Hey all!
Just today I achieved a long-time goal of mine: to have both a Mac and a PC setup ready to go at all times. I picked up a new L-shaped desk from UpliftDesk and a Dell 38" ultrawide and organized some stuff around and voila, new office setup.
I’ve got a lot of stuff on this desk so let me know if you want to know more about any of the items pictured 
Mac is on the right, PC on the left.
Note: I added some details about my setup below.
Tell us about your keyboard, mouse, is that an elgato?
wallpapers and mat!
Sure thing!
Mouse: Logitech G502 Lightspeed Wireless Gaming Mouse - I love this thing because of the variety of the button positions. Too many gaming mice just stick like eight buttons at your thumb. This one puts two more buttons to the left of your index finger and only three buttons at your thumb. I like this setup because in a lot of games there are different “secondary clicks” that allow you to check the status of the thing you clicked on or something similar. These secondary clicks benefit from the added precision of only having to press down on your mouse rather than push it to the side with your thumb.
Keyboard: NightFox from Input Club with Hako Clear switches - I loved the original WhiteFox so when they came out with the same keyboard in a darker colorscheme, I picked one up right away. While I still love this keyboard, if someone asked me today about picking one up, I might point them to the similar Drop ALT keyboard.
Wallpaper: No idea where I got it, taken from some wallpaper dump on Reddit, but here it is:
Desk Mat: Aurora artwork by N3art - This is an oversized playmat that I picked up this weekend at PAX Unplugged. I don’t think these folks sell this size on their website yet but you can definitely pick up a mousepad or a smaller 24" x 14" play mat. As I understand it, they’re working on getting these items manufactured and up on their website.
Monitor: Dell U3415W - Ultrawide4Life. For me, it’s dramatically changed the way I work and the experience I have when playing games. Truly awesome. That said, on Mac I recommend using some kind of window manager to make it easier to split up your screen (vertical thirds is the way to go). For this purpose, David often recommends Moom or Keyboard Maestro but I personally prefer Divvy. My workflows can change often from day to day requiring a different set of tools each time, so Divvy gives me the flexibility to have ad hoc setups rather quickly. That said, I still use Moom for one thing: saved window positions. There are some tasks I do more regularly and for those tasks I organize them with Divvy and then take a snapshot of them with Moom. Then I can go back to those window positions whenever I feel like it.
Mouse: Logitech MX Master 2 - Amazing Mouse. Solidly built, with awesome software for doing all sorts of things on your Mac (e.g. opening Misson Control, switching desktops, etc.). The side scroll wheel is a bit lackluster, but it does its job.
Keyboard: K-Type from Input Club with Hako True switches - Love this keyboard as well. I wanted the tenkeyless layout for doing work on my Mac so I went with this keyboard at the time. The K-Type actually generated a bit of drama between the two companies that joined forces to build it: Input Club and Massdrop. I think the drama’s over, but there might still be bad blood between the two. That aside, its a great keyboard but it’s not currently sold anymore in its original form. I can wholeheartedly recommend the Drop CTRL keyboard. I purchased one for work and couldn’t be happier with it. In fact, in some ways I think the build quality is superior to the K-Type with tighter tolerances and less wiggle.
Desk Mat: Seasons artwork by N3art.com - Awesome item that you can’t get online yet. See my notes in the PC desk mat section.
Monitor: Dell U3818DW - Picked up this 38" bad boy on Black Friday. Hot damn is this a lot of space. As I said above, I use a combination of Moom and Divvy to get my windows managed on this massive display. Do check out the monitor section in the PC segment above if you skipped it. Good stuff over there.
Elgato Stream Deck XL - Awesome macro deck. I use this mostly to run Keyboard Maestro macros. You can see the process I use over on this discussion on the Keyboard Maestro forums (hint: I don’t use Keyboard Maestro’s Stream Deck support as that has certain limitations). @MacSparky have you done it this way, or do you use the Keyboard Maestro built in stuff?
Also, because I love it so much, let me link to the chair I use: Black Flat Bungee Office Chair with Arms from the Container Store. It’s no Herman Miller (I have an Embody at work and it’s way better than this) but it does an amazing job at supporting my lower back at a fraction of the price. Also it’s mostly open so it breathes reasonably well.
Let me know if I missed anything!
Can we get the Mac and PC specs? I know its a Mac Mini but what config. did you go with? Same goes with the PC? How are they used? Are you a gamer, do you automate, Keyboard Maestro, Hazel?
Nice desk. I have an L-shaped desk but my home office is small enough that I have to put a filing cabinet under one end of it. That stops me having two - and I have more than two candidate devices.
Awesome set-up!
Apologies if I missed it in the description, but what is that wrist-guard(?) pad in front of the Mac keyboard? Do you have a link?
I don’t see any speakers. Are you using headphones all the time?
Nice setup. This wallpaper came from Steam during their Autumn sale about a couple of weeks ago. If you are on a PC and you own “Wallpaper Engine”, which btw, is an awesome, awesome app to have, you could download the same wallpaper which animates ever slightly - for instance, the guy at the counter is actually Gabe Newell (Steam owner) and he would animate his hands talking to his customer. Seriously, if you run a PC, you need Wallpaper Engine!
And if you are on ultra wide life and a PC, I will also recommend Display Fusion app. This is like the Keyboard Maestro for window and multi monitor (or I will argue, ultra wide monitor). I own a 38" ultra wide LG and I use Display Fusion to virtually split my monitor into 4 areas. One which is just a small column to the far left which I padded. In this small column, I put widgets. And because I use Display Fusion to pad it, when I maximize an app, Display Fusion will ensure that the window does not maximize over the padded area - my widgets always stay visible.
In addition to the padded area, Display Fusion splits my monitor into 3 smaller monitors - one for WhatsApp which is always there and unobstructed by other, two for browser or Word/PDF. And again, when I maximize in one of this virtual monitor, it does not spill over to the other one.
Let me respond one post at a time:
The PC is one that I built years ago and just upgraded parts as I needed them. I use it mostly for gaming so the most investment has gone into the GPU, I don’t need the other parts upgraded really.
In general, the PC is my play machine and the Mac is my work machine. Although most of my “real” work gets done on my work laptop pictured above, the Mac mini is my always on machine. It’s also my development machine for all my personal projects.
I’m part gamer, part software developer, part automator. So yeah I do some things with Hazel, Keyboard Maestro, TextExpander and some homegrown scripts that I wrote. Though because of the type of work that I do (software development), I don’t really get to play with those tools while I’m working. Most of the tools I use already have great automation built in, or I wrote my own automation for them a long time ago before I started using these tools.
As for games, I don’t have a 4k or 5k monitor so the 2080 that I bought a little while ago blows literally everything out of the water. I run everything on ultra with headroom to spare. Games I enjoy lately are:
That is indeed a wrist rest in front of my keyboard. It’s one that I bought years ago off of Amazon. The product listing doesn’t seem to exist on Amazon anymore after a quick search, but it’s the IMAK Wrist Cushion. IMAK Products was bought up by Brownmed a while ago and their products changed somewhat. I have both wrist cushions from before and after the acquisitions and they’re both reasonable. Since I can’t find the same listing on amazon, here’s a link to the Brownmed website where it looks like you can purchase their stuff: IMAK Ergo - Brownmed
Indeed! When there was a group buy on Massdrop a few years ago, I picked up the Massdrop x Sennheiser HD 6XX Headphoes (though it looks like you can just buy them off the website now) which were a remake of the ever popular HD 650 headphones with some improvements, I think. I use those regularly. Even without a DAC/AMP setup, they sound great. Then again, I’m no audiophile, I just wanted nice open back headphones for the house.
