My computer is a Mac Studio M1 Max that I bought along with a Studio Display for my retirement. I had to put a Thunderbolt 4 SSD to expand the meager internal drive. Underneath the desk is a 4 drive SoftRAID formatted for iTunes Library etc. The desk is a large L-shaped piece with lots of drawers and space, but the typing area is a little too tight on the left. I wanted to get a new desk along with the computer, but it is so huge, I would have to cut it up with a saw to get it out of my office, and don’t get me started on how heavy it is. So I gave up and kept it.
I have a Thunderbolt 3 external drive dock, but found if I use it (have to have the Apple converter), then my external SSD gets unmounted.
The desk is always a mess as I go from one project to another. And for the photographers out there, the slides are the dreaded family vacation slides that I am culling and the vast majority are pictures of buildings and places, with the family slides being digitized.
I’m doing something similar but with boxes of prints and where possible negatives. So many, I have eight archive boxes to work through. Mostly the family in the early days. Are you scanning Kodachrome? Using Silverfast?
That’s an M1 MBA on the left, and an M3 MBA on the right. Look closely and you can see a Keychron Q5 keyboard and Philips external monitor behind. On the low chest to the left you can’t see an OWC 11 port dock, which is running Gig Ethernet.
Oh, the wallpaper there? For Japan fans, that’s Horyuji in Nara-Ken…
Here’s a shot a few weeks ago showing the monitor at stretch:
Here is a pano showing my bookshelves, desk, an Apple Cinema Display, MacPro (2010) with a couple of backup drives on top, HP printer, and filing cabinets. And, yes, that is a touch-tone phone on the desk and it works. Also on the desk is a Garmin watch, iPad mini, and an OWC Drive Dock. Not shown, behind me, is a table with a MacBook Pro.
Using a Kodak Slide and Scan you see on the left to cull through the slides and it also does negatives. For slides or negatives that would be helped with more detailed scanning, I have a old Canon all-in-one that I will use, or send them off to a professional scanner.
OK. I’m home now. I can’t clearly demarcate where my work end any my personal stuff begins, but here are enough pictures to capture the organized chaos that is my office.
The next-over display/keyboard is the console for my Raspberry Pi (not visible in this picture) that managed my LAN’s DNS and DHCP, in addition to some fun stuff. It’s sitting on an old Technics cassette deck, which I had used to transfer lots of audio from tape to digital
The display that’s lit up is the console for my Mac mini (2018). Its keyboard is on the keyboard drawer.
That display is shared (via a KVM) with an older Micron PC (on the floor, to the left of the white trash can). It runs Linux and MS-DOS. Its keyboard is the one on the table in front of the display (with papers over it)
Behind the display is a small wire shelf where the Raspberry Pi and the cable modem live. My various external hard drives also live there.
Just to the right of that display, you can see the Mac, with its attached SuperDrive and a USB SSD
Ignore the box of Costco snacking nuts . But behind it is my home LAN router…
In the center, between the in-boxes and the cabinet, and behind more clutter, is a 16 port GigE network switch, which carries all the traffic for the room
The tall beige tower with a rainbow-painted base. It’s a 486 PC running DOS. It doesn’t get turned on much these days.
Next to that, on the floor is a Dell Precision T3400 running Linux. It serves some stuff for my home and I use it for some work.
Above the table is that row of three displays. The left and right ones are monitors while the center is my work laptop.
The left display usually extends the laptop’s desktop, but can also display the T3400’s console.
The right display usually extends the laptop’s desktop, but can also display the 486’s console
Next (mostly obscured) is a Mac SE. About as maxed-out as one can get: 4M RAM, 200M HDD, dual 1.44M floppies and 10M Ethernet
Next is an Apple //c, with Apple’s color monitor
Finally (with the keyboard on its side to make more desk space) is an Apple IIGS, with its RGB monitor. Partly obscured are its four floppy drives - 2 5.25" and 2 3.5" drives.
Also notable, on the second bookshelf, toward the center is my old iBook G4 (in its box). Still works, but I’ve removed the battery for safety.
And then on the fourth wall is the closet containing office supplies and spare parts and a few more old computers, most of which still work:
Mac Mini server 2011, left side, second shelf, in its box
Shuttle XPC with an Athlon-64 (4th shelf, left-side). No longer powers on. Probably needs a re-cap on the motherboard, but it’s not worth the work for a generic PC of that age.
I just have to say that I’m enjoying this topic immensely, and I’m thinking about writing about it in TidBITS to solicit even more photos. It’s fascinating to get a little glimpse into the lives of TidBITS readers through these photos, which are easily interpretable to those of us who have set up multiple desks over the years. You can tell who prints a lot, who like a super clean workspace, who focuses everything on a single machine versus having multiple machines around, and so on. And so many multiple monitor setups!
Agreed, and tangentially finding it interesting how many people have a single computer vs keep using older computers around the house. I know I’m probably on the extreme end of the number of computers in the house per people, but perhaps not as much an outlier as I thought.
Great to see everyone’s workspaces. It gives me some ideas to redo mine, which are in need of revision.
I am unusual in that I have two offices which I rarely use. This is my “main” office (Ikea desk) with old MBP running certain tasks and is my Plex server (there are half a dozen hard drives on the bottom shelf of the desk):
This is another MBP and a 2nd monitor, but I just don’t find sitting at a desk comfortable and haven’t done that for decades. Instead, 90% of my work is done on my portable laptop in a recliner in the den (or wherever I feel like working – in good weather I’ll sit outside):
From here I screen share into those other two MBP’s as needed and control them remotely. I like having multiple machines to spread workloads and tasks around, but I generally keep everything on Dropbox so all the machines are in sync and I can work from any of them.
Everything’s an organized mess, but you can see my MacBook Air (mostly used for travel), iPad Pro 11", Vision Pro, and a collection of Kindles.
My work has changed over the last few years and I need to redo my setup and shuffle some computers around, but I hate messing with stuff that more or less works.
(I’ll be forced to do some changes soon as I’m running into software incompatibilities with certain ancient setups. Like a few months ago Dropbox removed support for my oldest OS, but I can’t upgrade yet because of other critical software that won’t run on a newer OS.)
It is fascinating to see everyone’s workspaces - I guess it is really true that there is no ‘one-setup-fits-all’. My current desk setup which evolved gradually over several years:
LG UltraFine 5K 27" display (the first generation, 2016) on monitor arm
Logitech MX Master 3 mouse
Apple Magic Keyboard with Touch ID
CalDigit Element hub - one of the few hubs that are able to power the SuperDrive
Apple SuperDrive
JDS Labs Element DAC and amplifier
Sennheiser HD 650 headphones
They live on a standing desk with various lamps and wireless charging accessories. The color temperature of the Elgato ring light and the BenQ ScreenBar Plus can be adjusted. When necessary, I use the Sony RX100 Mk IV and the Elgato Cam Link 4K as webcam - not really necessary anymore since Continuity Camera is now available. All the cable mess (and the Time Capsule) lives in the tray underneath the desk. One Thunderbolt cable is usually all it takes to connect the MBP to the accessories, except when I need to use the headphones + stack.
I use a black wallpaper on the MBP; the mini LED display does go completely black when there is nothing on the desktop, like in this case.
I am really curious… Is this somewhere near Santo Antão (Cape Verde)?
While not powered by image recognition, I enjoyed using PeakFinder to decipher peaks and geographical features in photos. For example, this expanse of peaks viewed from Nagarkot (just outside Kathmandu, Nepal):
It is really handy to lay out paper maps on the (empty) desk, and refer to PeakFinder on the screen, at the same time.
Unfortunately, it is a case of biting off more than I can chew: I would be lucky to work through one page a day… and volume 4B has been released! The book on top (Stillwell’s Elements of Mathematics) is a lot more palatable, and the one below (Bertin’s Semiology of Graphics) is fascinating.
I have several workplaces at home ranging from a recliner in front of the TV, to the dining table, to my detached ‘home office’. If I know I need to sit down and get some heavy work done, it’s generally here.
It’s a bit messy at the moment but the primary machine is a 14" MBP (M1Max). There’s a Phillips 24" on the left (which gets moved to the dining room when I want to work inside) and a 32" Dell. There’s a rarely used HomePod Mini and under this are two OWC Express 4M2 enclosures running SoftRaid for photos, Lightroom and Capture One catalogs, and backups. Behind that is a Thunderbay 4 which holds the offsite backups for my work office. There’s also an Envoy Express which is for MacBook CCC clones.
I also have a rarely used iPad. On the floor is my old 15" MBP which is used for going back to anything which needs Yosemite vintage apps.
Other than that, standard wired keyboard and mouse, wireless trackpad. The room also features a second desk with a lampshade iMac, a weights machine, treadmill and so much other stuff as to be ridiculous. Oh, and it’s air-conditioned so it’s great for year-round working. When my daughter works from home she commandeers the main desk. All up it’s about 35sqm (315 sqft) and a good place to work (or work out).
The SuperDrive holds up the M1 iMac to the perfect height for the Thunderbolt Display sidekick.
I traded the mouse for a Magic Trackpad years ago. My favorite desk accessory is the wireless keyboard with integrated fingerprint reader.
I bought them back in the late 80s and early 90s and they were like $50 each ($120 today) so I could only afford one or two a year. They were nearly useless without the full set, since so many referenced other volumes, and so complicated I never did learn Mac programming until REALbasic (now Xojo) came along in 1998.
