whatever I’m working on right now. On the Cinema Display, I keep my staple apps open and viewable (i.e. Mail, Twitter for Mac, iChat Buddy list, etc.). Easy to view, quick to reply with customers, etc.

iPad 2

If I am sitting at my desk, the iPad is usually streaming that day’s Red Sox game. When I have a full desktop at my fingertips, I prefer to use it. But if I’m in a meeting the iPad is my main tool. It lets me control Mac minis in the data center, and keep up with all news and messages. I intended to tether my iPad to my iPhone when on the road but that hasn’t happened. It turns out that I still have not disabled the 3G on the iPad itself. It is too convenient to have it always on.

iPhone 4S

If I am on the move or traveling, my iPhone is nearly always the only technology I have on me. I use to bring around a laptop, and then the iPad, but I later realized that the iPhone can hold me over for an extended period of time. I had an iPhone moment the other day. As I pulled into a parking spot at the store, I was: (1) streaming music to my car via bluetooth; (2) controlling a Mac mini in the data center with Screen Sharing; (3) seeing Twitter notifications drop down; and, (4) beaming my location to my wife (via find my friends) as we were meeting at the nearby restaurant. From a phone. Seriously.

MacBook Air

I purchased this laptop for use in the data center. I wondered if the 11-inch screen might be too small but that has proven inaccurate. With Mission Control, full-screen apps, screen sharing, and an incredible battery life, it has been a perfect tool.

Mac mini

I do not think it is possible to list all the activities that the Mac minis are being used for in the data center. We have popular iOS developers hosting here (Bjango.com), numerous Apple employees (who shall remain without name unless they so choose), quite a few Filemaker resellers and small businesses/tinkerers in 47 different countries around the world.

When I say the Mac mini is a great server, I practice what I preach. Our main site, our support site, and our stats/monitoring all run on Mac minis here. I also have some other services running on minis that you may have used in the past Fireballed.org (a mirror for DaringFireball.net), DayliteHosting.com, and our lesser known iPadcolo.net.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

I suppose it’s easiest to break this up by product line.

Personal Mac

• Lion: All my machines are using the latest Lion operating system. I still hear of hesitation to upgrade, but I think it’s been quite stable.

• Day One: I have kept a journal for 12 years. I am nearing 5000 personal entries spread across paper, books, and applications. It is an absolute treasure to look back on so many important moments of my life. Recently I have moved to Day One and I have found it incredibly well done. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to start a journal.

• Money: Of all the money apps on Mac and iOS I think this one is best designed across the board. It is clean, and works well. It falls short when it comes to syncing a high number of entries, but they are introducing iCloud for Mac/iOS soon and that will be great.

• 1Password: Such a time saver when one tries every new online service and network and has to keep the credentials straight. A little part of me cringes every time a Mac user hand types a password into a site. I also love that it will auto-populate as you log into sites for the first time.

• Twitter for Mac: I think Twitter does well with their official Mac client. My only wish is that you could have a separate window for each Twitter account.

• Smultron: My favorite text editor. It was free for a long time, but even at its new price , I think it is worth it.

• SuperDuper!: I mentioned earlier that I backup my SSD to my internal HDD. Once a week, I clone the 2TB hard drive to an external drive with this app, then take that down to the data center for safe storage. All these years and SuperDuper has never failed me on a bootable backup.

• Caffeine for Mac I’m not a coffee drinker (surprisingly Shawn still calls me a friend) so this app is nearly all of the caffeine in my life. It’s a Menu bar item that prevents your Mac from going to sleep or screen saver. If I’m doing other work at my desk and just keeping an eye on the Mac, this prevents the constant mouse jiggle.

iOS Devices

• Reeder: Sometimes RSS feeds can be a time drain, but I get a lot of new ideas from reading the intelligent posts of others. Reeder makes it easy. The ability to send to Instapaper and other services is second to none.

• Tweetbot: The great thing about this app is the design of every little detail. Swipe left to see replies. Tap and hold the icon for options. So intelligent.

• Capture: I believe it was Shawn that pointed me to Capture. Start the app and you are recording video right away. Great for dads.

• Golfshot: Do not waste your time buying and testing other golf apps. Even at the higher price, this one is the best. GPS is accurate. Scoring is thorough. I consider this an essential work app. Everyone needs a place they can clear their mind to think, and the golf course is my place. (I had a roommate in college who thought best in the shower. iPhones are not much use in there.) If I’m struggling with an issue or brainstorming a new business idea,I am usually hitting golf balls somewhere.

• Find my Friends: So often, people assume the worst when you and your spouse use this app to keep track of each other. That is too bad. I have complete trust in my wife, and she in me. Whether she is driving home from vacation, or I am waiting for them to meet me at Grandma’s, this app helps us “communicate” without having to distract while driving.

  I do wish that you could set a recurring “friend” in the app. In other words, all the MMC staff would share location during business hours on weekdays, but not other times. That’d be very convenient.

Macminicolo

• Trackthepack: There are a lot of Mac minis flowing in and out of Las Vegas. This iOS and web app has proven perfect to watch them. I like that you can forward shipment emails to the site and it will automatically add it to your account. (And people wonder how we receive a Mac mini and then have it installed within an hour or two. This app is our secret.)

• iTeleport: I try all the VNC/Screen Sharing apps in the app store. There are many good ones, and some are better designed, but this one has proven most reliable for me.

• Lithium: We use lithium to monitor all bandwidth and traffic on the Macminicolo network. The Lithium Core runs on a Mac mini in the data center and there are Mac/iOS apps to keep an eye on things from afar.

• Boxcar: If there is an issue in the data center, we know about it right away thanks to this app. Sends all sorts of notifications. In a more common (and more fun) occurrence, each time a new customer signs up we get a “Cha-ching” notification. It is like my personal Pavlov experiment.

• Backpack: We coordinate all Macminicolo happenings with Backpack. I will try every new todo application to run the company, but always seem to come back to this great product. It is a shame that no great iOS clients are available for it.

• GoSquared: They have a great dashboard (and a nice free plan) to keep an eye on where your traffic is coming from and going.

• Pastebot: Even after all these years, I still prefer the sales emails to come straight to me. I enjoy that interaction. I like to be there when they start getting ideas for their new mini servers. However, there are definitely some questions that I have received over and over. Pastebot is invaluable to give good thorough answers quickly.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

There is no doubt some overlap in my Apple products. I have reasons for picking each (which I’ve tried to list) but it’s clear I could do without one or two of them. The truth is, I don’t want to. I’m not wealthy, but technology is the one place I’m comfortable to splurge a little with money. My shoes are usually a couple years old, I’ve worn the same brand/style of clothes for 20 years, I’m fine with grilled cheese and a pickle for dinner. Like a lot of you, it doesn’t take many possessions to keep me going. But, I do like cutting edge technology, and I like learning what it can do.

So ideal? I suppose it’s whatever is coming next. And I’ll use it while wearing my old clothes and eating my sandwich dinner.

More Sweet Setups

Brian’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

My name is Andrew Pepperrell, and I created Alfred, a productivity and launcher app for OS X. I live and work near Cambridge in the UK.

Previously, I was a Enterprise Java software engineer and believe it or not, Alfred was the first Objective C / Cocoa project I worked on — primarily to learn something new. Luckily, my foundation in enterprise development helped me nail the architecture and performance of Alfred from the word go. Developing for Mac very quickly became a passion of mine and I have been lucky enough to jump to full-time Mac development around 6 months ago.

In my spare time I love models and radio-controlled stuff, spending time fiddling with a few Tamiya cars which are either working really really well or in complete pieces being rebuilt. I also have a radio-controlled helicopter and plane but generally prefer cars as they crash much less catastrophically.

I am on Twitter as @preppeller and look after the Alfred users at @alfredapp.

What is your current setup?

I currently run a 24″ iMac 2.93 Ghz Core 2 Duo running Snow Leopard as my main development machine with 8GB RAM, which seems essential since Xcode 4 and Safari 5 seem to consume most of this during the course of the day. I have a 20″ Apple Cinema Display attached to the iMac, a wireless Mac keyboard and Magic Mouse plus some Creative GigaWorks T3 speakers which sound much larger than they look! I find the stock iMac too tall for comfort, so have it on an Ergotron MX arm which allows me to lower the iMac screen to a very comfortable height.

I also have a MacBook Air 2.13 Ghz Core 2 Duo 256GB SSD with 4GB RAM running Lion. I should have really waited for the i5 but I am still surprised how incredibly snappy the Air is. Battery life and portability are pretty incredible too.

For Alfred’s build server, I have a Mac Mini (Server) with 2 internal 500GB drives in mirrored RAID running Lion. This is protected by some Mr. Potato Heads which I have found significantly more effective than a firewall.

It goes without saying that I also have an iPad 2 and iPhone 4S.

Why this rig?

For a while, I developed primarily on a Black MacBook and while I loved it, the difference when moving to a proper desktop machine with a 24″ screen was amazing. Xcode 4 uses a huge amount of screen real estate, especially with the built-in Interface Builder. I use the external 20″ Cinema Display for everything other than Xcode. I am also really used to the Cinema Display’s colour balance so it helps me know what to expect when deploying anything which isn’t black or white.

The MacBook Air allows me to work on the go and, as everything I do is version controlled, my development environment is comfortably mirrored between the two machines. I have found it to be so light that on one occasion, I left the house thinking that I had it in my bag but realized later I had left it at home — d’oh!

The build server could be seen as unnecessary as I could deploy from my iMac, however I feel I have a responsibility to Alfred’s users to build and deploy something that I can happily know is free from any potential nasties. As such, the Mac Mini server has absolutely nothing installed on it other than what is necessary to build and deploy Alfred, and is only used for this purpose.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

On Mac:

• Xcode is the main piece of software I use, and use it every single day… Naturally I use this to develop Alfred and a few other secret projects I am currently working on.

• Fireworks CS5 for screen mockups and general design work. I love the vector as bitmap non-destructive workflow which feels very natural to me. I don’t like how sluggish it feels compared to more native Mac apps.

• Pixelmator for photo editing, however I am really looking forward to the vector tools in Pixelmator 2 and part of me hopes this will allow it to replace Fireworks CS5.

• ColorSnapper for quick and easy colour capture and copy colours with a hotkey – perfect for my workflow.

• Coda for web development. Oddly, before I downloaded ColorSnapper I would open Coda just to access the OS X colour picker panel — weird workflow.

• TextMate for quick and dirty text and code editing… sometimes vi too depending on where my fingers lead me.

• Twitter for Mac… no need to explain this one, I spend way too much time watching the Alfred stream.

• Safari for the majority of my surfing. However, I am trying to go “Flash free” so sometimes I have to revert to Chrome if I am watching YouTube.

• Evernote because it’s like my secondary brain.

On iOS:

• Reeder as it’s the nicest way I have found to read my RSS feeds.

• Calcbot for a calculator as the iPad doesn’t have one. Also use this on my iPhone for consistency.

• Evernote because I generally need to carry my secondary brain around with me.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

For starters, using a Mac gives me the reliability I couldn’t dream of during my past of using Windows machines… Being a Mac developer means I naturally have to use Mac, so this is definitely a good thing. Having my main iMac display dedicated to Xcode alone allows me focus much more easily.

Having a tidy desk and a distant view outside my window along with BassDrive internet radio playing really helps me remain creative during the day.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

I would quite like a bit more space in my office… I work from home and therefore am confined to the smallest back bedroom for my permanent office. A larger room for my office would allow me to have all of my radio controlled hobby stuff permanently set up for working on. I could also fit my Yamaha CP300 stage piano in too, which would remind me to practice more.

From a technical point of view, I would love a faster main machine, however, I am reluctant to upgrade at the moment as the current iMacs and Mac Pros all feel a bit mid-to-end cycle… Ideally I would love a 27″ iMac 8 core without a chin (looking more like the current Cinema Displays) and a 15″ MacBook Air… Did you hear me Apple?? I would like those… asap! chop chop.

More Sweet Setups

Andrew’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

I’m Duncan Davidson and I am a photographer, writer, and recovering software developer. Possibly my most recognizable affiliation is as the main stage photographer for TED. I’ve been exploring video and learning all I can, including bridging between stills and motion with a lot of time-lapse work, such as my recent Tribute in Light project. Finally, I’m a partner in Luma Labs which makes some awesome camera slings.

What is your current setup?

My desktop is an eight-core, early-2008 Mac Pro with 14GB of RAM, an upgraded ATI 4870 video card, an SSD boot drive in the bottom DVD drive bay, and 24TB of online storage across several arrays, both internal and external.

My primary display is a late-2008 24″ LED Cinema display. Tunes are pumped out through a set of old school USB Harman Kardon SoundSticks. Input is handed using an Apple Bluetooth Keyboard and Magic Trackpad and a Wacom Intous 4 tablet. For voice input, I use an Audio Technica AT2050 microphone hooked up to an Apogee One, and I monitor on a pair of Audio Technica ATH-M40fs headphones.

Document scanning is handed with a Fujitsu SnapScan. Photographs are scanned with an Epson v500 flatbed scanner. Most of my print needs are handled by an Epson 3880 printer, but for bigger jobs I also have a 24″ HP Z3200.

My primary laptop unless I’m in the throes of heavy photo or video work is a mid-2011, 13″ MacBook Air with 4GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. I went with the i5 instead of the i7 in the hope of getting the maximum battery life possible.

My secondary laptop which I pull out when I need to use FireWire drives on the road or when I know that the GPU will come in handy is a late-2008, 15″ MacBook Pro that I’ve upgraded to 4GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. This laptop is almost effectively retired, but not quite.

An iPhone 4 keeps me connected most of the time. A first generation iPad is what you’ll find me using on the couch or in seat 6A when I’m traveling.

Why this rig?

A desktop-plus-portable strategy is the only one that can satisfy my need for power, speed, and storage at home while also keeping things as light as possible for when I’m traveling fast. If I could go with a simpler setup, I would in a heartbeat. So far, however, the trend has been that my storage needs are ramping up quickly over time and dealing with over a TB a year of new data is the big challenge.

On the other hand, nothing beats being able to throw my MacBook Air and a Fuji X100 into a small bag and head out the door for a day or a weekend.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

I manage my photographs using a combination of Aperture, Lightroom and Bridge. Aperture is taking over my primary catalog needs from Lightroom. I use Bridge when I need to scour through the archives of photographs that aren’t in my active catalog.

When I need more in the way of photo editing tools than I get from Aperture, I use Photoshop. When I need less, I use Acorn and sometimes even Preview.

For video, I use Final Cut Pro X and love it. I also use Compressor and After Effects for various tasks, including stitching together still frames into video clips.

When I’m in code mode, I use BBEdit or Xcode depending on the task at hand. For straight ahead writing—including all of my blog entries as well as the writing that currently isn’t seeing the light of day—I’ve become a huge fan of iA Writer.

To get things done, I use OmniFocus. At least I try. Sometimes I do better than others. Keeping all of my non-media data in sync between machines in handled by Dropbox. 1Password is essential for passwords. Mail, iCal, Safari, Numbers, and Pages are all open on my computer right now.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

For the most part, it lets me do what I need to do in the kinds of environments I like to be in.

At home, I’ve arranged my desk so that when I’m working on my desktop, I can look up across my living room and out my huge living room windows across downtown Portland. Watching the weather go by is therapeutic to me. The MacBook Air lets me work in cafés near home and as well as anywhere in the world. It’s even useful for the kinds of light photo editing I do on the road.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

I’m pretty close to my ideal right now. If I could change anything, I’d have a view of midtown Manhattan out my window from 25 floors up and I’d have a 15″ MacBook Pro that wasn’t much heavier than my current Air but which did have a GPU. The former is a pipe dream right now. The latter might happen any month now. Hopefully.

I used to use two screens on my desktop, and I might consider do so again. However, I’ve found that using one screen increases my ability to glance up and look outside my window. A second screen cuts that down quite a bit. As well, I’ve discovered that parking my laptop on one side lets me keep various websites or other reference material in easy view while I work on the desktop.

Finally, a closer-to-ideal setup would include a data solution for my media files that was a bit less maintenance intensive. I think the best I’ll be able to do in the near future is consolidate my various hard drive arrays into two Promise Thunderbolt R6 arrays when I upgrade my desktop machine. That jump will probably happen sometime in the next six months.

More Sweet Setups

Duncan’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

I am a freelance designer, hobbyist photographer and musician. I am also the designer behind many ads found on the Fusion Ad Network. Recently I joined the team behind QuickCal as the app’s UI designer.

What is your current setup?

I’m using a 15″ Unibody MacBook Pro I bought in 2009, with a 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB of Ram, and the 500GB 7200RPM HD. At home, the Macbook Pro is hooked up to the 27″ Apple Cinema Display. On your recommendation, I recently purchased the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 3G 115GB SSD. I’ve set up the SSD as my boot drive and use the HDD as my media/working files drive.

I’m using the short wireless Apple Keyboard for typing and the Magic Trackpad for trackpadding. I’ve tried numerous mice over the years, from the Mighty Mouse to the Magic Mouse and even a Logitech MX Revolution. The Magic Trackpad is the first input device that just feels right. For Wi-Fi and Time Machine I use the Apple Time Capsule.

I listen to music through an old Kenmore receiver I bought from a friend for $50 over 5 years ago. Listening to music through headphones for extended periods of time never felt right to me.

I take pictures with a Nikon D90 with a 50mm prime lens. My lighting setup currently consists of an Opus OPL-H250 strobe with a 48″ reflective umbrella, as well as a newly-purchased Nikon SB-600. I trigger my lights remotely using two PocketWizard Plus II transceivers.

Lastly, I can’t write about what I create without mentioning my music setup. I own two acoustic guitars: an old Cort acoustic I bought nearly 9 years ago and a Takamine Steve Wariner Limited Edition a friend gave me as a gift. For my Boss Rebel gig, I go between my white Fender Stratocaster and a custom Telecaster by “Ed’s Guitars”, both of which were purchased from Jonathan Steingard of Hawk Nelson. The signal is sent through my pedal board, consisting of the following pedals:

• Ernie Ball Junior Volume Pedal
• Boss TU-2 Tuner
• Line 6 DL-4 Delay Modeler
• Boss OD-3 Overdrive
• Boss LS-2 Line Selector

The signal goes through the pedals to my Vox AC30CC. I use the LS-2 Line Selector to switch between the clean and dirty channels and the OD-3 Overdrive to add a little compression/crunch for solos.

Pat Dryburgh. Photo credit, Edward Platero.

Why are you using this setup?

I purchased my first Mac while working at a church. When I started, I was given an old Toshiba laptop that didn’t have enough power to run PowerPoint (in fact, it had been discarded by the children’s ministry for being so terrible). About 3 months into my time there, I bought the 13″ white MacBook and instantly fell in love with the Mac ecosystem.

When I began working in design the MacBook was adequate, but surely not exceptional. I saved up and bought the 15″ Unibody MacBook Pro which was a huge leap forward.

The main reason I stick with the Mac setup is its ease of use and the quality of the software. Software from large companies like Apple and Adobe perform so well on the Mac, and obviously the Mac community boasts some of the best indie developers in the world.

What software do you use on a daily basis, and for what do you use it?

I absolutely love the Mac developer community and use a ton of different apps to make my work and play better.

Design work happens in Adobe’s Creative Suite. Development happens in Coda, though I have been flirting with both TextMate and BBEdit over the last month. Photo editing happens in Adobe Lightroom, which is the only Adobe product I have ever loved.

I write in nvALT, a fork of the brilliant Notational Velocity. This syncs with Simplenote on my iPad and iPhone. I also keep all of my notes as .txt files in a Dropbox folder. Dropbox is also where all of my work files live.

Tasks and projects are managed with Things. I’m still waiting for over-the-air sync.

I work with a great team of guys to develop an app called QuickCal, which lets you enter events and to-dos into your calendar with plain English, and then it gets out of your way so you can get back to work. The version I am working on will be out soon, but you are more than welcome to buy the current version now and receive the next version as a free upgrade.

I use Quicksilver to launch apps and trigger keyboard shortcuts. TextExpander expands common snippets of text. Droplr lets me share screenshots, images and bits of text with friends easily. Pastebot is an incredibly easy way to share text between my Mac and iPhone. Caffeine keeps my monitor awake when I’m watching video. Seamless helps me keep my musical groove when I leave my desk. Take Five pauses my music for a few minutes if I need to take a quick call. 1Password keeps track of my passwords and credit card info securely. RSS feeds are read in NetNewsWire.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

OS X strikes the perfect balance between giving you what you need to do your work, while also getting out of your way if you want to go a different route. The developer community that has formed around this platform is second to none and I owe much of my gratitude to them.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

Other than anticipating what the next 15″ MacBook Pro will look like, I’m pretty happy with my current setup. Oh, maybe a Gibson ES-137.

More Sweet Setups

Pat’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

I am Federico Viticci, editor in chief of MacStories. I started MacStories in April 2009, and it’s become a place where I (and my team) can write about all things Apple including news, reviews, and discussion about Apple products. I also tweet as @viticci.

What is your current setup?

I switch back and forth between my office, and my “home office”.

Back home, I have a 21.5-inch mid-2010 iMac with 4 GB of RAM, and 3.06 GHz Core i3 processor. I’m not a fan of glossy screens, but I haven’t found the lack of matte finish on my desktop displays a huge annoyance as many others on the web would tell you. To back up my iMac, I use a combination of Time Machine and SuperDuper through a partitioned 1 TB Western Digital external drive. I have a simple white desk I bought from IKEA years ago (sorry, can’t remember its name), which makes for a good surface to host an additional Just Mobile Xtand and, occasionally, my Jawbone Jambox. My home network is powered by a terrible modem provided by Telecom Italia, which, fortunately, is slightly improved thanks to Apple’s AirPort Express. The AirPort Express used to be connected to some old external speakers to use with AirPlay and Airfoil, but last week I removed the speakers altogether as I’m planning on buying new ones soon.

The real office is where I spend most of time writing for MacStories. I’ve got a mid-2011 13.3-inch MacBook Air in there, connected to an AirPort Extreme which shares a single IP address from (another) terrible modem, this time from Fastweb. The AirPort Extreme (4th generation, not the latest one) allows for external disks, so I’ve taken advantage of such functionality to connect a 750 GB Western Digital drive for wireless Time Machine backups, and media archiving. I keep all my music, movies, TV shows and photos on that drive. Because the MacBook Air is so portable, I often find myself bringing it home for those times I don’t want to use an iMac (usually when I want to focus on writing a long piece — the Air keeps me more focused on the task). The Jambox travels daily from my home office to the “real” office, too.

Last, my iOS setup consists of an iPhone 4, and iPad 2. I like to keep my iPhone 4 “naked” with no case, whilst the iPad is protected (and propped up) by a polyurethane gray Smart Cover. I use my iPhone as, well, a phone and Internet communicator most of the time, whereas my iPad is mainly a writing and reading device. My girlfriend and I still prefer watching movies on my MacBook Air or, if it’s a really good one, on my Apple TV 2nd-gen, which I also own. I couldn’t live without my daily music dose, and for that I rely on AKG’s K390NC in-ear earphones, Black Mamba version. I like AKG’s noise canceling functionality, and the fact that these earbuds come with an iPhone-compatible mic and music controller also helps. To charge my iPhone, I use a first-generation Apple Dock (in which the iPhone 4 fits nicely) or the Powermat, according to my mood.

Why this rig?

Having to travel back and forth between my office and home, I needed two different setups. For as much as it’s lightweight and extremely portable, I don’t want to carry the MacBook Air with me all the time, nor do I want to see it on the driver’s seat every day. And because my workflow is heavily cloud-based, I can effortlessly switch between my two machines without losing the documents and data I work with. As iCloud approaches, keeping multiple devices in sync all the time is making more sense than ever.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

With my job, I test and fiddle with too many apps, so I’ll mention the ones that I really couldn’t work without.

• Dropbox keeps my files, work documents, app libraries and preferences in sync everywhere.
• Clipmenu is a superb addition to the Mac’s system clipboard that I’ve been using since 2008 on a daily basis.
• Evernote: is my digital drawer. I store notes, thoughts, links, images, PDF…everything inside the app, and its recent updates both on iOS and OS X made note-taking incredibly better.
• OmniFocus for task management. I’ve tried almost every “serious” (or you could say, “popular”) GTD-oriented application out there, but I keep coming back to the Omni Group. You just can’t beat it.
• OmniOutliner for jotting down ideas, structure my thoughts, and track expenses. Combined with DropDAV and Captio (which I use to quickly email expenses to myself on the go), it’s become a must have in my dock.
• Text Edit and Byword: I write in plain text using Apple’s default app, and proofread / check Markdown in Byword. Plain text files are stored in Dropbox, and accessed from my iPad and iPhone using Notely — again, I’ve tried many “writing apps”, but Notely impressed me for its reliability and customizable keyboard. This combination of tools is used for MacStories articles, not the stuff I keep in Evernote.
• Spotify lets me listen to music on my Mac and iPhone. I’m trying Rdio this week, but I don’t think I’ll switch.
• Google Chrome Canary is my default browser. I like Chrome better than Safari as it uses less memory, it’s got terrific support for extensions, pinned tabs, and free Google sync. The Canary build gives me early access to features I’d otherwise have to wait months for.
• Day One is a new entry, but I’ve fallen in love with it. I’ve never kept a daily journal, and Day One changed that.
• CloudApp to share images, links and files with my Twitter followers or co-workers.
• 1Password to securely store logins, credit card information and other private notes. I use AgileBits’ app on my Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
• TextExpander for text snippets and automatic expansion because, really, you’d be a fool not to use it if you type a lot every day.
• Reeder and Mr. Reader to catch up on RSS feeds on my Mac/iPhone and iPad, respectively. I like Mr. Reader because it’s fast and integrated with a lot of services, such as Evernote and Send2Mac.
• Instapaper is where I keep articles I want to read later. I’ve been using it every day for the past two years, and I can’t wait for version 4.0 to be released.

These are the apps I use more frequently than others. It’s the software I immediately re-install when I set up a new Mac, or iOS device.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

I write for a living, and Apple devices combined with the apps I use help me stay focused, connected and secure with a reliable environment I know I can trust. It’s not only about the “it just works” philosophy, it’s “it just works and lasts” for me. I haven’t looked back to Windows PCs since 2008, as switching to a Mac setup has been the best decision I’ve ever made — it got me where I am today.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

It wouldn’t be really different from today’s rig, except for a couple of additions. First, I really want new headphones. I’m torn between Sony’s MDR7506 and Sennheiser’s PX 360 at the moment, but I guess I’ll go with Sennheiser as the brand has served me well over the years. As I said above I also need new external speakers, and the M-Audio Studiophile AV40 look like a good solution. Thunderbolt was a big factor in choosing this year’s MacBook Air model, and I look forward to having a high-speed, relatively affordable external Thunderbolt drive soon (the current offerings are just too expensive and “pro” for me). My last summer vacation taught me that when you work with iOS devices 24/7 battery is never enough, so I’ll buy a JustMobile Gum Plus backup battery soon.

Other than these “accessories”, I’m very happy with my Mac setup.

More Sweet Setups

Federico’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

I’m Garrett Murray. I’m the Founder and Creative Director of Karbon, where we design & build awesome, award-winning iOS applications. We’ve worked with Google, Yelp, Condé Nast and ING Direct, among others.

I’m also an actor and an award-winning filmmaker. You may remember me from Forever’s Not So Long or Maniacal Rage TV.

What is your current setup?

My primary machine is a 2011 Thunderbolt 27-inch iMac with 16GB of RAM and the SSD+HDD option (250GB/1TB respectively). It’s the best computer I’ve ever owned — it has only one cable, it’s beautiful, and most importantly, it’s amazingly, mind-blowingly fast. I use the standard peripheral fare (Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, Wireless Keyboard), and I play music at my desk through Bowers & Wilkins MM-1 speakers. Everything rests on a Herman Miller Airia desk and I sit in a Herman Miller Mirra chair. When not at my desk, I use a 13-inch MacBook Air.

In the office I’ve got a nice comfortable couch (that folds down to double as sleeping room for guests), dimmable lighting via a floor lamp and a cube lamp (that also doubles as a table for the couch), as well as a book shelf with all my various testing iOS/other devices, a wireless printer, and my FW800 Drobo. My wife and I share this office space so we’ve also got her desk and Cinema Display, as well as a media center that holds a TV, video games, and a Mac Mini for TV and video streaming.

Why this rig?

I’ve struggled for years to decide whether I want a laptop or a desktop, and this year I finally came to the conclusion I need both. When I’m sitting at my desk, I want a fast, large-screened computer. The iMac is that and then some. But when I’m away from the office I want a light, capable machine. Thankfully, the MacBook Air suits those needs very well. These days I basically live off Dropbox, so sharing data between the two computers is trivial.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

• I design and build iOS applications using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, Xcode, Unretiner and Hues
• I edit photos and video using Adobe Lightroom 3 and Final Cut Pro X
• I develop web stuff using TextMate, CSSEdit and Transmit
• I manage Karbon with GitHub, Basecamp, Campfire, Billings, TestFlight, Fantastical and Dropbox
• I do everything else with Safari, Sparrow, Reeder, iA Writer, Alfred, Skype, CloudApp and Twitter for Mac

I recently reinstalled OS X from scratch and it presented a great opportunity to re-think what I installed. I kept the number of applications far lower than in the past and now my computer is less cluttered and faster.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

I spend most of my time these days designing interfaces, so it’s very important that my work space be clean, well-organized and functional. There’s nothing worse for me than trying to make a pixel-perfect UI with a mess in my peripheral vision. I’m a bit obsessive, so order helps me focus. Of course, comfort is also very important. I like to play music while I work, so good speakers are a must. And I tend to spend the last few hours of the day listening to NPR while catching up on email and project management. It’s nice to be able to dim the lights in the evening and relax while closing out the day or working late.

When we moved to LA, we decided to make the larger bedroom a shared office, so now my wife and I can work in the same space and interact more during the day. That in addition to Campfire chat with the Karbon guys makes working from home feel surprisingly social.

Being surrounded by vibrant colors, art and prints, comfortable furniture — it all helps fuel my creativity. Whenever I’m stuck, I can usually look around the office and find some color or design element that will inspire an idea.

And it doesn’t hurt that the iMac is a fantastic beast.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

Honestly, this is very close to my ideal setup and to how I imagine working for several years to come.

My pipe dream is an iMac with an external slot for an SSD drive and a MacBook Air with the same feature, so I could simply move one single drive between them easily. That would cut down on data duplication and make it effortless to work with either machine at any time. Thankfully, until that exists, there’s Dropbox and iCloud.

A 35-inch display might be nice, too. My eyes aren’t what they used to be.

More Sweet Setups

Garrett’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

I’m a web dork living in San Francisco, avoiding the sunlight and working for Flickr (primarily as the dude who breaks the site most often – sorry about that). As a side project I interview all sorts of people about their hardware and software three times a week.

I live near a park with three dogs, two kittens and one wife. I like coffee. A LOT. And you. But not you.

What is your current setup?

Quad-core i7 15 inch Macbook Pro. My last Pro had issues with the NVIDIA card, so this is a very very new beast. It’s pleasantly shiny and speedy and un-kernel-panic-y, which is nice. A Nikon D5000 and an iPhone. ATH-FC700A headphones (I am constantly destroying headphones somehow, but these are both my favourite and also not broken, so). A Time Capsule for backups/wifi, an Apple TV and a Mac Mini for streaming/watching stuff. That’s pretty much it; I like simple and minimal.

At home I sit on the floor with the laptop in my lap. I should probably think about a desk and a chair or whatever it is people use.

Why this rig?

Truth be told, if I wasn’t such a tragic, obsessive video gamer I’d totally gun for an Air, but I need a decent enough graphics card (obviously) so I stick with the Pros. I also hate the idea of having multiple computers and I tend to use this one for both fun and for work (my actual work one is a very very very old Pro with the silver keyboard that lives a quiet life in a drawer in my desk at FlickrHQ), so I stick with laptops.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

Some sort of text editor, mostly. I’m actually having a bit of a crisis of faith over which one to use, which sounds a lot lamer when I type it out. TextMate, usually, though it likes to choke to death on enormous projects (like, say, seven years worth of Flickr code) when regaining focus. I’ve tried neckbearding in vim, but the whole home row key thing really messes with my head (I type like a mutant, I guess). Currently I’m sticking with TextMate because I have a nice custom bundle set up for work, and I’m so used to it.

Chrome for browsing, because I love the omnibar. Adium for annoying people online in real-time, because it’s multi-protocol and works well. The official Twitter client nee Tweetie for annoying people in almost real-time. Colloquy for IRC. Boot Camp and Windows 7 and Steam for gaming. So much gaming. Aperture for storing my photos and punting ‘em to Flickr — it’s pretty good, though a little slow at times. I use the new Mail in Lion for work email, and it’s pretty awesome. iTerm 2 for nerding it up (mostly for committing code or publishing interviews).

Google Apps for email and calendar fun times, mostly accessed via the browser. And I use CalendarBar to — in theory — keep track of calendars via the menubar. I’m also using OfflineIMAP to slurp in all my mail locally, just in case. Not that I don’t trust Google, or anything. Yeah.

A tag-team combination of Time Machine and CrashPlan for backing up our laptops at home.

I keep my notes and to-do lists stored in SimpleNote, which is amazing – it’s syncing that actually, like, y’know, works. On the Mac I use Notational Velocity and on the iPhone I’m actually accessing it via Listary, which lets you interpret selected notes as to-do lists. I love it — I use it to keep track of who I’ve interviewed on The Setup and which groceries I’ve forgotten to buy yet again.

Oh, and LaunchBar for launching apps — I am so totally not taking advantage of all the power under that little popup bar, that’s for sure.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

Everything just works!

How would your ideal setup look and function?

This is pretty much it. Faster and faster Interweb pipes would be nice. I basically want less stuff, not more, so give me a laptop with power and Internets and some puppies and kittens and I’m golden.

More Sweet Setups

Daniel’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

My name is Thomas Brand, and I am technology enthusiast from Boston, Massachusetts. Before starting a career at Children’s Hospital I spent time behind the Genius Bar as a lead Mac Genius. These days I am known for my website Egg Freckles, which I write using an Apple Newton MessagePad. When I am not working or writing you can find me taking digital photographs, or preparing for the Boston Marathon.

What is your current setup?

I own a handful of Newtons, but the one I like the best is my MessagePad 130. I prefer its streamlined form factor over other MessagePads, and its capabilities fall somewhere in between the mint condition OMP I am scared to touch, and the two 2×00 series MessagePads I leave at home.

My MessagePad 130 has a 20MHz ARM processor, 2.5MBs of RAM, a telescoping stylus, and a 320×240 pressure-sensitive monochrome display with electroluminescence backlight. On its own, my MessagePad 130 weighs one pound, but for most writing assignments it is accompanied by a Newton Keyboard that attaches via the 130′s sole serial port.

I carry my MessagePad and keyboard separated in two large jacket pockets, or sandwiched together in the Newton keyboard case. When I am writing I position my MessagePad in a landscape orientation with the keyboard in front, and my wallet underneath to give my Newton the desired viewing angle. My MessagePad can only display ten lines of text at a time so I tend to write in small paragraphs correcting my prose with the stylus as I go.

When I am finished writing I return home and transfer the notes from my MessagePad 130 to a MessagePad 2100 via infrared. I use a 802.11b wireless card to email what I have written from the 2100 to whatever modern Mac I am using at the time.

Why this rig?

My MessagePad keeps me portable and on target the way no modern computer can. I can’t browse the internet with my MessagePad, I can’t use Twitter, IM, or iTunes. There are no preferences to get in the way of my writing. With my MessagePad I don’t need to be sitting at a desk to be productive. If a thought compels me I can pull out my MessagePad and jot down the idea for later. I have written whole blog posts while standing on the subway with my MessagePad.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

On my Newton I use very little additional software. Most of my articles are written in the included notes application. When I feel I need more structure there is always Newton Works, an extensible word processing application. On my MessagePad 2100 I use SimpleMail to email finished articles, and Screen Shooter to capture screen shots. Just like on my Mac I like to keep the working environment on my Newton as simple as possible. You will not find any any replacement dashboard or backdrop applications on my MessagePad.

Some of the applications I use to publish Egg Freckles on my Mac include:

• BBEdit for text editing and web page authoring.
• Transmit for FTP and folder synchronization.
• Since converting to an Adobe free workflow I do all of my image editing in Pixelmator, and all my image dithering in HyperDither.
• Twitterrific is the only bird I trust these days for tweeting.
• TaskPaper generates a nice todo list that is compatible with my Newtons.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

My Newton not only keeps me on task and portable, it also inspires. Using a MessagePad as my primary writing machine more than ten years after its untimely demise keeps my thoughts about technology in perspective. While staring into its monochrome olive colored LCD I can’t help but take a step back from the technology I am reviewing and decide wether or not today’s story is really such a big deal. Technology platforms come and go, but it is how we use them that makes a difference. My Newton has certainly strengthened my belief in open formats like like plaintext and PNG.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

What I wouldn’t give for a modern carbon fiber encased Newton with a capacitive E Ink display, and even longer lasting battery. The iPhone can keep its multimedia capabilities, and all too-colorful app store. What I want is the modern equivalent to the reporter’s notepad. A true getting things done machine built for writers, planners, and creative people that is easy on the eyes and always connected to my greater body of work in the cloud. Then again, who am I kidding. I would settle for any Newton I could comfortably fit into my pants pocket.

More Sweet Setups

Thomas’ setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

I’m Rogie King, a designer based in Helena, Montana. I’m a self-employed designer working under the company, Komodo Media. I love designing user interfaces, websites filled with character and spirited illustrations. I’m also a front-end developer specializing in JavaScript, CSS3 and HTML5 development.

What is your current setup?

I’ve worked on nearly everything from old school pizza box Dells, to home made machines pieced together from Newegg parts; a Quad-Core Mac Pro to my current setup of a 2010 15-inch, Quad Core i7 MacBook Pro/8GB Ram/128GB SSD/Hi-Res Matte screen with an external 24-inch Cinema Display.

For the most part, I’m pretty pleased with my MacBook Pro.

Why this rig?

I’m really mobile. Last year I traveled for 2 months, this year nearly 4 months of travel. I work a lot from the road. However, I’m known to sit on the couch or bed with my laptop as well. A 17-inch monitor has always felt crazy big and seemed like a brick to lug around. 13 inches is too small. So, I opted for the 15-inch with the high-res monitor and matte display. I LOVE the matte display. I’ll never go glossy again. High-res is a bit teensy, but I still love the details and extra screen real estate.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

I use Coda by Panic to code up HTML, CSSEdit by MacRabbit to create CSS. Terminal is always open committing edits via git. MySQL running natively to run all of my databases locally.

I use VirtualBox for running Windows 7/XP for testing. It’s still a pain and by no means ideal, but I just don’t have the will to own a Windows box and set it all up. I’d hardly use it so it’d be a waste.

For quick small screen recording sessions to explain something or describe a bug, I use Screeny by Drew Wilson. For screencasts, Quicktime. I use Sparrow for mail — it just feels simple and that simplicity drives me to want to keep it simple, to keep my inbox empty and tidy.

I’ve tried hoards of task-managing software, to-do lists, and attempted to use calendaring apps. None of them ever stuck. Except one. Fantastical. Yeah, yeah, I designed it blah blah blah, but I’ve been known to design things I never use, like whole websites n such. The magic of Fantastical isn’t so much its aesthetic (which was my part), but in the simple intuitive, natural language parsing part of it. Now, I add events to my calendar like a boss. I actually use this thing.

For rapid CSS3 production, I use Less.app. This year, I’ve been using SASS, however the more CSS-like syntax of Less combined with Mark Otto’s bootstrap.less and Less.app makes for lightning fast CSS production.

I’ve always struggled with the speed of development with editing a file, saving, going to my browser, reloading. It takes so long. Last year, I found ReCSS and it rocked my world. ReCSS enabled me to reload my CSS only and not the underlying code. Much faster. This year I found LiveReload which essentially monitors the file system, waiting for changes to underlying code, be it ruby files, CSS, or script files. When they are changed, the browser instantly refreshes. If the change is purely CSS, only the CSS reloads. Magic. So. Much. Faster.

I design all websites and user interfaces with Adobe Fireworks CS5 and until recently, I did all illustrations in Fireworks as well. Driven by a want to grow more as an illustrator (as well as the more powerful features), I made the jump to Illustrator CS4 about 2 months ago. Just last month, I purchased the upgrade to Illustrator CS5 for the refined web features.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

Two screens is huge. I split my cinema display with about 1/3 CSSEdit and 2/3 Coda and on the right display, my MacBook Pro on the left shows the current browser I am testing. I love not having to constantly minimize and maximize windows to reveal other programs — everything is right there.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I think I’ve finally figured it out. I think.

Next year, when the new iMacs are refreshed, I’m gonna grab the highest spec’d out model. No need for a SSD. I really like SSD’s but I’m not all that impressed like others. Sure, reboots and rapid file access are lightning fast. But when it comes to speed and snappiness, say in a design program, it does little for me. So I need more power, but not all the expense.

I still love my MacBook Pro, so instead of selling it, I’m gonna rock that spec’d out iMac with this couple year old, yet fully capable MacBook Pro running at it’s side. I’ll get a 27-inch Thunderbolt display to run as a secondary 27-inch monitor. Two 27-inch screens running side by side. Bliss. I’ll use the laptop for my travels or couch jam sessions.

More Sweet Setups

Rogie’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

I’m Steve Offutt. I’m a father, wedding photographer, musician, and a staff member at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, a Christian Missions organization know as IHOP-KC. I work and live in south Kansas City. By day I co-lead and manage the goings-on within the IHOP-KC Marketing Department. On the side, I often find myself traveling and photographing beautiful weddings, couples, families, and occasionally rockstars and/or food.

I can be followed on as @steve_offutt and my photography can be found at stevenmichaelphoto.com.

What is your current setup?

At home I run a 27-inch 3.2 GHz iMac i3 with 1TB internal storage and 8GB of RAM. At the marketing office I pair my personally-owned 2007 MacBook Pro (2.33 GHz, Intel Core 2 Duo, 15-inch) with a department-owned Apple 23-inch Aluminum Cinema Display.

Other key players:

• Apple bluetooth keyboards
• Apple Magic Mouse(s)
• Rechargeable AA-batteries
• 16GB iPhone 4
• Canon MP560 wireless printer (at home)
• 1TB Western Digital Firewire 800 external drive (also at home)

My home set-up sits atop a Galant series desk from IKEA that’s about 5′x3′. The iMac is flanked by two Lobbo series 40w lamps (also from IKEA). I have a knack for lighting, so I cant go without saying my current lightbulb of choice is GE’s Reveal series. They neutralize the typical yellow-ish tint from standard tungsten lightbulbs. Lastly, really nice chairs are cool, but I routinely spend my fun money on coffee and photography gear, so I’ve settled for the moderately priced Moses office chair (also made by IKEA).

For the photog nerds out there…the core of my photography set-up is this:

• Canon 5D MkII and a Canon 5D original version
• Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L
• Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8L IS
• Canon flashes
• Pocketwizard triggers
• HPRC cases and ThinkTank bags
• Orbis RingLight
• Manfrotto mono-pod

Why this rig?

Well let me first mention how I came to this current setup. My pre-iMac setup was just the single 15-inch MBP mentioned above. It travelled to the marketing office everyday and was my main photo editing machine at home as well. I can’t believe that I used to do entire wedding edits on that 15-inch matte screen. However, as my photography has progressed so too has my post-production workflow and its demands. While processing a wedding or preparing a blog post I may have 100+ large files open at a time. Over the past few years the advancements of digital photography outgrew my MBP’s specs, storage space, and 15-inch screen. I found myself facing four challenges/requirements:

• I needed a bigger screen
• I needed an upgrade in processor, storage, and RAM
• I needed to keep at least one machine permanently at home for my wife’s use
• My budget was about $2,000

On paper it was pretty clear; I would keep using the MBP for day-to-day at IHOP-KC and add a powerful 27″ iMac on the homefront. Most of my friends stick with a laptop + cinema display set-up, so I wasn’t convinced at first, but after some initial research I realized that today’s all-in-one iMacs pack more-than-capable processors, huge internal storage potential, and ample hi-quality visual real-estate. I didn’t need another laptop and that option was mostly out of my budget range anyway. The iMac seemed to be the thriftiest choice of the entire Mac line. It met all my challenges/requirements and was within my budget.

The 2007 MBP is still in heavy use everyday. It gives me all the mobility and processing power I need in my Marketing Coordinator role. There never was any intent to retire or replace it with the newer iMac and thankfully maintenance has been minimal (one battery and both fans…thats it!).

My most recent and favorite addition to my home office set-up is a Canon MP560 wireless printer. For years I’ve hated the dust-collecting eye-sore that takes up two or three square feet of desk space and barely gets used. When my old gray box stopped working, it seemed natural to go wireless and free up some valuable desk space. My new printer now sits atop a 5′ bookshelf where it is mostly out of sight and more importantly out of the way! The biggest score is the happiness of my wife when she can now print things from anywhere in the house from our MBP without having to fire-up the iMac.

What software/apps do you use and for what do you use it?

• Adobe Lightroom: for cataloging and culling photos
• Adobe Photoshop: for the heavy lifting
• Adobe Illustrator: for making shapes
• TweetDeck Desktop: for managing twitter and facebook
• ProPhoto3: WordPress theme customization for non-coders
• WordPress: to make my website work and keep it current
• CyberDuck: for FTP (I don’t know whether to be proud or ashamed)
• iLife: all of them all the time (except iPhoto)
• Safari: compasses guide you but foxes trick you
• SuperDuper!: for smart back-ups
• My Publisher: for designing wedding albums and photo books
• CrossProcess and ShakeItPhoto: my go-to iPhone photo apps

I also really like DropBox, Skitch, Awesome Screenshot Safari plug-in, Google Notifier for Gmail, MobileMe, and Cloud App.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

I believe that a setup should facilitate an efficient workflow. I’ve noticed most of my Mac-using friends utilize a one-machine setup and it meets their needs — especially when the choice is laptop while on-the-go with a Cinema Display parked at home. However, I’ve found that investing in a multi-machine setup meets the needs of my family as well as my differing job descriptions and their requirements. With cloud-based apps and syncing technology, multi-machine setups are now easy to keep cohesive and consistent day-to-day.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

It’d be nice to add a Solid State Drive into both my machines, however I’m going to wait until the pricing comes down a bit. It’d also be nice to bring the online experience to my living room via AppleTV. All in all, I’m very happy with my set-up, though a set of pro studio monitors would be very nice.

More Sweet Setups

Steve’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

I’ve always found the act of introducing yourself to be very intimidating because it’s something you often wished you had practiced more before being put on the spot but either way, my name is Jorge Quinteros. I’m an avid photographer based in Brooklyn who holds a BFA in Graphic Design and is employed as a manager for a major retail company. Try crunching that title into into a business card.

I’ve always been into the Arts and enjoyed documenting life through pictures and it’s that same natural interest that’s driven me to always want to travel and explore new places. While some prefer to enjoy experiences through their own eyes, I prefer to see it through my viewfinder firmly pressed against my face.

Once you’ve established what your passion is, you’ll find it difficult not using that as a source of inspiration for everything else you accomplish, hence my humble personal photoblog. This is where I share and sell some of my favorite photographs backdropped with a narrative of what when into capturing them. Equally exciting to curate is iPad Decór which is home to photographic wallpaper for your iPad based on personal travels and random outings of mine.

If a person’s stature as a photographer is dependent upon what they can do with any camera, in making the mundane appear interesting and using their imagination, then I confidently introduce myself as a photographer despite not having an official position in the industry. It’s the drive that will get me there.

What is your current setup?

• 15″ 2.16GHz MacBook Pro (pre-unibody model)
• Apple Aluminum Wired Keyboard
• Magic Mouse
• Griffin’s Elevator Stand
• SlimKey V2 Stand with USB 2.0 Hub
• Griffin’s Simplifi. It does what the name implies. It de-cluttered the space by charging both iPhone/iPod and downloading my photographs.
• JBL Creature Speakers. The perfect computer companion for setting the mood on those days when I can’t seem to get into writing mode.

Why this rig?

The last time I owned an Apple desktop was back when they were introduced in a variety of flavors. Mine was purple by the way and since then, I’ve happily been working with different laptop versions which began with a 12″ PowerBook to what I currently own now.

Everyone loves to be part of an environment where you have options and laptops offer that choice to pack-up and relocated to a nearest coffee shop for a change of scenery. With the configuration of my setup, I often forget that my computer is a laptop but the popularity of taking your work with you is a feature I’m not willing to give up by feeling tied down to a conventional desktop.

As a a retail manager, only 15% of my role includes working with a computer which has no internet connect and that’s shared by more than 4 people. My only connection to the web in those occasions is strictly through my iPhone 4. This is more of an incentive in takin g pride and effort in sprucing up my own computer space at home.

I’m seeing more photographs of people, specifically Mac users owning more laptops than ever before and utilizing them as if they were desktops by having a keyboard and mouse. I’ve yet to see this trait in PC laptop owners but for me, it’s an arrangement that carries a feeling of sophistication and although I might have added elements to work with, it’s an arrangement that feels as if I had taken something that felt uncomfortable in the first place. It’s probably the uneasiness of using a laptop keyboard and trackpad. I’m not a fan at all although during travels, these are the working conditions I put up with.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

Lightroom 3: The software was developed from the ground up as a tool for more serious photographers and it’s one that’s served as perfect transition when I felt that iPhoto wasn’t offering much. I think as comfortable as you’re likely to become with a camera you’ve had for a long time, the same goes with sticking with a logical workflow for managing your photographs and to not get excited when something new comes along.

Photographers have special needs when it comes to handling their images and Lightroom has been an invaluable software that’s kept me sane on those days that would have driven anyone crazy in dealing with hundreds of RAW files. As far as processing goes, it’s through experimentation that I’ve managed to generate a decent collection of custom presets that I use if it’s required.

Photoshop: Being a photographer and not owning Photoshop is comparable to a carpenter not having an assistant in that you don’t always need it but it’s at hand when you do. It’s literally used for minor touch ups on images but mostly when I’m resizing photographs to upload at iPad Decór. I almost feel like I’m cheating the software because of how rarely it’s launched. Lightroom is king for me.

NetNewsWire: Upon first learning about RSS feeds, I was entranced with the concept of having news, personal blogs, and other odds and ends instantly materialize in a standalone program and the deal was sweeten knowing that I can retrieve it all straight from my iPhone as well. Hands down a brilliant piece of software although I can’t speak highly of it’s coequal iPhone version because I prefer Reeder as a choice.

1Password: If I were held at gun point and asked to write down the passwords to all my online service accounts, I would simply fold. Who has time to memorize all of them? That’s what 1Password is for. Their slogan should be “Don’t think about it. Just buy it”.

Notational Velocity: Everything I write is written in this software. It’s widespread acceptance among Mac users could never go understated because it’s simply that good. You can’t say enough great things about it without sounding repetitive.

BBedit: I’ll admit there’s far better aesthetically pleasing coding software out there than BareBones’s BBedit. Coda, Expresso to name a few but very much like Lightroom, I’ve stayed with what I know and I haven’t found a need to retrain myself in what I’ve already grasp. I’m far from a coder but from what I recall from Introduction to Web Design in college and from pure allure, I’ve learnt the basics of what’s needed to manipulate HTML and CSS to prettify my site.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

I wouldn’t say the setup itself induces a sporadic flow of creativeness because that type of feeling takes place when I’m out shooting, but it certainly helps translating the same comfort I have in using my camera to using my computer.

I don’t consider it something extravagant although friends would disagree but I’m finding that people who have similar configuration have one trait in common. They all have an affinity towards the arts, specifically graphic design, web design, music creation and of course photography. My response to the common question of why I use my laptop as a desktop is “It’s a creative thing.” Needless to say that among my social circle, there’s many that choose to work with what’s in front of them rather than configurate it and make it their own.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

At this point, I’ve learnt there’s no sense in believing you could have the latest of anything with regards to technology because every couple of months something smaller, sleeker and faster is released. With that in mind, I have my eye in upgrading to the newly-enhanced 13″ MacBook Air.

I’ve had my current 15″ MacBook Pro for 5 years and in the past I’ll admit that the ownership of several models of Apple’s top of the line laptop has always been driven in wanting to have the best of what they offer without necessarily having the justification to pay for all that power.

There sheer number of positive benchmark reviews from the new MacBook Air alone is what would make it an ideal setup to migrate to because it has sufficient powerful for supporting the type of work I do without having to pay extra the way I have been in the past for a MBP. I would imagine editing photographs on a 13″ screen could only be tolerated for so long so I would want to add an older generation 23″ Apple Cinema Display which I’m sure I could find for a bargain on Craigslist.

When I’m not managing my photographs in Lightroom, I’m going through NetNewsWire deciding which articles to quickly read or send to Instapaper and/or continuing to build upon the loose thoughts I began typing up on Simplenote for the iPhone to further finish in Notational Velocity while listening to some tunes.

And so, with the exception of dealing with a couple hundred RAW files, my computer usage is not that demanding that it would need a super computer. Which is why the new 13″ MacBook Air along with an external monitor would be an impeccable upgrade to what I have now.

More Sweet Setups

Jorge’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

My name is Aaron Mahnke. I’m a freelance graphic designer in the Boston area. I work under the banner of Wet Frog Studios, focusing on identity and brand design, though I do a ton of print design and even a bit of web design as well. I blog sometimes at aaronmahnke.com, and share resources for freelancers on my other site, abetterfreelancer.com.

What is your current setup?

My desktop computer is a 27-inch 2.66 GHz Quad-Core i5 iMac with 4GB of RAM. I recently made the switch from the wired Apple aluminum keyboard to the bluetooth version in order to allow my Bamboo Fun (1st gen, medium size) tablet to sit closer to the center of my iMac, eliminating some unnecessary strain on my right shoulder. I’ve found that the mouse that came with the Bamboo tablet is perfect for my work style, and I can easily switch to the pen when needed.

I have a secondary work station set up beside my red reading chair that consists of a newer 2.4 GHz i5 MacBook Pro (also 4GB of RAM) and a 23-inch Apple Cinema Display. I use it mostly as a hub for three Western Digital 1TB MyBook external hard drives that contain years of video production work, as well as an external Sony DVD burner for churning out multiple copies of client work while I read in the red chair.

When I’m mobile I rely on my iPhone 4 and a 32GB 3G iPad to keep me connected and creating. The iPhone is my main device for task capture (via the Things app), RSS feeds (via Reeder) and reading (via Kindle, iBooks and Instapaper). I rarely use it as a phone, though during the work day it’s docked beside my iMac with a pair of Apple in-ear headphones connected and ready.

The iPad is a fantastic work device for me. I keep it naked at home, but it travels in a DoDoCase outside the house. It goes to every meeting with me, and I rely on a combination of SimpleNote and Penultimate for capturing the information I need. I rely heavily on the Photos app to hold my logo design portfolio and digital samples of my print design work. And the Dropbox app is the perfect tool for presenting potential clients with my logo design service information, my contract and glimpses of in-progress work.

Why this rig?

Power and flexibility are my driving motivations, honestly. I put my iMac to work every day, sometimes running Illustrator, Final Cut Pro, VMWare Fusion and a handful of smaller applications all at the same time. I am in this eternal struggle between wanting to be parked at a desk with extreme power and screen space, and being able to pick up and work from anywhere, so this setup allows me to live with a foot in each world for now.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

The first piece of software I always tell people about is Dropbox. I have a 50GB account to hold all my design projects, which means I can work whether I’m at my desk or using my laptop away from home. The natural back-up that Dropbox brings to the table also helps me sleep easy knowing my clients’ work is always safe.

The applications I launch every day when I sit down at my desk would be Mail.app, Things, Illustrator, Numbers and Billings. On occasion I have to launch Pages, Keynote, Final Cut. Other applications are always running, though, like Notational Velocity, Yojimbo, MailActOn, 1Password, Littlesnapper and Tweetie. I have a few Fluid instances for things like Basecamp and Rdio, but prefer Propane for Campfire chats. And finally, my menu bar plays host to Droplr, which I use a few times a week at most.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

I’ve tried my best to surround myself with tools that help me get the job done faster. I take notes in Notational Velocity, which is connected with SimpleNote, so that I never have to save, rename, or move the files again. I keep inspiration logged in Yojimbo and Littlesnapper, both of which sync across my computers. And I try my best to master hot keys to save time and effort.

Creativity is all about reducing the distance from inspiration to retention. I might not be able to react to a moment of inspiration right away, but if I can capture it properly (via screenshot, dragging into Yojimbo, or typing the idea out) I can come back to it when I’m ready. This isn’t multitasking, though. This is all about knowing your tools and having a solid system.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

Honestly, the Apple ecosystem is getting really close to perfect for my needs. I would love to upgrade the RAM in both computers someday soon, and a SSD in the MacBook Pro would be next on my list after that. I can dream about better app syncing between the Mac and iOS devices, but Dropbox really gets the job done for me. My only other “fantasy device” would be a big fat Drobo, but I think that’s because I’m an external storage junkie.

More Sweet Setups

Aaron’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

My name is Nicholas Felton. I am a graphic designer based in New York City. I focus primarily on data visualizations… making charts and graphs and maps for print and online. I also run a website called Daytum that I founded with Ryan Case to help people count the big and little things in their lives and compile these statistics into pages like my own Annual Reports.

What is your current setup?

My work machine is a dual quad-core Mac Pro with a 30″ Cinema Display. Away from the office, I use a 13″ aluminum Mac Book.

Why this rig?

The first Mac I owned was a Quadra 840AV and I’ve used Mac towers continually since the G3 days. I may migrate to an iMac for the next office machine, but I like having lots of internal drives in the tower. The internal drives are cheaper and seem to last longer than external backups. I also like how easy it is to upgrade the memory, and that I can hang onto the monitor when I swap the computer out.

My favorite laptop was the 12″ G4, so when Apple did the aluminum MacBook refresh, I bought the 13″, and it still holds its own for travel and home use.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

• Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign CS3 (with occasional excursions into CS5) for design.
• Textmate or Coda for web work (css and html).
• I use Processing to make little data visualization and mapping applications that I output to pdf and import into Illustrator.
• I use Apple’s Numbers and Pages as Excel and Word clones.
• I also use TextEdit all the time, for writing notes or answering interview questions and saving data sets. It’s remarkably useful.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

In plain terms, it’s fast enough, doesn’t crash too often and tends to not get in the way of what I want to do. Fundamentally, it lets me do my best work because I am familiar and comfortable with the way everything is set up, so I spend very little time looking for things. If it weren’t for email, I would be a very productive person.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

If Adobe would kill the feature creep and focus on software that’s fast and doesn’t crash I would be most of the way to an ideal setup. Apart from that, I just need a big monitor, a CPU that can keep up and some decent speakers to be happy.

More Sweet Setups

Nicholas’ setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

I’m Iain Broome and I write fiction. My first novel is called A is for Angelica and is represented by Tibor Jones Associates. They’ll be sending the novel out to publishers soon and I’ll be keeping various things crossed, especially my fingers.

By day I’m a copywriter for The Workshop, a leading UK design company. It’s a little more than writing copy though. Yes, I can give you a tasty strapline or plain English paragraph, but I also work on usability, accessibility and wireframing clients’ websites.

I have a couple of blogs. Write for Your Life offers writing advice for all types of writers. It also has snazzy illustrations provided by the marvellous Matt Pearce. Broomeshtick is my personal blog where I talk about writing, design, technology and, well, more writing.

What is your current setup?

I bought my first Mac in March 2008. It’s a 20″ iMac which gets backed up wirelessly to a 500gb Time Machine, which in turn connects to an Xbox 360 in the lounge. Or at least it did before the 360′s second bout of RROD. Microsoft, eh? *spits*

I also have a 16gb iPhone 4 and, when my piggy bank is finally full, I’ll be getting a 16gb, wifi-only iPad. I intend to use the iPad for creation as much as consumption.

The idea that you can’t use an iPad to write anything of substance seems ridiculous to me. All you need is a keyboard and a blank screen. The iPad provides both and I can (will) take it anywhere (everywhere).

Finally, I have a Sony A200 Digital SLR camera. One day I will learn how to use it properly.

Why this rig?

The iMac provides all I need and more as a novelist and blogger — let’s face it, words are pretty easy to process. But I also use it to edit images, record podcasts and put together video blog entries for Write for Your Life. The iMac has all the power and storage I could ever want for those things too.

Sometimes I think I might have been better off with a MacBook or MacBook Pro, but the extra screen size comes in handy for watching movies, viewing pictures and having multiple windows open. Truth is, it’s become the hub of our home. CDs and DVDs? Long forgotten. This is streaming central.

My iPhone 4 stays with me throughout the day. I primarily use it for email, Twitter, my todo list and reading articles through Instapaper. We also use it to play music and podcasts wherever we are in the house.

Truth is, it’s the perfect techno-companion and unless something catastrophic happens, I can’t see me using anything other than an iPhone for quite some time.

Oh. I sometimes make phone calls.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

Okay, this is the important bit. Having a Mac has changed the way I work, that’s for sure. But really, it’s down to the software.

I explained this in a recent post, which I might as well quote:

Drawn by the bright lights and Apple’s promise of all-the-cool-things-I-could-do, I expected dazzlement and wonder with every mouse-swish and keystroke.

But something strange happened. Instead of reveling in the glitz and relative glamour of iMovie, iPhoto and the multimedia posse, I found myself enjoying quiet nights in with my new best friends, strong and silent types like Finder, TextEdit and, more recently, Simplenote.

And the reason was this. I am simply a writer. I don’t need all that other stuff. Or at least, I don’t need it to do what I do best.

So once the dazzlement wore off, what I found was a computer – a word you hear less and less these days – that gave me tools to do things quicker, more efficiently, perhaps even better.

The technology disappeared and left me alone with my words. Just me and them.

That said, my novel was written in Microsoft Word. I know. But only because I had zillions of drafts and edits left over from my pre-Mac days. I use TextEdit for most other writing and have enjoyed WriteRoom on occasion.

In other news: it’s iTunes and Spotify for Music. Safari for browsing. Transmit for transmitting. Acorn for pretty pictures. Adium for chit chat. Simplenote for todo lists and ideas. Alfred for launching. Then 1Password, my trusty online bouncer.

Finally, there is DropBox. The key to it all.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

It’s a pretty time-consuming this writing novels, running two blogs while having a full-time job for a design agency business. It means I have to do things whenever and wherever I can. My setup is designed – well, it’s evolved, more accurately – to allow me to do that. It’s all about the sync.

With DropBox, Simplenote and an iPhone 4, I can access everything I need at all times. I can edit files on my work PC at lunch and know they’ll be there when I get home. I can approve comments, make notes or catch up on some reading on my phone while I’m waiting for the bus. And again, when I get home, my Mac is up-to-date.

Novel number one was written on no less than six different computers – a combination of desktop PCs, laptops and my iMac — in even more locations, using goodness knows how many USB drives for transferring and backing up.

Novel two will be written on just my future-iPad and my iMac. That says it all, really.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

It’s just the iPad, I think. Everything else works just as I need it to. I might be tempted, when the time comes, to replace the iMac with a MacBook, but it won’t change the way I work. And that’s the most important thing.

It takes a while to get a setup that you’re happy with, but after two years together, me, my Macs and a few third-party apps are getting on tremendously.

Frankly, we don’t need no one else.

More Sweet Setups

Iain’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

I’m Dave Caolo, a married father of two, a New Englander and a drummer. I work as an editor and writer at The Unofficial Apple Weblog. I also curate and publish 52Tiger.net.

What is your current setup?

My main computer is a well-worn, 2GHz Intel Core Duo MacBook Pro with a 15″ display. This machine has been in 5 US states and three countries; it’s missing three keys and the bottom is badly scratched. It’s also the most reliable workhorse I’ve ever owned. I’ll continue to use it until it dies or refuses to run essential software, whichever comes first.

When it’s on my desk, it rests in a Radtech Omnistand and connects to a 17″ Viewsonic display, a Mighty Mouse and an old Apple Extended Keyboard II with the help of a Griffin iMate. I back up to an external Western Digital drive via Time Machine. I also use SuperDuper! to create a bootable backup to a LaCie drive which lives in my wife’s classroom Monday – Friday, and comes home on weekends. I back it up each Saturday and send it back to the classroom each Monday. Finally, a 2nd LaCie drive holds “archive” material in cold storage.

Finally, a G5 iMac acts as a media server, storing iTunes purchases and feeding our Apple TV.

Why this rig?

It’s part nostalgia, part reliability and part being satisfied with what I have. When I bought this MacBook Pro nearly five years ago, I was darn proud of it. Just like my father with is 1989 Buick LaSabre, I feel a keen sense of pride in keeping it running. As I mentioned, it works beautifully despite the years of use and abuse, and that’s a testament to the high-quaility products that Apple produces. People balk when they see my computer, but I see an old friend.

Sure, it’d be awesome to own a 17″ MacBook Pro with an i7, but it’s not necessary.

I added the 2nd display years ago when I was spending a lot of time with Dreamweaver, and now I dislike working with one display. I typically keep Colloquy open on the left and a browser open on the right.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

First and foremost is Safari. I’ve tried nearly every browser I could and always came back to Safari. I spend most of my day writing for TUAW, which I do directly through our CMS, Blogsmith.

Colloquy is another constant for me. My TUAW colleagues and I communicate via IRC all day, and Colloquy is my preferred client. I’ve got it running on my Mac, iPhone 4 and iPad. It’s very Mac-like in its UI and looks great on the iOS devices. Colloquy is our virtual office.

Twitter is also a necessary part of my work day. I use Tweetie on the Mac and Twitterrific on the iPad and iPhone to interact with it. It’s amazing how frequently I communicate through Twitter. It’s completely replaced instant messaging for me and nearly replaced email. When a breaking story hits that we want published right away, the fastest way for the team to communicate is IRC first and then Twitter. I’ve set things up so that direct messages are pushed to my iPhone, so I’m notified right away, even if I’m off doing something else. Email and IM offer the same “bloop” no matter how urgent or silly a message is. Conversely, when I get a push notification from Twitter, I know it’s a direct message that I ought to attend to. I certainly use Twitter for fun, but it’s also become an essential part of my professional life.

OmniFocus keeps my “stakes in the ground” as David Allen would say. I’m one of those annoying GTD guys, and OmniFocus is the project management app that best suits my interpretation of David Allen’s methods. I’ve got a hotkey combination set up to produce the quick entry window and I use it all day long. Also, the iPad and iPhone apps are stellar.

I would not want to work without David Seah’s Printable CEO forms. They’re not software, but they are absolutely essential to my daily routine. Every morning, I grab a fresh Emergent Task Planner and do three things. First, I list the tasks that must be completed by the end of the day. Next, I write “Inbox” at the top of the notes section. Any “stuff” that comes at me during the day that can’t be quickly copied and pasted into OmniFocus (like phone calls, requests from real, live people, etc.) goes there. Then I write “Support” below Inbox. This is free scratch space for me to work out problems, write down reference information (“Width on those images = 720″ for example), etc.

Finally, I write my “hours of operation” in the right hand column and track exactly what I’m doing, hour by hour, in 15 minute increments. That sounds insane, but it helps me identify when I’m efficient and when I’m slacking. At the end of the day, I can see that it took me much longer to complete a certain task than it should have, and I can analyze why. Too much goofing around on Twitter, perhaps?

David’s Task Project Tracker is another essential form that I use daily. I subscribe to David Allen’s notion that a project is anything that takes more than two steps to complete. The Task Project Tracker lets me break a project down into its component steps, track how much time is spent on each, tick them off as they’re finished and monitor my progress towards completion.

I often joke that the 8 years I spent as a special needs teacher prepared me for GTD. Part of my role as a teacher was to break educational goals down into empirical, concrete tasks that could be observed, measured and built upon until a new skill was learned. For example, a shoe tying lesson might include steps like place foot inside the shoe, grasp the tongue with one hand, pull the tongue until taut, grab one lace in left hand, grab one lace in right hand and so on.

The work I do today can be broken down much the same way. For example: acquire software, install software, test x, y, and z, compile notes, outline post, write and review. David’s Task Project Tracker, and GTD, is perfectly suited to this.

I also use Simplenote as storage for reference material and Yojimbo to keep research material in one place. Finally, Billings keeps track of any client work I do.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

I trust it. When you’ve got a trusted system in place, your mind stops bugging you about “we ought to be doing [X]” and lets you focus its resources on the task at hand. I know that OmniFocus and the Printable CEO forms will capture anything important so that I won’t miss it. With that off my mind, I can get down to writing.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

I’m less concerned with the look (as my keyboard indicates) than I am the function. What’s most important to me is to reduce friction. When I’m working on “Task A” and something new demands my attention, I want to capture it with as little disruption as possible. I needn’t attend to every little thing upon arrival once I trust that I’ll be able to retrieve it easily when the time is right.

I also enjoy a quiet, tidy room. I rarely work with music playing. If I’m writing I want quiet. If I’m doing something that requires less creative thought, I’ll listen to a movie soundtrack. Clutter distracts me and I can’t have it on my desk. This is making me sound like Felix Unger, isn’t it?

More Sweet Setups

Dave’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

My name is Brett Kelly and I’ve got a pretty full hat rack. By day, I’m the Technical Communications Manager for Evernote Corporation where I split my time pretty evenly between doing web development and writing user documentation. The rest of my time is spent doing freelance web development and writing for my blog. My current claim to fame is being the author an ebook called Evernote Essentials, which people seem to like. I live in southern California with my first wife and our two kids. You can also find me oversharing and making awful jokes on Twitter as @inkedmn.

What is your current setup?

I work exclusively from home, so my setup is a mixture of my professional and personal equipment. My employer-issued computer is a 15″ unibody Macbook Pro and my personal computer is a very new quad-core 27″ iMac. When I’m doing day job work, the iMac pulls duty as a secondary display for the Macbook Pro. The third display on my desk is a 22″ Acer LCD that serves as a secondary to my iMac when I’m doing “evening” work. Up until very recently, the Macbook Pro sat atop a couple of large hardcover books to elevate it to something resembling eye-level, but a few days ago I purchased a laptop stand which hoists the laptop nice and high next to the iMac.

I use a standard Apple keyboard, but have been flirting with the smaller Bluetooth model for the last couple of weeks and may switch to that. When I got the iMac recently, it came with a Magic Mouse that I’ve come to like and will probably adopt as my permanent mouse, but before that was my old Microsoft two-button mouse which has served me reliably for going on six years now.

You’ll also find a smattering of backup drives littered around my desk, as well as a Fujitsu ScanSnap document scanner, which I absolutely adore (and that works with Evernote). Music is a pretty important part of my working effectively, so my gobs of music is output steadily through a set of humble-yet-reliable Altec Lansing desktop speakers that I bought at Staples about a million years ago or my trusty Sennheiser HD 202 headphones (for when my kids are sleeping or my wife just isn’t in the “speed metal mood”).

I have an iPad (the WiFi-only model) that I use around the house for reading things and maintaining my task lists. I’ve done some light writing (read: typing) on it, but it hasn’t really found any sort of imperative place in my workflow. My kids like to play games on it, so that’s cool.

Why this rig?

I’m a complete glutton for screen real estate. Both my work and personal configurations offer me ample space to do just about anything I need, and I always have sufficient room to tile different windows according to the task at hand. I’ve also found it quite awesome that I’m able to incorporate some of my personal equipment into my daytime work, which allows me to avoid having two discrete working configurations and, thus, an obscenely full desk.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

I spend the most time writing either code or prose, so the application you’ll find me staring at the most is my text editor of choice, Vim (the MacVim build, specifically). It’s insanely powerful and is absolutely great for writing just about anything. Bonus nerd points because Vim is almost 20 years old and it’s still the finest text editor available (unless, of course, you’re talking to an Emacs user). It’s infinitely configurable and scriptable, has an active and vibrant community and is lighting fast. I’ve been using it almost exclusively for about 7 years now and I still feel like I have barely scratched the surface of what it can do.

As you probably could have guessed, I also spend a good deal of time in Evernote. It serves as my filing cabinet, digital notebook, idea log, photo album, temporary clipboard — all sorts of things.

Everything else:

• OmniFocus for Task and Project Management
• Mailplane for email
• Firefox and Safari for web browsing, though the former is mostly still around because of Firebug
• Colloquy for IRC
• Adium for IM
• Transmit for FTP/S3
• Versions and Changes for source control-related stuff
• Tweetie for Twitter
• iTunes for music and podcasts

I’m also a big fan of Keyboard Maestro, Concentrate, Skitch, Dropbox, TextExpander, Path Finder, iStat Menus and MarsEdit.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

The combination of lots of display space and powerful hardware that can (most of the time) keep up with me make it easy to dig into the current endeavor. When I can comfortably view 4-6 source code files on the iMac and have my browser open on the second display, it requires me to do a lot less remembering. I don’t have to switch away from the current buffer to look up the correct parameter order for such-and-such function, I can just open it right next to where I’m working and see both side-by-side.

I liken my working style to the way my children play with toys: they don’t put away each toy as they finish playing with it (as much as I wish they would), so we have a great big cleanup party each evening where everything is organized and stowed in its right place. When I’m ready to wrap up the current day’s work, I’ll spend at least 3-4 minutes closing a dozen Safari windows, Firefox Downloads windows, Evernote notes and such. I like that I have the canvas and the horsepower to work that way without it getting bogged down or looking cluttered.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

I’m pretty happy with what I use, but I would change a few small things, particularly with respect to my current quiver of input devices.

First, I’ve grown to actively dislike the use of a mouse over the years, so I’d love to foster my own fu with tools like Keyboard Maestro to the point that I’d have to take my hands from the keyboard only occasionally, if at all. I’ve written about this in the past and I’ll admit that I’m a little militant in my position regarding “the rodent”, but the problem lies more with my ability to sharpen the metaphorical knife than with the knife itself. Mac OS X is incredibly friendly to keyboard lovers, I just need to quit whining about it and learn more.

Second, I’d really like to get my mitts on another Kinesis Advantage keyboard (which I used for several years but sold because of an obvious mental deficiency). It’s one of those absurdly ergonomic keyboards that looks like a pair of soup bowls lined with keys, but man is it nice once you get used to it. The downside is that you’re basically all thumbs whenever you sit down at a “regular” keyboard, as most of the meta keys that are normally struck using your little finger (Ctrl, Alt, Cmd) are positioned under your thumbs. That, and people seem to be unable to resist commenting on how the Starship Enterprise seems to be missing a keyboard. Oh, and they cost like $300.

More Sweet Setups

Brett’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

I’m Mike Rundle, a designer & developer living in Raleigh, NC. I’ve been designing for the web since before people used CSS and am currently a User Interface Architect for a marketing software company in Durham, NC. For the past 2 years I’ve been working on Mac and iPhone apps in my spare time and am the designer & developer of Digital Post, a news app for the iPad.

What is your current setup?

I have a 24″ aluminum iMac (bought it right when they came out), a 15″ 2.53Ghz MacBook Pro, an iPad, a first-gen iPhone and an iPhone 4. On my desk at work is a 27″ Core 2 Duo iMac which is the best computer I’ve ever owned. I’ve got a Logitech MX Revolution mouse which is fantastic, and under that is an XTracPads HAMMER mousepad which is gigantic and totally awesome. I highly recommend it. I also own a Rain Design mStand laptop stand which is built as if Apple made it. It’s the best laptop stand out there, hands down.

Why this rig?

The 24″ iMac replaced my aging PowerMac G5. The iMac is a great computer, but I just don’t use it anymore now that I have the MacBook Pro. When I work on my iPhone apps at night I’m usually on the couch so the MacBook Pro is just more versatile. I’m currently planning to sell the iMac that I don’t use and buy a new 27″ Apple LED Cinema Display for when I need extra space that a laptop can’t provide. I’m also planning to buy a new Apple Magic Trackpad to replace a mouse at home but I want to try one first.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

I have Adobe CS4 at home and CS3 at work; I actually prefer Photoshop CS3 due to how it handles windows and its speed on Snow Leopard. For web coding my tool of choice is TextMate, the finest text editor on the Mac right now. For Cocoa development I use Xcode 3 but have recently been playing with Xcode 4 since it’s the new kid on the block. The new interface is really nice but there are still some quirks that I’ll have to get used to. I use Bjango iStat Menus 3 for putting interactive graphs into my menubar and CloudApp for sharing screenshots and shortening links to post to Twitter. For email I’m a Gmail guy and have been a Mailplane user for awhile, also I use Safari 5 for web browsing.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

TextMate is really the key part of my workflow when working on the web. I have dozens of macros that help me write HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP faster. I actually do something quirky with TextMate: I wrote a macro that maps the 7 key to the Escape key so I can access code completion faster without moving my hands from the main part of the keyboard. I also mapped Ctrl-7 to output the normal 7 key in case I actually have to use it. Crazy, but it’s great!

How would your ideal setup look and function?

My ideal setup would still involve my MacBook Pro but it’d have 2 fast SSD drives in a RAID-0 configuration plus maxed-out RAM. I don’t have a terribly ergonomic office chair so an Aeron would be a must. I have typography and design posters all over my walls so I’d probably just buy more and more till there’s no more paint showing.

More Sweet Setups

Mike’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

He feels it’s his lot in life to stay abreast of the latest in tech and science, and has run a moderately popular, tech-centric site since 2002. He’s neurotic, obsessive, sarcastic to a fault and obviously great looking. He gifts the world a constant stream of wit and satire on Twitter (@jblanton), and recently started answering questions on Formspring. He’s also very serious about his photography.

What is your current setup?

These days my only machine (apart from an iPad and an iPhone 4) is the latest (mid-2010) 15″ 2.66GHz Core i7 MacBook Pro with 8GB of RAM (and the new, “hi-res,” 1680×1050 display). Internally, it’s rocking a 256GB Crucial RealSSD C300 solid-state drive. The whole thing is stupid fast. I love it.

My precious usually is plugged into a 24″ Apple LED Cinema Display, and resting comfortably in Twelve South’s BookArc (which I love). (Relatedly, if the MBP is closed, you can bet there’s a RadTech ScreenSavr wedged between the screen and the keyboard.)

I sit in an all-black Herman Miller Embody (which last year replaced a Human Scale Liberty). It’s the best chair I’ve ever owned, and I can’t recommend it highly enough, especially for sitting.

Coincidentally (or not!), my desk also is from Herman Miller. I picked it up late last year after struggling for a very long time to find exactly what I wanted; this came real close, so I decided to pull the trigger. (If money was no object, I’d probably buy BALMUDA designs’ Aero desk.)

Earlier this year, a pair of B&W MM-1s replaced my beloved, if large, Audioengine A5s. I absolutely adore the B&W’s, and feel fairly comfortable saying that they probably are the best built-for-the-desktop speakers on the market today. They’ve their own DAC, which eats up one of the two USB ports on my MacBook Pro (the other is used by the external Apple display, which has its own USB ports and thus acts as a hub).

At one point I claimed that the Griffin Powermate (the round, metal thing to the left of the iPhone in the above pictures) was my favorite computer peripheral of all time, and I still stand by that. I use it 1000x a day to globally pause, play and go to the next track in iTunes, and to control system volume. I love its design, its not insubstantial weight and the satisfying thud you hear when you “bop” it. All computer peripherals should be built with such care.

I tend to use mice that aren’t built for a particular handedness because I generally prefer them to be symmetrical. My daily driver, and the one mouse I truly love, is the Razer Diamondback 3G (I have three of them!), which runs around on a Razer Destructor pad. Despite the fact that I turn the tracking speed up so high that typically I don’t need a lot of wrist-motion space, I quite like the large surface area of the Destructor. Speaking of tracking, the Diamondback 3G has some of the best I’ve seen on the Mac. (Every time Apple comes out with a new mouse I give it a shot, but I’ve yet to come across one I enjoy using. The tracking speed is never fast enough (even with third-party software) and I feel like right mouse-clicks always require a conscious effort.)

For typing, I make a racket with the Matias Tactile Pro 3, which I very recently switched to from a Das Keyboard Ultimate. If I need to type in secret I use an Apple Bluetooth keyboard.

Other doodads on the desk include a Unite SmartBase (which I discuss here; the iPhone 4 fits it relatively well, but I’m looking for a new solution), a carbon fiber drink coaster (is there any other material?) and an IO Gear multi-card reader/USB hub (it’s nothing special, but it’s the heaviest, least ugly one I could find).

Under the desk you’ll find a Webble. No, really, it’s called a Webble — look at the site! At $150, this one may be a tough sell to some, but to a constantly-moving spazz like me, it’s an automatic buy. It’s incredibly well made, and with materials I’d have chosen myself had I designed it.

For backup, I use a pair of 640GB Seagate FreeAgent Go drives, each of which sits in its own stand located behind the external display. One is sync’d to my MacBook Pro’s internal disk using SuperDuper (every day at 3AM), and the other is sync’d to the same internal disk using Apple’s Time Machine software (every day at 4AM, thanks to TimeMachineEditor). Super-critical stuff is double-encrypted and backed up daily to one of the network-based backup services currently available. (I’ll eventually get a Drobo. I’ve been saying that for years. But I will get one.)

I currently shoot with a Canon 5D Mark II, which I rarely use without BlackRapid’s R-Strap or Canon’s E1 hand strap. I just sold my Canon S90 because the camera in the iPhone 4 is so competent.

Why are you using this setup?

Did you not understand everything I just said? Why am I using this setup?! Because I’m crippled by an unyielding desire to experience excellence.

Seriously though, I’m happily and forever wedded to Mac OS X and so my options are limited with respect to the hardware I can (legally) use. Lucky for me, Apple’s MacBook Pros are incredible machines, and for the past few years have come strapped with more than enough power for my needs. (Also, have you handled/cradled/slept with one of these unibodies? They’re freakin’ brilliant.)

I used to go the Mac Pro + MacBook Air/Pro + sync route, but it became something of a chore and certain things always seemed to break, and so I currently am a notebook-only operation (and don’t see that changing any time soon).

Overall, this setup (the room, desk, chair, peripherals, etc.) just feels very natural to me; everything has its place, and nothing is superfluous.

What software do you use on a daily basis and for what do you use it?

• LaunchBar — I hate using the mouse if I don’t absolutely have to. (I know, I know, I ended a sentence with a preposition. It’s OK as long as you acknowledge it, right?) Surely this is a holdover from my early Linux days when I literally lived in a terminal, and kind of loved it. With LaunchBar there’s very little I can’t accomplish via the keyboard alone. (I used to use Quicksilver, but eventually was turned off by instability and lack of development; it just hasn’t been the same for years.)

• OmniFocus and Things — I’ve gone back and forth with these task management apps so many times that the only tasks in each of them are, “Try Things again, you insatiable masochist” and “Try OmniFocus again, freak!” As far as I’m concerned, The Hit List was the perfect to-do app (and I really liked its design), but then its developer fell. off. the. face. of. the. earth. I gave up looking for him and grudgingly started cycling between OmniFocus and Things again. Currently I’m using OmnifocusThingsOmniFocus and for the most part I’m content. Functionally, it’s second to none, but its look definitely could stand to be updated (that said, I’m constantly theming it, so it’s not so bad). Also, its iPhone counterpart is wonderful. (If you haven’t already, now might be a good time to read Shawn’s review of Things. Well, not right now; finish reading this first.)

• TextMate (together with MultiMarkDown (an extension to the ubiquitous Markdown) and the IR_Black theme) — Quite honestly, if I’m typing anything other than an email or a blog post on my Mac, I very likely am typing it into this app. (Actually, I hacked up a way to use it for blogging at one point too, and, truth be told, I sometimes find myself using that method because it just feels good.)

• MarsEdit — 99% of the words found on my site were sent there using MarsEdit. (The developer of MarsEdit, Daniel Jalkut, also makes FastScripts, which I use for this and this, among other things.)

• Lightroom — Lightroom may be my favorite application ever, on any platform. It’s just a pleasure to use. It’s a great photo organizer, and an increasingly competent post-processor. I find myself going into Photoshop much less frequently these days.

• Default Folder X — I’m not quite sure how to even describe this software, but I can say that I never again want to be without it. I especially like that it allows me to set a default “working” folder for each application, and that it remembers recently-used folders when I go to save something, etc. Basically, it saves me time that I didn’t even realize could be saved. (Full disclosure: the developer gave me a free copy of the software.)

• Evernote — I recently migrated to Evernote, from Yojimbo. Again. I definitely have some niggles with it, but it syncs across everything and is fairly stable.

• LittleSnapper — I use this any time I need a screenshot or want to save an entire webpage (usually because I see in it some potential inspiration). I go back and forth between this and Skitch when I need to quickly (and usually roughly) annotate an image.

• Mint — Is there anything better for web stats? Even if there is, I probably wouldn’t use it because I’ve long had a kind of geek-crush on Mint’s developer, Shaun Inman.

• Soulver — Allow me to quote Jonas Wisser: “As far as I can tell, Soulver is the only real advance in calculator technology since calculators were invented. It’s a fundamentally different—and cleverer—way of doing math.” I tried to come up with a better description, but failed. As another indicator of my love for this app, it also owns a spot on my iPhone’s first and 20.

• 1Password — Um, just buy it. You have no excuse.

• iStat Menus — I couldn’t function without having information regarding network speed, memory usage, processor utilization and various internal temperatures available at a glance. I’ve been looking at this kind of information every day for 15 years, and at this point I have a kind of sixth sense about my system’s internal operations. What I’m trying to say is that I keep iStat Menus around just to double-check my gut.

• Instapaper — Where to begin? I never shut up about Instapaper on Twitter, and I know real-life friends are sick of hearing about it, but it really has changed my life and I’d be remiss to not mention it here. I definitely owe Marco a few beers. (If he’d give me control over .htaccess files on Tumblr accounts, I’d probably give him a baby, at the very least.)

• Dropbox — Blah blah blah. Who doesn’t use this?

• Path Finder — I almost left this out because it’s become such a natural part of my workflow. I really dislike the Finder. Always have. Path Finder fills in the gaps, and then some.

• TextExpander — I’m a whore for efficiency, and TextExpander just makes me feel good every time I use it. It’s like I’m doing myself a little favor 1000x a day.

• Cinch — I use this to quickly maximize a window or to cause the window to take up exactly half the screen. It’s great.

• Tweetie — Despite the fact that it’s still lacking native retweet functionality, it’s the best Mac Twitter client available. Every time a new client is announced I try it out, but it’s usually just a few minutes before I’ve switched back to Tweetie.

• Pester — This is a fairly recent addition to my day-to-day workflow (thanks to Wolf Rentzsch, but I’ve a feeling it will forever be a staple. For more immediate reminders that I know I won’t/can’t snooze, I continue to use my LaunchBar timer script, but for everything else I now use Pester.

• Safari/WebKit nightlies — Once Flash became relatively stable on Google Chrome’s developer channel (and there were extensions to block it) I gave up on Safari; Chrome was just too fast (and, well, new and different, so I had to use it). However, I’ve found the recent release of Safari 5 to be mind-bogglingly stable for me, super fast and I’ve been impressed with the extension community that immediately grew up around the new framework.

• Little Snitch — This Provides me with added peace of mind.

• iTerm — The best terminal program I’ve found for the Mac. I spend a lot of time in this app.

• Notational Velocity — I find myself using this application more and more; in fact, I used it to draft these very words. It couldn’t be more minimal (e.g., there is no notion of “saving,” search/create are kind of the same thing, etc.), which really attracts me to it. My only real wish is that it would let me define background and foreground colors; it’s rare for me that black on white is an optimal color scheme for writing.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

It doesn’t. My best work is done while grocery shopping. I’m just kidding, I don’t shop for groceries.

I think the biggest piece of the creativity puzzle for me (apart from being comfortable with, and having confidence in the tools I use; e.g., Mac OS X, etc.) is simply having my own space — the “bitcave” is my room. (See what I did there? Instead of “bat,” I used the word “bit,” because I’ve an affinity for computers, and zero qualities of a bat.) It’s important for me to have a familiar, comfortable place that’s mine alone, where I can blast tragic, melancholic music and just brood. Or, I guess, work.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

Is this thing on?! I just spent 2200+ words explaining why my setup was the best thing since sliced bread, and now you want me to describe something better? Impossible.

OK, fine, I’ll bite.

In a perfect world I’d like everything that’s currently in my MacBook Pro squeezed into the body of a MacBook Air. Also, I wouldn’t mind putting the external display on a floating arm so that I could move it more freely, and hell, I’ll probably swap my 24″ Apple LED display for the just-announced 27″ model. Finally, I’d kill for a minimalist desk (not unlike the one I have now) that could raise and lower itself under its own power, so that I could stand for half the day. (Yes, these exist now, but I’ve yet to see one I really like that isn’t unreasonably expensive.)

More Sweet Setups

Justin’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

I am David Chartier, an Associate Editor at Macworld. I write about all things Apple, its products, and the third-party ecosystem that helps to make its products great. I also write about tech news and culture at onefps.net, and tweet at @chartier.

What is your current setup?

My primary machine is a late 2009 27-inch 2.66 GHz Core i5 iMac that could eat small family pets alive if left unchecked. I have a wireless Apple keyboard and a Magic Trackpad which is probably going to replace my Magic Mouse. My iMac’s partner in crime is a mid-2009 17-inch 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro. I have a 64GB iPad WiFi + 3G that I am increasingly using to write pieces (like this one), and an iPhone 4 that is almost never out of my arm’s reach. I also have a 2TB Time Capsule, an 802.11n AirPort Express, a 160GB Apple TV, a Logitech G9 mouse for gaming, and my wife has my old late 2008, first-gen aluminum unibody MacBook (before they went “Pro” and got an SD slot). I know, we’re the shrink-wrapped Apple family. I’ve had to find a way to live with it.

Why this rig?

I love screen real estate. I rarely full-screen apps, so when I’m writing I’ll give my browser, word processor, a chat window or two, any e-mail I need for reference, and other things as much balanced screen space as possible so I don’t need to switch between them to move information back and forth. Some techie friends consider the 17-inch MacBook Pro to be the aircraft carrier of Apple’s portables, but I love having all that space on-the-go when I need to use all those resources for pseudo-multitasking.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

I have a ton of third-party apps, many of which I use infrequently for tasks like video transcoding or uploading photos to multiple services at once. But if I had to start with the fundamentals for writing at Macworld, I use MacJournal for almost every post, Skitch and Acorn for editing photos, and Safari. For communication I use Mail with MobileMe and Macworld Google Apps accounts, Adium for when I’m not slingshotting back to iChat (until I give in and want to use Facebook or Yahoo chat again), and Propane for the Macworld chat rooms that run on 37signals’ Campfire.

To keep track of story ideas and leads I use a mix of OmniFocus (after my nearly finished exodus from Things), Evernote, and Mail. I also have a few menubar utilities, though I’m trying to be a little more discerning about those lately. I use LaunchBar for lots of productivity stuff like launching apps and creating new e-mails and iCal events, CoverSutra for controlling iTunes, and Divvy for keeping all my windows in their places.

I’m trying to work LittleSnapper into my Macworld process so I can keep original images around for when editors need them for print. I use Time Machine to backup my Macs and my wife’s MacBook to the Time Capsule, ChronoSync to backup key files and media to a secondary external 2TB drive, and CrashPlan as a third layer of remote redundancy.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

I love to look at the big picture whether I work at home or on-the-go, which is why I keep lots of resources available at a quick glance and why I use MacJournal. It’s the only Mac word processor I can find which lets me draft in rich text, but copy to the clipboard as the perfectly formatted, plain HTML that most CMSes want. Lots of my peers pen in HTML or Markdown, but I don’t like to look at code or URLs when I write. To me, code is code, and prose is prose. I want to draft, re-read, and continue drafting a piece as the reader will see it, watching for things like the visual flow of text and too many concurrent links that can weigh a paragraph down.

With a desktop, a notebook, and now a tablet, I have a good array of choices between power and portability. I can bang out work and pseudo-multitask at home with my iMac and on-the-go with my MacBook Pro. Or I can bring my iPad out for the day and weekend getaways and focus on one task at a time while lying on the couch or in the middle of Millennium Park.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

I hope this doesn’t mean that I fail the Shawn Blanc Geek Test, but excluding my desire for the latest and fastest hardware, I’m not itching to make major changes. However, now that the 15-inch MacBook Pro has a higher resolution display and can switch graphics cards on the fly, I’m going to downsize and save some weight. I had a Mac Pro with dual Samsung displays for a couple years (22-inch and 24-inch), and while that was a sweet setup, I find that I like having one large, high-res workspace better.

As for the iPad, OS 4.0 and multitasking cannot arrive soon enough, but it really needs at least 512MB of RAM, if not more. I’ll probably upgrade immediately when (but only if) Apple revs the RAM (though possibly at a smaller storage capacity; I’m barely pushing 32GB on this one), because I’m not that desperate for a camera.

Speaking as a reformed mobile phone junkie, the iPhone 4 is the first phone I’ve been thoroughly happy with in years. The antenna thing doesn’t really bug me because I don’t hold it that way. The iPhone 5 will have to have some serious unicorn tear polish to get me to upgrade.

The only other changes to my setup would be more gear mostly for pleasure, not business. Mobile is exploding right now, so I’d love to pick up some Androids and Pres so I could learn a lot more about what they’re up to, but mostly for curiosity and work purposes. I’m also a frequent PC gamer, so I hope to build a dedicated PC again in the next few months. Boot Camp is wearing on me, and Steam for Mac seems like it’s going to need some time to pick up… momentum.

More Sweet Setups

David’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

My name is Jonathan Christopher, and I’m a Web developer/designer from Albany, NY. I currently spend my days filling the role of Development Director, surrounding myself with writing code, discussing design, site evaluations, and a bit of managerial material along the way.

Perhaps you’ve found yourself at some point reading Monday By Noon, my weekly publication focusing on Web design and development? If not, we’ll need to have a talk.

I try to take photos as much as possible and I’ve got an obsessively long wish list full of gear I’ll never be able to afford, but enjoy thinking and talking about.

I’m recently married and loving every minute of it so far. I’m completely thrilled to be stepping into the next phase of life with my wife. I still get a kick out of saying ‘my wife’ — you can understand.

I also watch at least one episode of Seinfeld per day. Almost.

What is your current setup?

I’m currently using a 15″ unibody 2.66 GHz Intel Core i7 MacBook Pro with 4GB RAM. At home I’m externally connected to a Samsung SyncMaster 205BW, but I wouldn’t mind a 27″ Apple Cinema Display.

• I key with a full-sized wired Apple aluminum keyboard
• I mouse with a Logitech MX Revolution
• I back up to a series of 2TB Western Digital My Book Elites (photos and videos) and 640GB Western Digital Elements (Time Machine)
• I shoot with a Canon 7D (50mm f/1.4, 35mm f/2, 17-85mm f/4-5.6)

Why this rig?

My first Mac was a black MacBook sometime around 2006, and I’ve been hooked ever since. I’ve chosen strictly notebooks since then simply because I work in an office and I truly prefer to be in the same environment both at work and at home. I use external peripherals at both desks which I prefer, but having the ability to go mobile has come in handy on more than one occasion.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

• Mail.app for all things email.
• iTunes all day every day.
• OmniFocus (and on iPhone) for task management and getting things done.
• 1Password for password management.
• TextMate for every bit of text, code, markup, style, and script I write. I’m even writing this very content in it. I’ve tried everything and always come back to TextMate.
• Fireworks CS5 when designing my own stuff, Photoshop when cutting up everyone else’s. Acorn when I don’t want to wait for Photoshop to start up.
• Yummy FTP when moving sites and assets. Seriously great app; fastest FTP available. Promise.
• ExpanDrive for wonderful network mounted TextMate projects.
• Safari
• Versions for SVN (source control)
• XAMPP for my local development environment.
• Skitch for taking and annotating screenshots. There are lots of apps but Skitch fits my workflow the best.
• Aperture for photo management and post processing. FlickrExport for publishing straight to Flickr.

There’s a bit more but I’m honestly shuffling through these applications every day of my life.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

With the combination of mobile hardware along with a tried and tested arsenal of chosen applications, I’m able to focus on the work itself instead of figuring out how I’m going to do it. Not having to worry about software or hardware problems alone helps me get things done, and that can be attributed to being on a Mac running OS X and the software built for it.

The software environment itself also caters to a creative mind. The attention to detail Apple puts forth (as well as software developers) is truly inspirational and sets the bar quite high out of the box. When you’re staring at that in everything you do, you’re inspired subconsciously all day long.

I also try to keep my work environment inspirational as much as I know how. The referenced photo includes a shot of my home office, which I try to keep organized and a bit private. There’s always music playing and it’s always better when heard over speakers instead of headphones. There are two book cases flanking the desk full of not only Web related books but also other books great for leafing through from time to time. Banksy’s Wall and Piece for example is a great piece to revisit from time to time for me. The posters in the background are prints from Joshua Davis, an artist I’ve followed and looked up to for quite some time.

I hope to spend more time on the home office, specifically with my wife as she also has her workstation on the other side of the room. It’ll be a great project for the both of us as time goes on.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

My ideal setup would definitely be in my current home office space, but include a few more details I haven’t had the time (or finances) to pull off quite yet. My wife and I moved into the house (our first home) about a year ago and the office is the last to get attention. It was recently painted Elephant Skin gray and I really like the color, but if I were to change one thing about it I would have to start with the lighting. Lighting is a big deal in an office environment and I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for a set of lamps to replace the extras I’m currently using.

On a technical level, my ideal setup would include a 27″ LED Apple Cinema Display, completely wireless connections for everything, and wireless electricity. I don’t like wires. I’m supremely happy with my current MacBook Pro and wouldn’t trade that in, but I’d love to see it house a speedy SSD drive should the option come up.

Last, I’d love to have a new series of applications in which to work. Don’t get me wrong, aside from all the quirks here and there I totally love working in Fireworks and TextMate. If I absolutely had to choose two applications to use while stranded on a desert island, they would be it. The issue though, is that the industry has outpaced their development.

TextMate is an open and shut case. The application is truly fantastic but it’s now the job of another publisher to take the torch and continue on. So far, no one has stepped up to the plate as a major player; I’m anxiously awaiting that.

Design software, though, is a different story altogether. Beyond the heated battles surrounding which existing app is better than another, the truth is that no application in existence has been designed to meet the needs of modern Web design. Without getting too philosophical, I’m hoping over the next number of years we see a change in the thought process behind facilitating Web design from the ground up.

More Sweet Setups

Jonathan’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

I’m Leo Babauta, author of Zen Habits, mnmlist.com, and The Power of Less. I write about simplicity.

What is your current setup?

For a couple years, I’ve been using a combination of a 20″ iMac and a first-generation MacBook Air (yes, the ones with heat problems). Since our move to S.F. last month, I’ve been going with just the MacBook Air — I gave the iMac to my wife Eva.

I love using the MacBook Air as my full-time machine — it’s light, simple, and meets all my needs.

I don’t have an iPhone or an iPad, though both are drool-worthy.

Why this rig?

I’m a bit of a minimalist. I like to keep things as simple as possible, without sacrificing the essential functions.

I’m a writer, and all I really need is a browser and a text editor. The MacBook Air does those two things perfectly.

I don’t need a big monitor, as cool as they are. I don’t need a powerful CPU. I like lightness and simplicity and portability and focus.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

I’m currently using Chrome and Notational Velocity, but sometimes I switch to TextMate or TextEdit or Omm Writer, depending on my mood or need.

Notational Velocity is lightweight, simple, fast. I’ve been doing all my writing in it — from todo lists to notes to full articles and blog posts. This way everything I have is instantly findable, it’s all stored in text (simple and accessible), and backed up via DropBox.

Chrome is lightning fast with a minimalist interface. I’ve tried all the other browsers but they just seem slow and clunky next to Chrome.

Other things I use regularly: LaunchBar for everything, 1Password, Transmit for FTP. Sometimes I also use WriteRoom, Scrivener, and MarsEdit for different writing needs.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

I like focus — simple software that doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles helps me find that focus. I like things that do very little, very well. I try to cut out distractions — Tweetdeck or Tweetie, iChat or Skype, these things distract me.

Notational Velocity is the perfect writing app. All it does is write text, and it stores everything in text files, and you can find them instantly. You don’t need to file, and you don’t need to look for things.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

I’m content with what I have. I love the simplicity of the MacBook Air — when I have to use someone else’s MacBook Pro, it feels heavy and clunky. Don’t get me started on how it feels to use someone else’s Window machine. It would be nice if my Air lasted for 20 years.

My only improvement would be to have the perfection of Mac OS combined with the openness of Linux.

More Sweet Setups

Leo’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

My name is John Carey. I am a photographer moonlighting as a live audio engineer or the other way around depending on what day you ask me. I also run the website fiftyfootshadows.net on which I provide many images from my photographic work as wallpaper imagery for my readers. I have done this for somewhere around seven or eight years now and I feel it is just starting to pick up momentum. There is a significant update to the site currently under construction which I hope will help it grow beyond where I have taken it to this point, but more on that when the time comes…

I started out with drive to become a designer, but over time my desires shifted toward photography. I love the honest nature of it, the compromises within it, and the fact that I can bridge a very tangible art form using traditional film cameras with a highly digital one using digital cameras and computers to create images and share the world as I see it with others. I have grown very passionate for the art of photography and the places it takes me, and I am anxious to see where I end up with it next.

My secret double life as a live audio engineer is equally fulfilling and rewards me with the same sort of satisfaction photography does in the way that I am using both analog tools as well as digital ones to get the job done. I love my work and often wonder if I could live without either of these sides of my professional life because they fulfill my lust for adventure in such unique ways.

What is your current setup?

I have been a Mac user my entire life. Honestly, I have been using them since the Apple II days and every iteration they have come out with along the way. I remember shooting with an old Apple Quicktake digital camera along side an old film Canon when I was just starting to get into photography and design. I followed the digital photography revolution very closely as it crept into the minds of skeptical photographers.

My current set up is simple and built from a combination of necessity, luck, and (like any self-respecting geek) an unhealthy desire for new tech.

That said I currently have an old black MacBook which at home is paired with a Cinema Display, bluetooth keyboard, Magic Mouse, Griffin laptop stand, 8 or more hard drives, and a pair of powered studio monitors because I simply need a nice pair of speakers around for my sanity. I also use a 64GB Wi-Fi iPad, and a 32GB iPhone 4.

If anyone is interested in what I shoot with, I use a Canon 5D paired simply with a 35mm f/1.4L lens, a Hasselblad 501cm with its standard 80mm lens, and a Voigtlander R3M 35mm rangefinder with a 40mm f/1.4 Nokton Lens.

Why this rig?

The core of what I use revolves around the MacBook, the last generation of the black plastic bodied ones. At the time it was the top of the line and it has proven itself to be more than capable through its years of use and certainly the most stable and dependable Mac I have ever owned. I will admit that it’s probably seeing its last good year in use and may need to be replaced sooner or later simply to keep up with newer tech and the demands of the work I do.

But the question is WHY. Yes… well, the true nature of my life is pretty nomadic as I am constantly on the move either traveling for work or traveling for pleasure around the world whenever possible. My office is anywhere and everywhere it needs to be so my portable tools are as important to me as the modest space I have at home for computing. My real office is carried in bags with me wherever I go, at times two or three even. I always have my cameras with me, if not all of them at least one, and I usually carry my laptop for work but also simply out of necessity because much of my blogging and internet life I squeeze into down time at work or while traveling and so I often need to have these key things with me wherever I go.

Also I have a small bunch of tools that I always carry for work, as well as a blank notebook or two and a couple nice pens (because nothing beats pen and paper for sketching out ideas, no matter how many apps you have for it) and other sorts of little things depending on what I need on any given day.

My bags of choice are made by an amazing bag company called Spire. I swear by them and their amazing customer service — you really can’t go wrong with those guys. I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with next, their bags have traveled the world with me.

When I do set up office away from home I have my iPad to handle more and more of my day-to-day internet shuffle, and I will have to admit at this point the 3G option sure would have been nice at times. It has allowed me to leave the laptop at home more often which is nice. I use a wonderful little stand, the Compass, and it has been more than helpful in giving my iPad a home while out on the job or in a coffee shop working on ideas.

To protect the iPad while out I use a simple fabric sleeve I had a friend make for me to my specifications including a thin piece of wood to protect the screen which was sewn into the fabric and padding. (I actually do this to my laptop bag as well, a worthwhile customization for anyone wanting to really protect their screen.) I also have a Speck candyshell case for it which I use while I am on job sites to keep it safe.

The last piece of the puzzle is my iPhone 4 which I admit I bought into because of the camera and display. Its a wonderful device and the controversy surrounding is just way out of control. It’s a brilliant phone plain and simple, and it holds all the little things in my life together.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

My favorite applications on the Mac which I use most often are:

• Aperture: I love Adobe’s take on raw photo management as well as Lightroom being faster overall in its performance, but I greatly prefer the workflow of Aperture — both in file management and editing. I find it is easily worth the compromise.
• Photoshop: It’s just unavoidable in my photo and occasional design work really. I have been using it since version 3, just before layers came on board and changed everything. My use of the program is admittedly very minimal as I have long since moved beyond my days of over manipulating images (it just got old after a while).
• Illustrator: I have been using Illustrator for what seems like forever as well. I remember messing about with it when I was very young, making overly complex blends between objects that the poor old computer running it at the time took forever to render. I use it for layout mostly — this and many other design needs. It’s just as relevant to me as Photoshop really.
• CSSEdit: I love working with websites. I have been making them since the late ’90s to share my design and photography, but the problem is I never REALLY learned how to do it. My knowledge of making websites has been pieced together out of necessity. And I learn as I go, so an application like CSSEdit that helps me simplify editing style sheets is a wonderful thing indeed.
• Espresso: Any HTML or PHP editing I have to do I reach for Espresso simply because I love its approach to interface design. Simply brilliant.
• Things: Again with the interface design. I looked for years to find an elegant solution to handle my task list and notes, and this hit the nail on the head. It’s the glue that holds my ideas and projects and jobs together. Now if they would just hurry up and get cloud syncing in there!
• MarsEdit: The newest member of the family. MacJournal was my go-to, local blogging tool for a long time, but it started to get frustrating with its half-way support for uploading. So I made the switch that was a long time coming.
• The rest: Then there are all the other in-betweens. iTunes, CoverSutra, DropBox, DeskShade, Safari, Mail, Transmit, and not to mention the iPad and iPhone apps that have made their way into key parts of my workflow. I also create electronic-fueled music with a good friend of mine and have for years. And for that I use Reason and Ableton Live, whereas he uses countless other applications as he is more the musician that lives and breathes electronic music.

How does this setup help you do your best creative work?

Well, as I mentioned, my life is always on the move and these tools allow me to easily and elegantly glide between tools needed to accomplish the many projects I juggle at any given moment. It can be stressful trying to do so much at once and being able to quickly and confidently jump between tasks allows me to focus less on messing about with my computer and focus more on simply getting things done. For me the tech I use should actually make my life easier to manage, not get in the way of the process. I am not a super geek by any stretch of the imagination, I just learn the tools I need to know to accomplish what I want to.

It’s amazing the amount of mileage I have gotten out of this simple old MacBook over the years. It’s not always necessary to constantly have the latest and greatest unless you really have a need to. I do my best to stay relevant in this unbelievably demanding world we live in, but most of the time less is defiantly more.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

My money-is-no-object, ideal setup would be a large 27″ iMac at home for all my heavy lifting and data management, then a MacBook Air for travel. Only I want one that Apple has yet to make — one slightly more capable, and who knows if that will ever see the light of day. This paired with an iPad for presentations and casual use and my iPhone simply because it easily syncs information together with the rest of Apple’s universe.

The last addition would be a hefty RAID Server for hard drive/data management. It’s exhausting having to juggle all of these hard drives!

Also, an oversized desk with plenty of workspace would be nice. One that I could build a light table into. I like the idea of having a lot of extra space… breathing room for my mind.

More Sweet Setups

John’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

My name is Phil Coffman and I am an Art Director at Springbox, an interactive marketing agency in Austin, TX. In addition to my day job I write about whatever inspires me at my personal site philcoffman.com and take the occasional photo. I’m also currently developing a new site called Method & Craft that will focus on the creative mind and beauty found within each pixel. You can follow @methodandcraft for the latest on its progress and plans for launch. I’m married to my beautiful wife Cynthia and have a 2yr old son, Ethan.

What is your current setup?

At work I use a Mac Pro with 5GB of RAM and dual-monitor setup comprised of a 23″ Cinema Display and 20″ Dell something. The Cinema Display is my main screen where I run Photoshop, Illustrator, and Safari. The Dell is dedicated to email, Adium, Tweetie, and Bowtie, my iTunes controller. A few months back I started using a Wacom Intuos 4 Medium tablet and have never looked back. I forced myself to use it for a week solid and now use the pen for everything from Photoshop to browsing the web.

Listening to music while I work is vital to my productivity. I have a pair of Sony MDR-V300s that, despite their long cord which gets tangled around my chair, provide adequate audio clarity and help block outside noise when I need to focus.

At home I use a 15″ MacBook Pro (pre-unibody model) with 2GB of RAM, which is not nearly enough. Sometimes I bring my Intuos home if I need it’s flexibility on a project, but otherwise I use an old Dell optical mouse.

At the office we work off servers that are backed up daily. At home I use Time Machine to back-up to an external FW hard drive. That entire setup is then mirrored online using Crashplan.

Why this rig?

I use a Mac Pro at work because I’m often dealing with heavy Photoshop files and need the horsepower. The 5GB of RAM helps keep everything running quickly. The dual-monitor setup is a must for me as I prefer to work fullscreen in Photoshop and want as much screen real-estate as possible. While I use the 2nd monitor mostly for secondary applications like IM, email, etc., I often use it to display documents related to what I’m working on such as a copy deck or IA.

The Intuos has dramatically changed how I interact with Photoshop. My design style lays heavy on the fine details, and the fluidity that a pen provides over a mouse is simply unmatched. Being able to add the element of “pressure” has come in handy more times than I can count. On the very rare occasion I’ll use the Wacom mouse to get uniformity with the Photoshop brush tool, but most of the time it just sits there collecting dust.

I’m very picky when it comes to which wallpaper I use on my machines. At home I sometimes don’t have as much of a say , but at work I use a dark wood panelling photo. Having a dark, B&W image alleviates distractions and makes it easy to find things on my desktop, although I try to keep things orderly as much as possible.

What software do you use and for what do you use it?

• Adobe Photoshop: all of my comps and design work including wireframes
• Adobe Illustrator: logo work or the occasional vector asset
• Safari: web browsing
• Tweetie: to stay in the loop
• Adium: to connect with my coworkers and friends with various IM accounts
• iTunes: music
• Bowtie: to control iTunes via the keyboard
• Entourage: email
• Quicksilver: custom keyboard triggers for screen captures and quick launch of apps
• Cyberduck: FTP (although I have Transmit at home and will probably transition at work as well)
• Dropbox: for file sharing between home and work

Do you have any other gadgets?

I use my 16GB iPhone 4 all day. I commute to work via lightrail and use that time to listen to podcasts, read, check my RSS feeds & twitter, and play games like Angry Birds and Words With Friends. The evolution of the iPhone 4 from the 3GS is amazing. I love the retina display, and the 5MP camera is just remarkable. When not taking photos with my iPhone I use a Nikon D80 paired with a 50mm 1.8 and 28mm 2.8.

How would your ideal setup look and function?

I’m happy with my work setup, so my ideal setup pertains to home. I don’t take my MacBook Pro anywhere to get work done, so ideally I’d upgrade to an i5 27″ iMac so I could take advantage of the larger screen, horsepower, RAM, and storage. I’d also pick up an Intuos to go with the iMac since I’ve grown so accustomed to using a pen over a mouse.

More Sweet Setups

Phil’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

Johnny’s Setup

1. What does your desk look like?

2. What is your current Mac setup?

My current Mac setup consists of a 24″ 2.33GHz Core 2 iMac with a second Gateway 24″ display desktop and a 2.4GHz black MacBook. The iMac has 3GB of RAM and the MacBook has 4.

I store all of our iTunes media on a 1TB external Firewire 800 drive (seen on the right of the iMac). This and the rest of the iMac’s data are backed up to a 1.5TB Time Capsule (I replaced the 1TB drive with a 1.5TB when we started running out of disk space). My Macbook and my wife’s Macbook are backed up to a 500GB external drive attached to the Time Capsule (seen just behind the Gateway monitor).

On the iPod/iPhone front I have a black 16GB iPhone 3G and a first-gen iPod Nano / Nike+ kit that I use for running.

My keyboard is from the Logitech diNovo Cordless Desktop package and the mouse is a standard Apple wireless Mighty Mouse. I also have two HR824 Mackie speakers that I previously used for amateur music production in Pro Tools, but I kept them around because they make iTunes BUMP!

Located just to the right of the iMac in front of the iTunes drive is a Belkin FSU233 4-port USB hub that I chose initially because it matched the iMac but fell in love with when I started using the top USB slot for Skype headsets, media card readers, and just about every other sort of temporary USB connection (I tried to find a link to this, but Belkin’s site doesn’t seem to have it anymore).

Not shown is an Airport Extreme that I use for a dual-band radio (keep 802.11n and 802.11g on their own respective routers), an HP all-in-one, and two Apple TVs: one in the living room and one in the bedroom.

3. Why are you using this setup?

I use this setup for all sorts of different things, from software development to playing in Pro Tools. And the desktop/laptop combination fits me pretty well.

I initially thought I might be able to get away with dumping the iMac and just having a MacBook, but I like the breathing room the two, 24″ displays gives me and finding a good backup/sharing solution for all the media and other data we have that doesn’t involve a desktop computer was a challenge.

This setup gives me a good dose of both worlds and allows sharing everything on the iMac with our MacBooks, the Apple TVs around the house, and just about anything else we might want to stream data to.

I keep the iMac and MacBook in sync using MobileMe and a central Git repository on the iMac that I have exposed with SSH for keeping code for various projects in sync.

The only thing I’d change is perhaps a new iMac some time in the near future. The 2.33GHz is starting to show its age and having a 3GB memory limitation makes virtualization a bit of a chore.

4. What software do you use on a daily basis, and for what do you use it?

On a daily basis, I use Mail.app, iTunes, Safari, NetNewsWire, Adium, CoverSutra, Twitterrific, and iCal (these are open just about all the time).

On a (mostly) daily basis, I use IntelliJ for Java development, TextMate for Grails/Groovy development (and just about any other text related task), XCode for iPhone/Mac development, Photoshop CS4 for image/icon manipulations and some UI prototyping, Firefox for web debugging, Taskpaper as a simple GTD app, and iPhoto to, uh, look at photos.

I also make extensive use of the Terminal (so much so that I rarely use Finder) and use VMWare Fusion fairly often for IE testing and .NET development when necessary. Occasionally, I also use Skype.

I thought it might be interesting to list some of my favorite iPhone apps: I love the combination of iFitness and Lose It! for meeting my workout goals; Twitterrific; DVR Remote for TIVO control (works better than the TIVO remote, IMO); Guitar Toolkit as a tuner; Jaadu VNC and iSSH for remote desktop/terminal into my home desktop; Pandora; NetNewsWire mobile; the Facebook app; and BeatMaker for making the beatz. (I use a lot more apps, but these stand out to me the most.)

5. Do you own any other Mac gear?

My wife has a white MacBook and we have a couple Apple TVs around the house (as I mentioned above). She also has a 30GB iPod Classic (great for road trips!) and a white 16GB iPhone 3G. Finally, we also have a now-discontinued Apple Hi-Fi in our bedroom which we use daily. In the past, we’ve owned two iPod Minis and an iPod Touch.

6. Do you have any future upgrades planned?

As I mentioned above, the iMac is starting to show its age. I’d like to get a new iMac or maybe even a Mac Pro and buy a second 24″ display or sell the 24″ Gateway and get a single 30″ … not sure what’s best between dual 24″ and a single 30″ though. Other than that, I’ve been eying the iPhone 3GS… We’ll see.

More Sweet Setups

Johnny’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

Sean’s Setup:

1. What does your desk look like?

2. What is your current Mac setup?

At work I use a 15-inch MacBook Pro (mid-2008), outfitted with 4GB of RAM and a matte screen. I use the Griffen iCurve and plug into a 23-inch Cinema Display. I also use the Mighty Mouse, and despite its reputation, really like its design.

At home and on the go I use my personal 13-inch MacBook Pro (unibody, SD card slot), also equipped with 4GB of RAM. I don’t have a desk at home (yet) so I usually setup wherever I can find a flat surface — which is sometimes just my lap.

I carry the Magic Mouse with me, and use it whenever the MacBook Pro’s trackpad isn’t enough.

For backup I have a Drobo with two drives in it, as well as an external (bus-powered) hard drive that I carry with me. I plug into the Drobo at least once a week, and run Time Machine. The external drive serves as my photo library vault, and duplicates my iPhoto library.

3. Why are you using this setup?

I used my work laptop as my primary computer until purchasing the 13-inch MacBook Pro last fall as my personal computer. The 15-inch is heavier and bigger, and I found that carrying it in my bag caused back pain and fatigue. When the need arose for me to have my own, personal computer, I opted for the smaller laptop over, say, an iMac, because I wanted to remain mobile. My job requires a level of flexibility in that regard.

I don’t yet have a desk to work from at home because I haven’t found the perfect one.

I keep both Macs in perfect synchronization with Dropbox. I’m even able to run local development environments on both computers with the same files using MAMP and VirtualHostX.

4. What software do you use on a daily basis, and for what do you use it?

• Safari — my web browser of choice
• Adobe Photoshop — graphics creation
• FontExplorer X Pro — font management
• Dropbox — file synchronization and backup
• Things — task management
• TextMate — development, text editing
• Coda — quick development and file transfer
• Mail — email
• Tweetie — Twitter
• iTunes — music, podcasts
• MAMP — development environment

Honorable mentions (not daily uses, but still valuable in my workflow):

• Droplr — quick file/link/photo sharing
• Transmit — heavy-duty file transfer
• VMWare Fusion — Windows emulation
• Fission — audio editing
• HandBrake — video conversion/transcoding

5. Do you own any other Mac gear?

My 32GB iPhone 3GS is always with me. I also have an older AirPort Extreme and carry an AirPort Express in my bag.

Also in my bag and worth mentioning:

• A Nintendo DS (which I hardly ever play anymore)
• A Canon SD450 point-and-shoot camera
• A couple AppBooks from Vol5, and .38mm Pilot G-2 pens
• Starbucks VIA

6. Do you have any future upgrades planned?

A few extra drives to keep the Drobo fat and happy.

More Sweet Setups

Sean’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

Tyler’s Setup

1. What does your desk look like?

2. What is your current Mac setup?

I am the owner of a unibody 15″ Macbook Pro (2.93GHz, 4gb RAM, 320gb HD) which recently replaced my aging Macbook Pro from 2006. I have it hooked up to a 24″ LED Cinema Display which was also recently purchased in June. To control all of this, I use an Apple Wired Keyboard and a Bluetooth Mighty Mouse. For my music and sound, I have a Logitech Z-5500 system which provides 5.1 Dolby Digital goodness to my MBP, my desktop PC (browser testing + gaming), and my PS3.

For my backup and storage needs, I rely on a G-Drive Q 500gb HD as well as a LaCie d2 Quadra 320gb HD – both connected over blazingly fast FireWire 800 connections.

My iPhone 3G connects to my Macbook Pro through an Apple iPhone Dock, and my Cannon MP180 printer plugs right into the Cinema Display for quick document printing.

Last but definitely not least, a constant staple on my desk: a Field Notes memo book. While my expertise lies with all things digital, there is simply no replacement for a good ol’ fashioned brainstorming session with some pen and paper. I try to carry one around with me at all times, so no inspirational idea goes unwritten.

3. Why are you using this setup?

A couple months ago, before I purchased my current Macbook Pro, I was still seriously considering purchasing a Mac Pro. What I came to realize after extensive research and comparisons, was that a faster laptop would be more practical for my current needs and lifestyle. Because I’m constantly traveling between Toronto and my school located a few hours away (not to mention the times I go to various places to do design work), it made more sense to upgrade my laptop from my old Macbook Pro (which wasn’t keeping up with my processing demands) to a new one. Paired with the improved battery life, LED screen, sturdier construction, and ability to change the selected video card on-the-fly made this purchase well worth it. Also, Windows for web design and development wasn’t even a question.

My iPhone also provides me with on-the-go life management. I use it for making calls (yes, really), checking email, Twitter, to-do management, inspiration-writing (if I don’t have my Field Notes on me), and the occasional game or two (recovering Tris addict).

4. What software do you use on a daily basis, and for what do you use it?

I use the following apps on a regular/daily basis:

• Safari – My browser of choice. It is fast, lightweight, and has a UI that I fell in love with years ago.

• Mail – While I use GMail for my main email accounts, Mail is still used daily to manage my school email account as well as a few other small accounts.

• Photoshop CS3 – For all my design needs and website mocks – the best product available for the tasks I need to do.

• Microsoft Word – Most people I receive files from use PCs, so it’s sometimes easier (shudder) to deal with external documents in Word.

• AdiumX – Used for the odd-time that I need to chat with someone on MSN/AIM.

• Acquisition X – For media downloading and keeping it legal.

• xScope – Probably one of the niftiest tools a designer could have – it is used for automatic measurements, an overlay ruler, a color identifier, and more.

• LittleSnapper – Capturing and tagging all of the inspirational bits I find on a daily basis; certainly one of my most justified purchases.

• iCal – Scheduling school-time, meetings, appointments, commitments.

• Things – To-Do manager which basically serves as my memory. Also syncs with my iPhone Things.app which is very handy.

• Tweetie – After using countless Twitter clients, this is my go-to app for posting and reading the latest and greatest.

• Espresso – For web development. I never got into Coda or Dreamweaver so this app fills this void nicely (paired with CSS Edit).

• iTunes – Quite obviously, it manages my music library (6,700 songs and counting) and syncs all my iPods.

5. Do you own any other Mac gear?

In my university house I use a trusty Airport Wireless N router which makes network management a breeze.

I own 4 iPods which have their own uses: a 2nd-Gen iPod 20gb (with the 4 touchscreen buttons – it still works!), an iPod Video 60gb (used to store my music library in my car, and is hooked up to my stereo), a 2nd-Gen iPod Nano (used for some tunes while running), and a 1st-Gen iPod Touch (actually doesn’t ever get used).

As I mentioned earlier, I have an old Macbook Pro (2.15GHz, 3gb RAM, 320gb HD) which is now used as a torrent/fileserver/media hub.

6. Do you have any future upgrades planned?

I have purchased the new Macbook Pro and Cinema Display all within the past 2 months, so I think it’s safe to say that I won’t be dropping more money on a computer or display anytime soon. However, I have plans to replace the Mighty Mouse with my mouse of preference: a Razer Pro|Click v1.6.

More Sweet Setups

Tyler’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

Sherród’s Setup:

1. What does your desk look like?

2. Current Mac Setup

I have a 15″ 2.4GHz MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM and a paltry 200GB hard drive, 30GB of which runs Windows XP in Parallels. I have a 1TB Western Digital My Book Studio Edition as a backup drive, and a 24″ Westinghouse LN2410NM LCD.

The desk itself is from IKEA. It is a VIKA GRUVAN desk which is glass topped, and uses VIKA FAGERLID legs which have two levels of storage.

3. Why are you using this setup?

I converted to a Mac about six years ago with the PowerMac G5. I converted simply because I found I needed to get stuff done. That was when I was a senior in High School, and it’s even more true today. I use a MacBook Pro as my sole machine because it’s portable without sacrificing power. I got the WD drive when my old 15″ MBP’s 320GB drive filled up completely in the middle of the day, and it’s been my savior ever since.

The desk is just as important as the machines on top of it. I chose this desk set because it’s very easy on the eyes, enormous in size (it will easily seat 2-4 people), easy to maintain (the top is a single sheet of glass), and has lots of storage space (note the stuff on the other side of the space under the desk) without feeling closed. Underneath, in the legs, I keep all of my technical, design and leisure books.

4. What software do you use on a daily basis and for what do you use it?

• Apple Mail: I have tens of thousands of emails and Mail gets through it all pretty ably.
• NetNewsWire: I have to stay on top of what’s going on in the tech, design, food and photography worlds.
• Safari: Battle-tested, standards-compliant, blazing fast and ahead of the game.
• iChat: I work with people around the world and video chatting makes everyone feel a little bit closer together.
• iTunes: Music is essential to concentration for me.
• TextMate: My text editor of choice, it is fast, unobtrusive and simple.
• TextEdit: I use TextEdit to jot down longer notes or as an extended clipboard. I prefer it over TextMate for simpler things because it autosaves and handles rich text and HTML.
• The Hit List: I’m a lister, and THL really gets out of my way and lets me get my tasks in and manage them intuitively.
• Photoshop CS3: It’s the gold standard for anything image-related. I use it for web and graphic design.
• Tweetie: Again, I try to stay on top of things and tweetie is a great portal into the twitterverse.
• Cornerstone: I prefer Subversion for version control and Cornerstone is easy to use but really powerful. And it’s diff features are unparalleled.
• Querious: Querious is hands-down the best MySQL GUI available for the Mac. It’s extremely fast, rich and, most importantly, stable.

5. Do you own any other Mac gear?

I have a 1st-generation, 4GB (You know, the one discontinued mere months after its debut?) iPhone which I also use for development.

6. Do you have any future upgrades planned?

I plan to upgrade to a 15″ MacBook Pro with the matte screen, and at least 500GB of storage. I’ll probably get another identical display.

More Sweet Setups

Sherród’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

John’s Setup:

1. What does your desk look like?

2. What is your current Mac setup?

I’m using a mid-2007 2.2GHz MacBook Pro with an anti-glare screen. I have a 20″ Apple Cinema Display (the old aluminum kind) plugged into the MacBook Pro whenever I’m at my desk. I’ve got both a wired and a wireless Apple keyboard (the aluminum type), which I switch between depending on what I’m doing and my mood at the time. I consider my Magic Mouse to be the most amazing Apple product released in the last year.

Next to my computer are three WD My Book drives providing me with 2TB of total storage for photos and videos. I’ve also got a set of small speakers also on my desk; I don’t particularly care about the quality of them because I usually have my music playing pretty quietly in the background.

There is also an old eMac lying around somewhere which I use occasionally as a local web server. The problem with my setup, in a nutshell, is that I juggle hats so often that I’m constantly adjusting my setup to better fit what I’m doing.

3. Why are you using this setup?

I bought the MacBook Pro so I could have a computer that did everything I needed it to do — from video editing to document editing — and still be portable enough to take almost everywhere. It’s certainly not as powerful as a Mac Pro, and its limitations are more than obvious at times.

Even though it’s the smallest model, the Cinema Display is pretty much all I need now in terms of screen space. Sure, editing in Final Cut Pro is more fun with a bigger screen, but it’s not necessary (and it won’t fit on my desk very well). I can’t live without FireWire 400, and the hub on the back of the monitor is wonderful when I need it.

4. What software do you use on a daily basis, and for what do you use it?

I use a lot of software, and I’m usually testing and playing with new releases to see if I like them. Overall, my most-used apps are iTunes, Mail, Skype, iChat, Tweetie, Fever, and Safari, like pretty much everyone else who reads this site.

Besides that, my most-used apps would be:

• The Hit List. I keep switching between The Hit List and Things, but The Hit List is usually my favorite. Hopefully there’ll be an iPhone version of it at some point in the near future.

• Photoshop CS4. I upgraded from the original Photoshop CS, and the upgrade was definitely worth it. I can’t say anything glorious about an Adobe product, but it is what I use for photo editing, design work, mockups, and essentially anything having to do with image manipulation.

• Final Cut Studio 3. I’m in a love/hate relationship with the applications in this suite. They’re incredibly powerful and functional, and do everything I could ever need to do in terms of video editing. Yet the work I do in them tends to slow my computer to a crawl, and I really wish the interface would get a facelift.

• Espresso and CSSEdit. Basically everything web-related goes through these applications. I absolutely love the live preview feature of CSSEdit, and I enjoy tweaking stuff on my site (and other sites) with it.

• Aperture. I completely fell in love with this application the first time I saw it in use, and I never could go back and use iPhoto. All my images (besides my LittleSnapper library) are cataloged in aperture, and in my opinion it has set a standard for how user interfaces should be designed.

• MarsEdit. Because writing and editing blog posts in the WordPress admin area just isn’t fun.

• TextWrangler. You can’t beat the price of this application. It’s everything I need in a text editor and more; I prefer it to Pages a good bit of the time. In fact, I am writing everything in this interview in it.

5. Do you own any other Mac gear?

I own a white 16GB iPhone 3G (the Evil Empire won’t let me upgrade to a 3GS), and the Apple Bluetooth Headset which I use in the car. I have an AirPort Express that tends to bounce around the house depending on where it’s most needed at the time.

6. Do you have any future upgrades planned?

I’m in need of a new computer at some point in the future, but I don’t know what to get. A MacBook Air is almost necessary for college (I’ve strained my shoulders enough carrying around a MacBook Pro and lots of textbooks), but incredibly limiting for everything else. A 27″ iMac would be great for everything except for school. I’ll probably just settle with a high-end MacBook Pro and hope I don’t have to deal with files from a RED camera anytime soon.

More Sweet Setups

John’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

ADRIAN’S SETUP:

1. WHAT DOES YOUR Desk LOOK LIKE?

One is my setup at work, the other is at home.

2. WHAT IS YOUR CURRENT MAC SETUP?

At home I use a 17″ MacBook Pro which is almost always connected to my Sennheiser headphones. For digital photography I love my Panasonic Lumix LX3 with an Eye-Fi card that sends photos to my computer wirelessly. I just bought a 500gb external Western Digital drive that is powered by Firewire 800. As you can see, my home setup also includes a ping-pong table and a cat. At work I am on a Mac Pro (2x Dual Core 2.66Ghz). Possibly the most important technology in my toolbox is a sketchbook.

3. WHY ARE YOU USING THIS SETUP?

I try to never be too far from objects that keep my mind at play. You can see the toys above my desk at work, the wall of artwork at home, the headphones, and the ping pong table. I try to balance the utmost simplicity in my work space without losing the inspiration that I find from posters, artwork, toys, and games.

4. WHAT SOFTWARE DO YOU USE ON A DAILY BASIS, AND FOR WHAT DO YOU USE IT?

• I use TextMate, Transmit, and CSSEdit for web development
• There aren’t many days when I don’t open Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign
• Adium for instant messaging
• Google Search Box recently replaced QuickSilver for shortcuts
• Fever for RSS feeds
• MarsEdit for blogging on all my WordPress powered sites
• Transmission is typically going in the background

5. DO YOU OWN ANY OTHER MAC GEAR?

I have an iPhone and an aging PowerMac G4. I still use an old 3rd Generation iPod for audio books on my commute. The internet reaches me through my Airport Express Base Station.

6. DO YOU HAVE ANY FUTURE UPGRADES PLANNED?

I am holding my breath for the rumored Mac netbook. If that doesn’t come into existence I might just try installing OSX on a netbook to create a hackintosh. I have to resist the urge to upgrade constantly. I would love a new unibody MacBook Pro and an iPhone upgrade, but realistically those purchases are at least a year away. I have had my eye on a 30″ Apple Cinema display for a while.

More Sweet Setups

Adrian’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.

Justin’s Setup

1. What does your desk look like?

2. What is your current mac setup?

There are three different setups pictured … work, home, and a second desk at home.

My work setup has a Dual Quad-Core Nehalem Mac Pro with three 24″ Dell G2410 monitors, 12GB of RAM, 1.28TB internal disk space, 1.5TB external disk space (backup), Bose Companion 2 Speakers, Bose Quiet Comfort 3 headphones, a Logitech MX 1100 mouse, and a Fujitsu S500 document scanner.

The main home desk holds my 15″ unibody MacBook Pro (when I’m at home that is) and a 20″ Apple Cinema Display. The second desk has a 20″ white Intel iMac with three G-tech external hard drives (totaling 1.57TB), a Logitech DiNovo Edge keyboard, a Logitech MX Revolution Mouse, Bose Companion 5 speakers, and a 32″ Samsung TV connected to it for Hulu, movies, etc.

3. Why are you using this setup?

My work setup is about two months old at the time of writing. It was a gift from my boss for my two year-anniversary at this company. I develop web applications to extend our windows only ERP which means I need a Windows XP virtual machine running the ERP client and SQL Management Studio and a Server 2003 virtual machine running development databases. The screens are perfect for me as I’m most concerned with resolution and not accurate color.

My home setup is used for those late-night coding sessions to meet a deadline and some freelance projects. The desk with the cinema display is perfect for me as I prefer to work from my laptop at home and it allows me to just plug in and get the benefits of a desktop without having to transfer files over, get MAMP going, etc. The second desk is used mainly just to keep iTunes up all the time (see other Mac gear section for an explanation) and occasionally for my wife or I just to get on the internet real quick when our laptops are downstairs or in the car. She will usually use whatever desk I’m not at if she is on the computer while I’m in there (thus the reason for two desks instead of one big one).

4. What software do you use on a daily basis, and for what do you use it?

• Dropbox – This made the top of the list because it is the best syncing utility on the market. Changes to your files are instantly synchronized across all of your connected computers on any platform (Mac, Linux, or Windows). This is critical for anyone with multiple computers. It is free for up to 2GB or $100/year for 50GB. (I’m not affiliated with them, just love their service)
• Evernote – This is similar to Dropbox, but for notes. It instantly syncs across computers and handhelds. I can take notes in a meeting on my laptop and then just close my laptop and they are instantly available on my desktop when I get back to my office.
• Mail – This is pretty self explanatory. I used to have the GrowlMail extension for this but it broke with Snow Leopard and I haven’t checked for an update since.
• iTunes – I listen to music throughout the day, some on Sirius some from my library.
• Safari – This is my web-browser of choice for everything but the initial testing of web applications I develop.
• Firefox (w/ Firebug & Web Developer) – Firebug is a fantastic javascript debugger, and web developer allows you to see the HTML generated after the page load (injected with AJAX, etc.). I use Prism for the web-app platform for my users so I test early versions of the web-apps in Firefox (prism is based off firefox) so that I can be sure I have a working version first and then take care of the cross browser idiosyncrasies that pop up later.
• Adium – Connected to my internal Jabber server, AIM, and MSN. To be honest though, lately I have been using iChat for AIM as file transfers seem more reliable in it and I haven’t taken the time to figure out what is wrong with Adium.
• Things – This is the best task manager I have yet to find. It has WiFi syncing with iPhone and I sync the database up over Dropbox. The latter isn’t perfect but as long as I remember to only have one copy open at a time it works great (which is fine for me as I typically only need Things on my laptop when out of town).
• Textmate – Best editor out there, hands down. I used to use Coda but recently switched to Textmate, CSSEdit, and Firefox/Firebug after I realized I was just using code/css editor in Coda and everything else outside of it.
• CSSEdit – My favorite CSS editor.
• Parallels – I have to run XP and Server 2003 and after several VMware / Parallels comparisons Parallels came out on top.
• Apple Remote Desktop – It is a little more versatile than the basic screen sharing tool plus allows me to add normal VNC clients to the list.
• Microsoft Remote Desktop – Used for server administration, all the servers at my primary job run Windows so this is critical.
• Toast – Burning CDs and DVDs, however I don’t do too much of this anymore. The only time is to give a copy of a finished product to someone or to burn a lot of data that would be too large to efficiently send over the internet (15GB+).
• Transmission – Favorite BT client.
• Transmit – Favorite FTP client, offers MobileMe sync which is pretty convenient.
• Visual Hub – They stopped development on this program and it will eventually become obsolete but it is still the best media convertor in my opinion.
• VLC – Plays just about anything you throw at it.
• Tweetie – My favorite Twitter app.
• Terminal – Doing normal linux server administration stuff for freelance projects.
• Pages – Better than MS Word.
• Excel – Better than Numbers.
• Fireworks / Photoshop – I switch between the two for image editing and layouts.
• Pulsar – Excellent Sirius/XM internet radio tool. The web version at sirius.com (aside from having Snow Leopard problems) would prompt for a password each time, ask every hour if I was still listening, and had a very outdated interface. Pulsar is perfect, click the station, it plays, and that’s it (that is all it should do).
• Balsamiq Mockups – I use this for quick web-app and web-site mockups. It has a lot of great built-in shapes and the sketch looking results promotes people to make changes in the initial design meeting (vs. 90% through development or during implementation).
• Teleport – Great mac port/frontend of Synergy (and updated for Snow Leopard) that allows me to use one mouse/keyboard for multiple macs. This is most beneficial with my laptop on my desk, I can just move the mouse from the desktop to the laptop like it was just another monitor.
• Fever – This is fantastic, self-hosted RSS aggregator that I actually found out about from another setup on this site. I use Fluid to keep this as a separate application in my dock.
• Adobe ConnectNow – This is a great tool for online meeting. I checked out other alternatives like DimDim but found that ConnectNow was the easier for the participants and myself.

5. Do you own any other Mac gear?

My wife and I both have iPhones, her’s a 3G and mine a 3G S. Also, my wife has a 13″ unibody MacBook.

I have a 1TB Time Capsule for wireless backups. The Time Capsule and Airport Extremes are fantastic wireless routers as they have dual band G and N plus guest networking built in. They lack some of the options and flexibility offered by some others but when I’m at home the last thing I want to worry is tweaking a router for QoS, etc. … I spend enough time doing that at work.

We have four Airport Expresses and two Apple TVs that I have picked up over the years. The Airport Expresses are solely used for airtunes (and one as a bridge for a wired printer). With Apple’s remote iPhone app we can be in any room and play any music from the iMac library (which is why it is always on) to any main room in the house (living room, kitchen, my room (office), wife’s room (scrapbooking), or master bedroom) with the flick of a finger.

6. Do you have any future upgrades planned?

I would like to get a 24″ LED Cinema Display to replace the 20″ Cinema display at home. That being said it isn’t a priority since I try not to work too much from home and I already have the 20″.

I would like to get a Macbook Air again. I bought the first generation one on launch day and it was so horrifically slow for what I did it just sat around until I eventually sold it. I have read the new model is significantly better and want to try it out again. My job entails that I always have a computer with me when I travel (granted, I wouldn’t travel without a computer anyway) and sometimes the MacBook Pro is a bit of a bear to lug around when the only thing I plan on using it for is to check email and post some pictures. If Apple releases a tablet I will certainly get one of those.

I’d really like to pick up a pair of the Dr. Dre Beats (studio) headphones, they sound fantastic. I need to find out if they have a rechargeable battery though. My Bose ones do and there is no worse feeling than getting a dead battery mid-day because I forgot to charge them all week. I would gladly go through a AAA every week or two not to have to worry about recharging the battery every couple days (and not having to bring the recharger with me when I travel).

More Sweet Setups

Justin’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.