💻 New Mac, new setup (June 2025)

I’ve recently moved into an office in the garden – a fancy shed, in other words. Doing so exposed a weakness in my tech setup, based as it was on a Mac Mini. When I returned to the house, I couldn’t access my computer!

Now, wellness gurus would probably be yelling “GOOD!” at me at this stage, but, y’know, sometimes I don’t want to have to go outside to do some work, and I fancy doing my email over a lazy breakfast, or I just want to check something in the evening. It was really annoying not being able to. So, I switched the Mini for a new Macbook Air.

I went for the 15″ one, as I don’t travel much these days, and the extra screen real estate is good for my eyes. I also maxed out the specs, so got the new M4 model with the 512GB SSD and 32GB RAM in the Midnight colour (a sort of light black, if that makes any sense at all). I don’t want to be having to replace this thing any time soon.

In terms of hardware to make it work in the office/shed, I went for:

  • Logitech MX Master 35 mouse – this mouse is brilliant. I find the Apple Magic Mouse cumbersome and heavy, the lack of buttons annoying, and the ability to use it as a trackpad replacement useless. This mouse is regularly recommended on various trustworthy websites, and I have to say I love it. It’s pretty light for a wireless mouse, very ergonomic, and has loads of programmable buttons which both don’t get in the way and are really useful.
  • Spigen Urban Fit Laptop Case – fairly standard hard case to protect the outside of the laptop. Has a pleasing texture, but isn’t sticker friendly, I don’t think. It has however proved to be very adhesive when it comes to animal hair.
  • Rain Design mTower Vertical Laptop Stand – went for a vertical stand, because I’m happy to keep the laptop shut when I am at my desk and plugged into the monitor. Fits the laptop nicely.
  • WAVLINK Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station – this was the thing I probably did the most research and agonising over. Some of these things are ridiculously expensive, but at the same time i didn’t want to go too cheap, and find myself overloading the thing. This has worked with no problems since I got it.
  • Apple Magic Keyboard with Touch ID and Numeric Keypad – i umm’d and ahh’d over the keyboard – was very tempted to go for something mechanical, but in the end stuck with the official Apple one, but went for the bigger size.

This is in addition to the Dell 27″ monitor and Logitech webcam I already owned. Some of this may seem a little pricey (although by no means the most expensive kit out there) but I have to say, using higher quality gear genuinely makes a difference to my productivity (honest).

Software wise, I’ll break this down into categories to make life easier! There’s a lot and quite of a few of these are utilities that start up on login – hence why I maxed out the RAM, I guess.

Setapp

Setapp is a neat subscription that gives you access to a mighty range of Mac apps for a single monthly price. You do have to make it work for you, but luckily some of these apps are properly best in class, and the others are good enough to replace first choices which otherwise would cost extra dosh.

  • Canary Mail – I have an email address that runs on Fastmail rather than Gmail, and I like to have a desktop client for it (I use Apple Mail for my iCloud account. I have too many email addresses!). Canary was available in Setapp, so I use it. It’s fine.
  • Ulysses – one of the better writing apps for longer documents out there. I tried using it for an ‘everything bucket’ for a while but that didn’t work out.
  • Commander One – a Finder replacement, with a lot more options but most importantly a twin pane display, which makes organising stuff much easier. I could live without it, but it’s included, so what the hell?
  • Bartender – when you run as many apps as I do, the menu bar at the top of the Mac desktop gets very cluttered. Bartender helps me keep it neat and tidy.
  • Rocket Typist – this allows me to create various little abbreviations that automatically expand into words or phrases. For example, I can type my telephone number with just 2 characters – and I don’t have to remember what it is! Text Expander is probably the number 1 app in this space, but Rocket Typist works fine for me.
  • Dato – the Mac shows the date in the menu bar, but it doesn’t do anything. Dato makes it clickable, so it shows what meetings I have coming up. Inessential but neat.
  • Paste – a clipboard manager. It remembers everything cut, copy, and paste, so I can go back and use them again. This is one of those tools that once you’ve used it, you wonder how you ever managed before.
  • Yoink – rarely used but helpful when needed. When dragging and dropping stuff (files, folders, text, photos etc) around the screen, Yoink lets you temporarily leave it in a dropzone on the desktop, then come back for it later
  • CleanShot X – makes taking screenshots a breeze, a significant improvement on the built in Mac method
  • Soulver – I used this purely as a sort of conversational calculator. I’m not great with figures, and so I can type calculations in words to get the response I am after – usually working out percentages!
  • Nitro PDF Pro – a PDF editing tool that saves me having to shell out for Acrobat Pro. It’s fine.
  • CleanMyMac – a handy set of tools to keep the Mac working as it should
  • Coherence X – can turn websites into desktop apps. I don’t use it much, other than for Google Tasks, which I use to log daily to dos, and having it lingering in a browser tab is not something I enjoy (this is very niche, I get it)
  • Mindnode Classic – a really easy to use mind mapping tool. Been using this for planning and organising thoughts for years
  • MarsEdit – my desktop blog editor of choice. Venerable but brilliant. I don’t use it quite as often as I used to, because of the micropost system now in place on this blog, but I still prefer using MarsEdit to blog when I can.
  • Gemini – not something I use all that often, but Gemini hunts out duplicate copies of files, and lets me tidy them up.
  • Permute – really good little app for converting all sorts of media files to different formats. Not a problem many people have, but when you do, it can be really annoying.
  • Sip – a really simple tool for picking colours from anywhere on the screen
  • TextSniper – pulls text out of images
  • Diagrams – makes a certain type of diagram very prettily. Doesn’t work for everything though.

Fair to say I get my money’s worth from Setapp.

Free as in speech and/or beer

There’s a bunch of things I use that don’t cost money – not all of them proper open source though.

  • NewNewsWire – an old school feed reader for people like me who need such things. It’s free and open source, and brilliant.
  • AltTab – I find the Mac version of the Alt-Tab shortcut annoying – it scrolls through open applications, not windows. This fixes that – and does a load of other stuff I haven’t really looked into.
  • Rectangle – makes resizing windows, tiling them just how you want them etc easy peasey.
  • iTerm – a general improvement on the basic Terminal app. To be honest, I install this out of habit more than anything. Likewise the first thing I do with it is install Homebrew – also for no good reason.
  • Alfred – again, an improvement on the built in Spotlight tool. Means I can do more from the keyboard.
  • BBEdit – when I need to edit some bog basic text, BBEdit is my go to, especially as it now had a free version.
  • Google DriveLocalise runs on Google WorkSpace, and I usually happily use the browser. Sometimes though moving files around on the desktop is easier.

Stuff I have bought

I do shell out for individual bits of software occasionally, although it is relatively rare. One of the things I love about the Mac though is the time and care taken by those developing apps for it – and that makes spending the money a little bit less painful than it would be otherwise.

  • Mimestream – I like having email in a native app rather than a browser tab, and Mimestream – despite the terrible name – seems to be the best at working with Google accounts.
  • DEVONthink 3 – my new everything bucket, and it’s working great for me. Having tried loads, I just decided to splash the cash and buy the behemoth. I use about 2.5% of its features, admittedly, but I like them. Main uses are storing PDFs and archives of webpages in a library, keeping notes from all my meetings in one place, and maintaining a work journal of what I am doing and who I am talking to.
  • Transmit – bit of an indulgence, but I find every other FTP client annoying, so am happy to shell out for Transmit’s ease of use.
  • Sketch – a recent addition. I had been using Figma’s free version on the web for my very basic needs, but was reaching the point where I would have to start paying, and so I went for the native desktop option instead. It feels solid, although as with much of the software I use, I barely scratch the surface of its capabilities.
  • Screen Studio – a new one for me, but this seems to be the top choice for screen recording – something I intend to do a lot more of in the near future.
  • OmniOutliner – I bought this on the App Store years ago, and so always download it, although it rarely gets used these days, unless I am really struggling to get my thoughts in order about something
  • Pixelmator Pro – been using this, and the non-pro version before it, for years. My image editing needs are very basic and Pixelmator just works
  • BetterMouse – way better than the standard Logitech software for customising my mouse. Well worth the £7 or however much it was!
  • Microsoft Office – grumble, grumble. A necessary evil.

Native apps for web services

Most of these are just Electron or similar wrappers around websites, that give an ersatz sense of the solidity one gets from a proper native app. Still, at least they don’t take up valuable tab space.

  • Trello – still one of the best ways to throw together a collaborative to do list / lightweight project plan
  • Slack – a customer uses it heavily, and i am a member of a couple of community focused groups
  • Miro – no idea whether Miro is the best app for the online workshopping thing, but it continues to serve my needs just fine
  • Whatsapp – seems to be the default comms method for an awful lot of people these days. Being able to type on a full size keyboard speeds things up, even if it doesn’t reduce the typos!
  • Zoom – still my preferred way of doing online meetings. Google Meet is quick and easy, but feels flakey still. Teams is a royal pain in the backside, although sadly it seems to now be the default for most of the people I talk to regularly.

So, quite a lot of stuff. It’s taken me an age to put this together, so hopefully there’s something useful in there for everyone. My question: have I missed anything?!

Macbook Wireless Problem

I love my MacBook, I really do (although I am rather tempted by one of these). However, of late I have been having a really annoying problem it and my home wireless broadband.

I generally turn off the router during the night, to let it cool down and whatnot, then switch it on again at about 8 in the morning. The mac gets turned on then to deal with with any email etc that has come in, then I get the lad ready and do the school run. When I get home, the mac is fired up again and I start work.

Then we get to around three in the afternoon, when the Mac suddenly gets disconnected from the wireless, and any attempts to reconnect are doomed to ‘time out’. There’s nothing wrong with the router, and when I start up my lumbering Acer Aspire, which runs Ubuntu, it connects fine. If I am lucky, the Mac will be talking to the router again by about eight in the evening.

This is profoudly annoying. Does anyone know what might be happening here?

Some MacBook Questions

Mac

I do love my Macbook, I have to say, and it gets an awful lot more use than my Vista laptop, which you can see just in shot, shut as usual. Mine is a 2.2 GHz model – the middle range one. I need to get some stuff sorted out for it, and could do with a bit of help.

  1. I want to upgrade my memory to the maximum 4gb. How come it costs £240 from Apple but only £63.44 from Crucial? I mean, I know Apple probably charge a premium but that’s a huge difference!
  2. Photo editing software. I currently have Pixelmator, but it does my head in a lot. Now I have a DSLR I reckon I need something a little better for photo editing. I was thinking Photoshop Elements?
  3. I have a little Sony Handycam that records straight to hard disk. It lacks an external mic capability, which is a pain, but it makes up for that in cuteness. Anyway, it being a Sony, I can’t currently edit the .mpgs that the Handycam exports on the Mac, they just don’t like each other. I found this solution on the web, suggesting using Quicktime Pro (which I don’t yet have) and something called ‘MPEG_Streamclip_1.8.dmg’ to sort this out. Assuming this means I can edit the video on the Mac, should I stick with iMovie or is it worth investing in something like Final Cut Express? Does Adobe Premiere exist on the Mac? I can’t see it anywhere.
  4. Storage. As well as the MacBook and the Vista laptop, I can possibly see myself investing in an iMac at some point in the future. I’d like to have one drive which they all share, or through which they all sync up with. Is this what a Time Capsule could do? For instance, I’d like all my photos to be in one place, rather than spread over 3 different machines, or at least have the same photos on every computer.
  5. 5. How do I hook my MacBook up to an external monitor? It doesn’t seem to have the right shaped hole anywhere on it.

If anyone can help me out on any of these things, I’d be most grateful!

Finding Mac Software

I am trying to find all the software I need to make my Macbook as useful to me as my Vista laptop is. Obviously some things are made much easier, like making Skype calls (no longer any requirement for a headset) or video (built in camera, no webcam needed!), but others are proving hard. I need replacements for my social media toolkit.

So far, I have been having most difficulty finding a decent offline blog editor. I guess you might question why this is necessary when WordPress has a perfectly adequate built-in online one, but for some reason I find blogging a much calmer activity when using a desktop editor. I never claimed to make sense 😉

So, I have downloaded MarsEdit, Qumana and Ecto and will be trying these out over the next week or so. I think it is going to be a compromise choice in the end, as it doesn’t look like any of them offer the functionality of a Windows Live Writer or a BlogJet. Ecto has already failed to publish this post once, and crashed, so I would say its days are numbered (not least because it also ballsed up the paragraphs on the post so I had to edit it online anyway. Grr).

Another hunt is for an FTP client, and on this score things are going much better, thanks to my Twitter buddies Laura, Ed and Jenny. I have downloaded Fetch, Transmit and Cyberduck and all seem perfectly adequate. Think it will come down to which I feel most comfortable using rather than functionality.

I have also installed Skype, something called Skitch which I think will let me take screenshots like SnagIt does, and something called TextWrangler for making notes with.

I’ve bought a Mac!

Yes, for the first time in my life, I have bought a Mac – to be precise, a MacBook with 2.2Ghz, 120gb hard disk and a paltry 1gb RAM. That will be the first thing to be resolved, I reckon, but I might wait til next pay day for that treat.

My initial thoughts are good, it seems quick and I got it up and running with no problems at all. It’s a lovely size, which makes it ideal for lugging about, which was my intention really when buying it. Installing software seems easy enough, and so far I have added:

  • Firefox – natch
  • NetNewsWire – RSS reader, a Newsgator product so it syncs nicely with FeedDemon on the PC. Doesn’t seem a patch on FD though – and how the hell do I hide feeds from view which don’t have new items? Grr.
  • Marsedit – hoped this would be a useful replacement for Windows Live Writer and BlogJet, and while it has a nice way of managing images – especially from Flickr – it doesn’t even seem to have wysiwyg editing, which strikes me as being rather backward.

So, am impressed with the Mac, less so with the software. Any hints and tips gratefully received!