UPDATE I’m taking two bets re: Finder and Federico 🙂

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For many years I had four setups: 27" iMac in my home office, 27" iMac in my kitchen nook casual work area (rarely used by my wife, but available), MacBook Pro for mobility/travel, and 12.9" iPad Pro.

iPad failed at being my mobile solution once I no longer needed iOS apps for my work on location with clients (large screen iPad was so much better than an iPhone).

When I finally ditched Intel, starting two years ago, I have ended up with three setups: Mac Studio M1 with Studio Display in my home office, MacBook Air M3 with Studio Display in kitchen nook, and the existing iPad Pro.

iPad Pro, even with iPadOS 26 beta, gets little use.

The kitchen nook Macbook Air does double duty as it is also my “grab and go” mobile solution.

My current “lessons learned”:

Macbook Air is so fast, no regrets.

Will seriously consider Mac Mini instead of Mac Studio when I eventually upgrade. Mac Studio, even for the video/photography work I do, seems too much power for so much added cost.

Mac Studio Displays worth the extra cost over 3rd party monitors. Beautiful aesthetics and screen quality/visibility is awesome. Hopefully will survive multiple upgrade cycles of compute without having to re-upp on monitor investment.

Love the reduction in number of systems I have to “manage”.

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How did you keep all setups in sync? Or did they have specific purposes / apps installed on each? I would love to do something like that. My Mac Mini is in my home office with 2 screens, but when I need to be in the Dining Room or Family Room with the family during “work/study sessions” I would like to have a MacBook with me, but always go back to…am I replicating everything? and then I get into storage issues LOL

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DropBox.

All my documents are in DropBox, almost nothing in local folders.

I use selective sync to avoid trying to push 4 TB of files from my Mac Studio into the smaller SSD on the laptop or other systems (when I had them).

Apple screwed us by changing to force cloud services to have their root folder on the system drive, but selective sync allows me to partition files into a few big buckets so I don’t have to worry about it.

I have several Crucial brand high-speed USB SSD’s (my preference over Samsung T’ series, but either are fine) that I use for big work.

e.g. My video editing is done directly on external 4 TB SSD. I just carry it with me from room to room. (I’m paranoid, so every time I finish a session, before I eject or unplug the external SSD, I make a backup of some kind.)

I pay for two licenses for DevonThink, just about everything else I use (including full Adobe Suite) allows use on two computers simultaneously, so no extra licensing issues or expense.

(When I had three systems, for some software, like Adobe, I would have to sign-out on one system if I wanted a different “set of two” computers to be active, but it was legally within the license rights.)

I use JumpDesktop to move between systems, so if something is on another system, I can just hop over and grab it.

I tried using network shares, but found it too cumbersome and Apple’s SMB file sharing would also screw-up on me at the worst time and I was tired of debugging weird networksharing stuff (do enough of it for my day job!)

Before anyone asks, I purposely have chosen not to use NAS as I want to reduce admin overhead and complexity, but that would work nicely if you have massive file/sharing needs where my approach would be too klunky.

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+1

+1

A NAS or SAN has to be protected the same as any other computer. That means backing them up frequently (schedule depends on how much data can you afford to lose), keeping software up to date, and checking logs.

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I am kind of intrigued to be honest. I have a NAS (Synology), love them a lot actually. It just seems to usually fail me at the last stretch.

Example: Was giving a retreat for a few days, had difficulty connecting to the NAS (even though I could connect to anything else), I had the backup in iCloud (which was a first that it actually worked)

Based on your structure, it should be able to work for me. I will probably explore how it affects Omnifocus, Craft, Notion, Obsidian, are the big ones for me.

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Am I right in thinking you paid for two DEVONthink licences because you used to have three devices? The standard DEVONthink licence has always allowed you to use it on two devices simultaneously, and that’s not changing with the move to the new licensing system in DT4 – so you’ll save yourself an extra seat cost when you upgrade… (I mention this in case somebody is put off buying DEVONthink because of the thought of having to pay twice for two devices…)

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Yes, sorry for the confusion. I haven’t looked at the licensing in a while.

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Apple is reverting back to the traditional Finder icon.

I’m sure this will make @ismh86 happy. :grinning:

I’m trying to remember who may owe me money. :rofl:

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Partial victory! I don’t know about the blue outline around the light side of the face. The yellow in the Notes icon still goes full bleed to the top and left/right and looks better.

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That’s fine, I’ll take partial payment. :rofl:

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I prefer the beta 1 icon, I think it has more character and the new one looks dull in comparison! You can never make everyone happy :wink:

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I’m still holding out for a six color apple.

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11th June:

31st July: From Federico’s Thoughts on iPadOS 26…

“iPadOS 26 has fundamentally revolutionized my workflow in just a little over a month… Actually using iPadOS 26, however, has… pushed me to completely rethink my desk setup (again) and the apps I use around the iPad Pro and iPadOS 26”

Joy in the inevitability.

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Cynic hat here - Creating controversy and fresh interest by flip-flopping between tools and writing “what I am using now” and “why I switched to xx” do fill the “what do I write about next” pipeline for text-based content creators very nicely. :smirk:

The only thing worse are the constant “what’s in my bag” YouTube videos :laughing:

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I’m annoyed by the YouTube videos on “what Mac should I buy” seemingly based on how good they are for editing YouTube videos!

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I know. Some YouTuber should go out and take a sampling of people in different professions - writers, engineers, accounts payable people, HR, whatever — and take them through a day of using a device/machine and make recommendations. I’m tried of X does not work simply because you can’t do something in Da Vinci Resolve. In my life, I’ve never had to touch Da Vinci Resolve and couldn’t even tell you what it is. That would also make for an interesting face off between the MacBook Pro, vs. MacBook Air vs. iPad (Pro / Air / Base). For most of us here, we already know how it would play out. But for consumers who are not technophiles, this could be a really useful survey and guide.

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Indeed, I’ve made this point a few times in previous posts or replies.

Content creators who discuss technology should resist the tendency to focus too narrowly on their own or similar professions. They should broaden their scope to show how people in more common lines of work use hardware, apps, and services effectively, offering recommendations based on groupings of similar work. For example, I have stopped listening to productivity podcasts produced by those whose profession is creating content about technology and productivity. I want to hear from professionals in their respective fields who share how the hardware, apps, and services they rely on make them both more effective and more efficient in their work. For instance, how does the doctor use an iPad to get her work done? How does the marketing executive use a Mac, and what apps and services does he use? What Mac hardware, apps, and services does the construction manager use, and why?

These kinds of real-world insights are what I want to hear. However, even in 2025, the vast majority of professionals use Windows machines. Consequently, the number of professionals who can speak to how they use Apple hardware and related apps and services is more limited. This may partly explain why many tech podcasters focus on individuals outside corporate environments and why there is a tendency to highlight independent content creators.

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Really insightful point — hearing from a variety of use cases is always welcome. It’s one of the reasons I love how @MacSparky and @ismh86 have run MPU — we get to hear from a variety of folks on their interview shows. I always find those shows enlightening.

I totally get podcasters wanting the iPad (or any tool) to work for them…it’s their profession. But hearing every podcaster talk about how the iPad needs to work better for podcasters…it just gets old for me. Mostly because I listen to a lot of tech shows (which is a “me” thing, not a fault of any podcast hosts).

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