“These days, I work on a 13-inch MacBook Air. On workdays, I connect it to a second display—a 17-inch ViewSonic monitor. My laptop serves as the primary screen, with my Dock at the bottom, and windows arranged somewhat haphazardly: Almost all apps live on the right (laptop) display, with extra Safari windows offloaded to the second monitor,” Lex Friedman writes for Macworld.
“This approach is totally normal to me. But I’ve come to realize that while maybe no man is an island, almost every Mac is: Everyone uses a different desktop setup,” Friedman writes. “And it’s interesting to learn how other folks use their Macs, because it might influence how you do things.”
Friedman writes, “If there’s in one thing I learned in talking to several fascinating people about how they use their Macs, it’s this: A lot of people—including me—don’t use Spaces, Mission Control, or Full Screen apps. But what do they use?”
Find out how Marco Arment, Jim Dalrymple, and others use their Macs in the full article here.
Just simple: MacPro 2012, 8 core, 2 x 1 TB SSD for programs, user and scratch disk. 4 x 4 TB HD in the bays, 32 GB RAM, 30 inch display plus 27 inch display. Perfect machine for FCP X, Logic X, InDesign CS6, Photoshop CS6. Love it.
Well, you certainly have a nice hardware setup, but that has nothing to do with the article, does it? What they;re talking about is how you manage your desktop, i.e., what apps you have in your dock versus your desktop, what folders, etc., and whether you use any of the apps that help you manage your desktop like Mission Control, Spaces, or Mavericks’ multi-desktop setup.
Apple gives us a lot of different ways of doing this, as does Windows to some extent, but I have always found Macs have the edge in productivity because of things like drag-and-drop with navigation to live folders, or apps, and OS X’s simple directory structures. It is always interesting to see how others are using these tools to hike their productivity, because you inevitably learn something that you can use or adapt to your own workflows. It’s also nice to share with people who you may see struggling with the Mac UI after switching from Windows or Linux.
Interesting article, maybe I Love Mac can now share HOW he’s managing all that slick hardware?
dmz
Sorry, I forgot to add: two screens are extremely helpful for FCP X, one of the apps what makes best use of a two screen environment. One screen for timeline, correction, files, etc., and one for preview window. Once you used it you never want to go back.
If I don’t work in FCP X I usually use the 30 inch screen for InDesign and Photoshop, both are no native full screen apps. The 27 inch screen I use for Mail and Safari, sometimes in full screen mode, sometimes side by side each app on half of the screen, vertically divided with Cinch, a simple window manager.
This way I avoid a cluttered desktop and have everything in the right place.
@I love Apple
small pecker syndrome ?
Command – Tab is how I quickly move from one app to another.
I also use Mission Control to clear away windows so I can quickly get to my desktop, and 4-finger scroll to see all open windows in an app.
I forgot about the other options, I’ll have to look into those again.
Mac Pros with dual large displays are the norm here.
For work, we seldom use full-screen apps, and almost never use Mission Control or Spaces. Notifications are turned off — that’s what an iPhone is for. The Mac Dashboard is used more often than web browsers or iOS apps for looking up simple things like weather, traffic, etc.
Why? Because we work on our Macs, which means we don’t like ads or intrusions, and we want all our stuff on screen before our eyes instead of hidden.
Your mileage may vary, especially if your job description is “consumer”.
This is precisely how I used to use my Windows desktop machine at work, except for dashboard, of course. I would have loved to have had a Mac instead, but corporate IT doofusi would not permit Macs on their poorly secured systems.
But yeah, that makes perfect sense to me for someone who has a dozen applications with multiple windows for each open all the time. Once you get used to it, it’s very efficient, be;ieve it or not.
I hot corner the bottome left for seeing the desktop. Nice quick mouse flick and I’m there.
I also hot corner the bottom-left to show desktop.
My bottom-right corner puts all the monitors to sleep.
I have two Thunderbolt Cinema 27 displays hooked up to MacBook Retina 15 in this configuration:
[ ][ ]
[ 27 ][ 27 ]
[ ][ ]
[ ]
[ 15 ]
I spread out work on the two 27 screens. (Usually web, notes, etc on left; Eclipse or other development environment Full Screen right)
The 15 has the dock at bottom and three spaces:
1: Email Full-Screen
2: Empty desktop (i.e. no distractions, access to desktop files)
3: OmniFocus to-do list manager Full-Screen
4: iTunes Full-Screen
The spaces got squeezed out of those screens!
[………………..][………………..]
[……..27……..][……..27……..]
[………………..][………………..]
…………[………………]
…………[…….15…….]
How about desks? I sit in the middle of three quarter circle desks so I can rotate between work.
Two quarter-circle desks form a half circle with my work-a-day 27/15/27 monitors and MacBook (shown above) on the left and a Windows PC I use for GPU computing with three new dual GPU-cards driving three ancient Apple Cinema displays forming 30/30/30 on the right.
The third quarter circle desk faces the other way, with spaces on either side so I can get in and out of the circle. I use that desk to study and design on paper, facing away from all six monitors.
I HIGHLY recommend working inside circular desks. Far more ergonomic than straight desks.
“My bottom-right corner puts all the monitors to sleep.”
Control-shift-eject does the same thing, and frees up the bottom-right corner for starting screen saver or…
These are Mac experts? Ha! What about power users who do everything simultaneously and where their desktops look like a war zone.
cool you have a battlefield too
agreed!
I just have a hot chick in a short skirt with no panties on wearing expensive perfume sit on my lap and any difficulties I have with my Mac melts away to nothingness.
Mac mini connected to Dell 2713HM screen. Xcode and iphone simulator and real estate around to click on xcode help or safari to get them front. Cmd tab to flick through obscured windows and cmd space to start new apps when not in the dock. Pretty old school I think.
Looks like another slow day in the writer’s bullpen at MDN..
“If nothing pops up tomorrow we’ll do a story on who still prefers CRT monitors….”
Actually, this is the sort of stuff MDN used to be all about, until idiot tech/biz analcyst spews, Apple Bear Bullshit and stock prices became the priority. I miss the days of joyful Mac trivia around here. Not everything is about angst and contention.
So there is hope on someday seeing a CRT vs flatscreen user
satisfaction comparison story?
Heh! If you’d been talking to me 10 years ago I would have given you the lecture about which was better for color management, as there were some severe limitations in most LCD screens way back then. These days, it no longer matters, which is one reason LCDs have successfully replaced CRTs for just about all uses. I would also have happily ranted on about LCD versus plasma flat TVs. But that issue is also now dead.
…and power user / hidden tips
True dat!!!
15″ rMBP open on a 6″ riser. 27″ thunderbolt to the right. Bliss.
Really want to add another 27″ thunderbolt to the left.
I use a similar setup at work, except my 27″ the monitor is in the center and 15″ rMBP on the left. I use a mouse and keyboard connected by bluetooth.
Mavericks handling of multiple monitors has improved this, since the menubar is now available in both monitors.
13″ MacBook. Mission Control upper-left hot corner…rarely use it. Application Windows in upper-right hot corner…never use it. Launch Pad? Hey look! I have a Desktop 2! Dock on the left and up in the corner (using TinkerTool, and I see Onyx now supports the ‘start’ Dock position too) and smallish. Not hidden. Never connect it to an external monitor, but do have a 24″ iMac at work. It’s set up the same way as the MacBook. I need to use Cmd-Tab more. I wish Mission Control and Application Windows would have a baby. The windows are too piled on top of each other in Mission Control.
Damn! Just scored a nice iPad Air at Target. Traded in my iPad 3 for $200. Plus $20 off the iPad Air to begin with. $279. Nice. Quick and easy. They also sold me the AppleCare. They had three 16 gig iPad Air ‘s and that’s what I wanted. They sold the other two while I was buying mine. They had a variety of other configurations too. Target could sell all they could get! Great deal. Especially for older iPad owners . Even iPad one!
I use my applications folder in my dock with grid view. I find this to be a much better app launcher than Launchpad.
I sit on a toilet with my iPad mini, using a shell program and a vnc program hacking all your fancy desktops!
What I do is group application suites like Adobe Creative Suite and MS Office into group folders that I access from the Dock. I’ll use Adobe CS as an example. Create a folder on the desktop and name is Adobe CS. With the folder highlighted, do a Command-i to bring up its Info window. Now go into the Applications folder and click on the Adobe Acrobat folder to highlight it. Again do a Command-i to bring up its Info window. We’re going to borrow the Acrobat folder’s icon and use it as the Creative Suite’s icon. Click on the icon in the Acrobat Info window to highlight it and then do a Command-c to copy it to the Clipboard. Now click on the plain folder icon in the Creative Suite folder you created to highlight it and then do a Command-v to paste the Acrobat folder icon in its place. You don’t have to do this, but it looks better and is easier to find in the Dock. Now go to your Adobe Creative Suite folder in your Applications folder and open it. View this in column view, makes it easier to do this. Now go into each application folder and click and drag the application icon into the Creative Suite folder created earlier while holding down the Command-Option keys down. This will create an alias of the application into the folder. Do this with all the apps within the suite of software. Acrobat is in it own folder, so grab those too. Because you created the aliases in a different location, you won’t have the the word aliase after the application name. When I create these shortcut folders, I want them accessible to other people who may use the same computer but log onto it as a different user. Go to the Hard Drive/Users/Shared folder. Create a new folder and name it Aliases. Place the folder of aliases created earlier into it. Next, drag the Adobe Creative Suite alias folder to the right side of the Dock divider. Right click or Command click on it in the Dock and select View As Icon. Also select List View. Now when you click on it in the Dock, you’ll have a full list to all the applications that are part of the Adobe Creative Suite. About 21 of them for Adobe Creative Suite 6. Plus that Acrobat icon in the Dock looks nice and is easy to find.
Is there an app or setting that will automatically open programs to designated parts of the screen. I have my windows where I want them every day but it is a pain to set them up every morning. Any suggestions are appreciated.
Why don’t you just set everything up, then just sleep the Mac instead of shutting down every day? Everything will be right where you left it.
I designate some apps to specific screens (spaces). iTunes gets screen 2. Mail gets screen 3. Transmission gets screen 5. I have 5 spaces in total.
Getting this to work is easy, as long as you know how:
1) Navigate to the space where you want an application to reside.
2) Right-click on its Dock icon.
3) Choose ‘Options’.
4) Choose ‘Assign To’ This Desktop. All done.
Next time you run that app it will run on the desktop you chose. I find this to be an excellent organizational tool.
BTW: I’ve been using virtual desktops since day 1 on my Macs. There was a guy in Canada, I think it was Scott Brown, who offered a free utility set for Mac OS. Amidst that free set was his excellent, incredibly customizable, Virtual Desktop application. I grudgingly use the less customizable Apple Spaces these days.
No one has mentioned Dropbox. I use Dropbox for my active projects popping the files open with the menu. Spotlight is the quickest way for me to launch whatever, so I have almost no files/folders/aliases on the desktop. And yes, I do use Spaces — to separate open projects.
But it is taking me a while to get use to the menu bar popping back and forth across my monitors. Old news and tricky dogs, or whatever…
My Dock would appear to be a catastrophic mess to the uninformed. It’s actually organized by category of app as a spectrum that makes sense to me. What makes it a mess is that every thing I ever use is on it. That’s one reason I hate the dock. I’m a fan of the original Apple menu. It worked perfectly for me. Then some idiot (I won’t bother to look up his name) at Apple laid down the law that ‘no one’ liked navigating the original Apple menu. Entirely WRONG! I curse the Dock, one of Steve Jobs’ bad ideas. I keep it on the bottom and always hidden, seeing as I hate it. The only reason I bother with the stupid thing is that I have an uncanny ability to drag my cursor to exactly where the app I want is located amidst the morass. That makes it useful.
For Apps I use all the time, I have key commands to open them. I used to use iKey but moved to QuickSilver, which I love.
When my desktop gets too filled with icons for stuff, I dump them into a ‘Desktop Dump’ folder which eventually gets tossed off onto a ‘Move Out’ DVD, in case I ever care about what I threw in there. I keep such DVDs cataloged with that catalog saved on an encrypted DMG I share and use on all my Macs.
Organized chaos.
And why the frick did Apple do away with WindowShade? That’s another app I used from day one on my Macs. Apple eventually bought it then killed it. Shameful.
Seeing as the developer Unsanity is walking dead these days, I use the application WindowMiser to fake this remarkable feat of logic and screen space saving.
While it is true that the dock hasn’t improved much from its Unix origins, Apple is correct in offering an icon-based visual display for all frequently-used applications. It would be nice if the Dock could be pulled down from the Apple menu, but apparently Apple never figured out how to offer an improved visual Apple pull-down menu.
Putting the dock on the side makes sense to me, as most of the time vertical space is at a premium.
Mavericks makes the dock uglier than ever since in all but perfect lighting, one can’t see the tiny white indicators for open apps on the hideously ugly gray dock. Some of the new application icons are rather dull as well. Visibility on the whole takes a hit almost as bad as iOS7, in my opinion. The whole grayed-out Mavericks look is really disappointing, and the simplistic “flat look” login icons suck. You’d think Apple would offer users a more elegant system with more comprehensive appearance options, since they did relatively little under the hood this time around.
I know what you mean about the white indicators on the Dock. I have created ColorSync profiles for every basic time of day and every room situation I use. (I’m trained out the ears in imaging). I find that helps a lot in being able to see the vague little dots on the screen.
As for the general Apple GUI look these days, they’re clearly trying to go as bland professional as possible. I equate it with the Male Work Suit used in business. Boring. Uncreative. Unexpressive. No personality. Nobody home. Who let the UNITS out?
And of course that is incredibly odd coming from Apple where NO ONE wears a UNIT suit to work.
I occasionally think it is a hold over from the smarmy ‘Macs are toys!’ bullying the Windows-settlers shat onto Mac users out of jealousy. Anything remotely toy-like (including beloved WindowShade) has been stripped out of OS X. It’s all about function or disciplined style. That shuts up the smarmy dimwits. But it is NOT in the spirit of the original Mac OS!
Macs ARE for play time AND for work time. Both!
Meanwhile, Windows is just about suffering, always has been. Like ‘paying your dues’ means constant misery. No it doesn’t! Poor sad, suffering, miserable Windows users.
Do you manually change from one ColorSync profile to another.
I have never thought of this and I am intrigued. Indeed.
Yes. I have several profiles I created using the Display preferences pane. Apple doesn’t provide the most intuitive way to make profiles, but it works reasonable well once you get used to the strange squares of colors they provide. I then set the Gamma at 1.8 and keep the native color temperature of the display.
I use the free application called ‘ProfileMenu’. I have it running all the time in the menu bar. As I notice the screen contrast or color isn’t ideal, I figure it’s time to switch to another color profile. I have one I use at night in my living room as I lay around on the couch. I have one for the morning. I have one for rainy days. I have one for a tan room where I work. Etc. I make them as I figure I need them. ProfileMenu makes it easy to swap around and even compare different profiles.
Hmmmm….something to try. Thanks!
Late-2011 MBP 15″ i7 8GB RAM 500GB
10.8.5 as Mavericks in still in process of being rolled out on work machines.
That is centered on a rain stand with two ~22″ dell widescreens flanking on either side. Left one is landscape, right is in portrait for document review and outlook email composition and review.
Running windows 7 through VM fusion in Unity mode.
Dock, menu bar, and windows task bar are all on the centred MBP display. Windows task bar is pinned to left side of screen.
Apple BT trackpad is pointing device with Apple full-size external USB keyboard.
‘KeyRemap4MacBook’is remapping some function keys and most importantly recreating the PC_INSERT key for my windows-run terminal system.
Also, ‘Free Memory’ ensures I don’t have any RAM issues due to any rogue behavior with this set up.
Which ‘Free Memory’ application are you using? Just good old Purge?
I end up having to use a script to trigger Purge on my good old reliable 2006 MacBook with 3 GB of RAM. I’m a utility maniac and they eat a lot of RAM in total. Then I run Safari, the biggest RAM hog on my machines, and smash the RAM ceiling constantly. Safari 6.1 and 7 have abated some of this phenomenon, thank fully, But I always have Purge at the ready for when I demand getting something done in Safari rather than sitting and waiting for it to clear up its RAM mess.
It’s called ‘Free Memory’
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/freememory/id460931672?mt=12
“Smart Auto Free mode”
Ooo!
Interesting that they all use dock on the bottom of the screen. Mine has always been on the side of the screen. It works well for my particular workflow.
One of the subjects in the article used it on the left side.
I do not see what makes any of the people profiled in the article experts. I have been using OS X since the public beta, when many of the “experts” in the article were using their daddy’s Windows PC.
1 Delete all/most the shit Apple ships in the dock since much of it is easily accessible by other means.
2 Select snap to grid and organize by name so your desktop does not look like the mess one of the “experts” in the article has.
3 Move the dock to the left and turn auto hide on. Drag your documents, downloads and applications folders to the dock. Then drag the folder at Home/Users/Name/Library/iCloud to your dock. Now all your iCloud docs are in one place organized by application without buying an app for that function in the app store.
4 Drag the apps you really do use frequently to the dock.
5 Open System Prefs & turn the translucent menu bar off. Turn off hide scroll bars. Turn most/all notification center BS off. Return the trackpad.mouse scrolling to the proper setup- the opposite of what Apple ships. Turn on the Firewall that Apple ships turned off.
6 Do yourself a favor and leave the social media crap off of your computer and it’s desktop.
7 Open Spotlight and turn most of it off. It is a big waste of cycles, electricity and is about as useless as a bicycle for a fish. Most newer Apple ‘features’ (Twitter/Farcebook integration come to mind) are crapware copied from third party apps/services and are a waste of time.
8 Select wallpaper and screen saver of choice.
Very good recommendations! Not sure about turning off firewall though. Just needs to be set up correctly.
I find it bizarre that anyone clutters their desktop with files as that “expert” does. The least objects on the desktop, the better. Overall, it is amazing how much people don’t realize how much time they waste doing searches — either from the search field or visually looking through dozens of icons. So much easier to just set up the machine to take you where they want to go in a simple click. don’t rely on a “cloud”, don’t rely on Google, and don’t rely on Spotlight to find stuff. Even in complicated messy multi-user situations, we set up some decent folder management to eliminate time wasted searching.
Also, we don’t do cloud computing, and never will.
I have the firewall on, both Apple’s and the Intego FW.
My god, someone who knows what there talking about for a change. I already do much of what you stated. Very good advice. Check my trick up the stack. Another good one is to drag the Applications folder to the Dock. R-Click or Command-Click it once it’s in the Dock and set it to Folder View. Also set it to view as a list. Now you have a nice pop-up menu of all your applications right from the Dock.
Until Mavericks, you could drag apps into the top of the Finder Window & that is where I put stuff like Activity Monitor, Airport Utility, Console & Disk Utility.
If you upgrade from 10.8 with the links installed they stay, but if you do a clean install you cannot put them in- another ‘improvement’ that is not.
Try using an alias instead.
Long time mac user but still learned some stuff here from various MDN posters. Good, keep it coming.
—–
my 2 cents:
more screen real estate the better. I have 2 monitors, a 21 inch Cintiq (which is like a big iPad but pressure sensitive as well) and a 24 inch, really saves a lot of time as you can throw open windows around.
Upgraded my Mac Pro’s graphics card, was really surprised it made a big difference (I guess my monitors were testing the previous card’s limits).
Use Aquaminds Notetaker a lot for complex projects, notebooks can take clips from the internet etc, can be cross linked and so on. For example when doodling in photoshop (on the Cintiq you can draw and write notes) I take screen grab shots when I’m happy with something and then archive them in the notebooks. In more right brain jobs the Cintiq works well. (architects, designers, anybody who needs to ‘sketch’ concepts will find my setup useful).
27″ iMac.
Dock on the right (out of the way)
Launchbar for anything other than the 15 dock icons.
Spaces for Mail, iPhoto, iCal (full screen) and screenshare to my media Mini.
iTunes mini window, Messages and FaceTime on all screens
Nothing on desktops
13″ MBP/8GB/500GB C2D. I use Spaces and Full screen apps constantly to maximize screen real estate and have been using it since it was added to the OS. Since I may spend more than 30min in an app I don’t want the clutter of other windows. I can easily CMD-Tab to whatever other app I need to use or get back to the Finder. The dock stays on the left with only my most used apps of which there are about 15. Folder for documents are a must: Applications, Documents plus three different work specific folders. Lastly, Spotlight is my launcher for opening docs not in those folders…been a avid Mac user since ’90.