MP All Models What does your home office look like?! :) Mac Pro 7.1 but everyone welcome to share!

[prefuse07]

Not the best pics, but I think it gets the point across...

And yes, my mac keyboard is using a silicone cover, which is wearing off 🤣...

My desk has built-ins for cable management (at least it makes vacuuming a breeze)

Looking over to the right-side of my room, this is my extended setup, where the real work gets done:

And I have just added a new piece to the setup:

 

[profcutter]

Here's mine...

View attachment 2122218

I know, it's like Howard Carter when he first peered into Tutankhamun's bedroom. Wondrous things indeed. But don’t be alarmed. I'll talk you through it.

Mac Mini, the much-admired 2014 model with its soldered 8 (count 'em) gigabytes of smooth random access memory and a 1TB HDD spinning at five thousand four hundred revolutions per minute. I know. Does your SSD spin so energetically? Right.

Sure, I added an NVMe SSD, choosing only the best quality item I could find on Black Friday sale at Amazon, plugging it into a no name adapter of indeterminate provenance, and sitting back to enjoy those sweet sweet two lanes of data highway express.

That really speeded it up. Safari was so snappy, the first time I used it, I got whiplash.

Moving on, yes that'll be a Full HD monitor. Not "HD-ready" you wannabes, I'm talking FULL HD. Right again. Touch me. YES it's retina, at a distance of just 90 inches. Or 9 inches if your retinas are old enough to remember when Marvel was actually a comic.

Mat? Stripy mat? Yeah I have a mat. Who doesn’t have a mat. You gotta have a mat. But this one is no less an item than from the legendary 1993 fire-damaged sale at Ikea, Birmingham. That's Birmingham England, Europhile history fans. This mat is a collector’s item. In my case, the debt collectors. But no, they can’t have it. It's just too cool. The first time I used this mat, a girl two streets away fell pregnant.

Best part of this killer setup? Correct. That fancy-pants keyboard and trackpad made-in-heaven “ensemble”.

I tried a mechanical keyboard, after YouTube filled my feed with somebody called Thockmaster McLube. But it turns out the Thockster, the Internet and Sir Jonny Ive were all wrong. Yeah who knew, misinformation on the Internet.

Anyway, they were wrong and I'm here to tell you the truth: A keyboard can be too thick Mr Thock and can be too thin, Sir Jonny. Whereas this holy example of aluminium excellence is the canonical quintessential Goldilocks keyboard and trackpad: just right.

If it was a planet and the trackpad its moon, they would support life. If they were on YouTube, it would be in a legendary 4:3 lecture by Carl Sagan. If it was an epic battle of years gone by, they would be featured in delicate tapestries and have adventure yarns written about them.

This keyboard / trackpad / 2014 Mac Mini / HD monitor combo is The Grail.

/mic

TP

<clap clap clap>

 

[Choco Taco]

View attachment 2123062

Aren't you worried about sand getting all up in the Mac's business?

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

What issues have you had to overcome with scaling (for text legibility) and viewing angles, to make the 86" usable up-close?

How far away from it do you need to sit, for it to be managable?

This is one of those things where you really want to see the thing to grasp how it’s really a non-issue. So the display resolution on the 85” display is basically the exact same as on the 30 inch display, from a pixels per inch stand point. The other thing to note is I used to have 3 30 inch displays up top instead of the 85 inch display, and they were collectively the same width as the singular 85 inch. So if you’re used to using a 3screen set up, really, this is not much different, except you have more vertical space. Of course I would angle the two side screens, inward, a little bit, and it would help if this 85 inch display were a bit curved. But there are easy work around for that.

About 65 inches of the 86 Display Dead Center is very easy to see with no issues whatsoever. However, at the periphery, it gets a bit more difficult, not because of viewing angle (this screens viewing angles are basically 180) so much as just the sheer distance. The solution for that is pretty simple, I have research documents, or other things like that that are PDFs and I can put those off on the periphery and just simply stretch them so they become for example 200% the normal size, and then they are very easy to read even from that distance. Or I can use that space kind of for “work piles“ for things that I’m not currently working on, but will get to you soon.

As for how far i sit away from it, again, you really just need to think of this as if you had 3 30 inch displays on your desk. I don’t sit any further away. My face is about 24 inches away from the screen. It’s like any other screen I would have on my desk.

Now if I decide to watch a movie at full screen I’ll push back a bit to take it all in at once. One of the unexpected benefits btw is blowing things up on the screen to be super huge. I don’t necessarily work that way for prolonged periods of time, but you could take a quick look at the photo and all the sudden you’re seeing it at full 12 megapixel resolution on the screen, which is pretty cool. And documents, I’ll frequently blow those up if it’s a PDF or a word document or something like that, and it makes detailed work a lot easier. For things like if you’re doing CAD/CAM, you can see so much on the screen at the same time of your blueprints, it’s really extremely useful. Heck, even just blowing up maps.app and seeing huge sections of an area that you’re researching, it’s really kind of next level useful.

 

[maikerukun]

Thanks, but unfortunately I've got too many projects taking my attention. I am currently designing desk 2.0 and have a good builder. I guess if there were interest, maybe I would release that desk. It would not be cheap. With thunderbolt, fiber, and cat8 cabling, and modern monitors so much easier to deal with, the conduit wiring should be WAY easier for desk 2.0. I think I may try to make desk 2.0 similar, maybe it rises for standing, and tilts for drafting.

Anyway, here are some earlier revisions of the Desk 1.0.

Some of the hidden conduits and early cabling:
View attachment 2122111


A bit of the monitor stand in the back, you can see the integrated mini fridge in the credenza going in and some of the early wiring for the hidden wiring/hubs. So that is wiring just for the credenza and yes, the credenza wiring was conduit driven into the main desk, completely hidden (total pain in the butt). So the credenza had a hidden lower lip and completely hidden cabling, as did the main computer desk. That way if I plug in an iPad on a dock on the credenza it shows up on the Mac and everything is all connected etc.
View attachment 2122112


Again this was a prototype but the wiring was a disaster to manage when it was 6 30" cinema displays. It all BARELY fit in the conduits that would get sealed up and hidden, but here was the prep work:
View attachment 2122119
View attachment 2122121

Here the conduits start to come together and you see some of the, again, early prototype wiring looking better:
View attachment 2122129



Here you can see there is a hidden lip behind the desk where all USB ethernet power etc ports can hide (this was when I didnt have the 8k screen and only had the 6 30" cinema displays and whiteboard wall):
View attachment 2122130


Again, the early setup only had 6 30" displays (and you would only see the 3 cables from the top monitors going into the hidden channel (these were eventually hidden as you can see in the image above, but the image below, we were still finishing the build), but you can see the integrated fridge on the right:
View attachment 2122139


Here we've refined thigns a bit in one of my earlier offices. To the right you can see the whiteboard wall (it's multi color glass). Yellow, red, green blue glass and in the middle of the glass is clear so you can see the 4 vertical 65" displays all connected up as an extended desktop for the Mac Pro (back then the 5,1) under my desk. I made the wall papers of each of the 65" screens mach the colors of the whiteboard glass. And you can just display any image and write over it on the whiteboard wall. I highly recommend this setup if you whiteboard a lot.
View attachment 2122141
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You can see some scribbling on one of the whiteboard panels on the left, kind of to-do board for me there, and not a bad view:
View attachment 2122143
View attachment 2122147

Here you can see I dragged a bunch of windows onto the whiteboard wall screens and white boarded marked over it on the glass. We would often mockup a lot of things that way rapidly.
View attachment 2122145

Little shot of the screens going in and the whiteboard glass going over it:
View attachment 2122146

This was my next space, a bit nicer and roomier, and you can see the nice KEF speakers (highly recommended). This was a little before I stared work on getting the 8k modification setup: View attachment 2122148

And just for completeness, my current limbo but with the 8k screen mod done:
View attachment 2122150

Hopefully the new office wont take as long as I fear, but then again, desk 2.0 is going to take me a while to finish designing and prototyping anyway.

Anyway, hope this was useful inspiration for others.

I LOVE the whiteboard wall...very cool And...my fav Easter egg is the random angry bird hiding on your window sill lol Very cool offices leading up to your current build. Desk 2.0 is gonna be a beast I'm sure!

 

[maikerukun]

Here's mine...

View attachment 2122218

I know, it's like Howard Carter when he first peered into Tutankhamun's bedroom. Wondrous things indeed. But don’t be alarmed. I'll talk you through it.

Mac Mini, the much-admired 2014 model with its soldered 8 (count 'em) gigabytes of smooth random access memory and a 1TB HDD spinning at five thousand four hundred revolutions per minute. I know. Does your SSD spin so energetically? Right.

Sure, I added an NVMe SSD, choosing only the best quality item I could find on Black Friday sale at Amazon, plugging it into a no name adapter of indeterminate provenance, and sitting back to enjoy those sweet sweet two lanes of data highway express.

That really speeded it up. Safari was so snappy, the first time I used it, I got whiplash.

Moving on, yes that'll be a Full HD monitor. Not "HD-ready" you wannabes, I'm talking FULL HD. Right again. Touch me. YES it's retina, at a distance of just 90 inches. Or 9 inches if your retinas are old enough to remember when Marvel was actually a comic.

Mat? Stripy mat? Yeah I have a mat. Who doesn’t have a mat. You gotta have a mat. But this one is no less an item than from the legendary 1993 fire-damaged sale at Ikea, Birmingham. That's Birmingham England, Europhile history fans. This mat is a collector’s item. In my case, the debt collectors. But no, they can’t have it. It's just too cool. The first time I used this mat, a girl two streets away fell pregnant.

Best part of this killer setup? Correct. That fancy-pants keyboard and trackpad made-in-heaven “ensemble”.

I tried a mechanical keyboard, after YouTube filled my feed with somebody called Thockmaster McLube. But it turns out the Thockster, the Internet and Sir Jonny Ive were all wrong. Yeah who knew, misinformation on the Internet.

Anyway, they were wrong and I'm here to tell you the truth: A keyboard can be too thick Mr Thock and can be too thin, Sir Jonny. Whereas this holy example of aluminium excellence is the canonical quintessential Goldilocks keyboard and trackpad: just right.

If it was a planet and the trackpad its moon, they would support life. If they were on YouTube, it would be in a legendary 4:3 lecture by Carl Sagan. If it was an epic battle of years gone by, they would be featured in delicate tapestries and have adventure yarns written about them.

This keyboard / trackpad / 2014 Mac Mini / HD monitor combo is The Grail.

/mic

TP

I love your setup And that is one smooth FULL HD Monitor ya got there!

 

[maikerukun]

Cramped, but adequate. View attachment 2122235

If "get's the job done" was an office <3 I love it!

 

[maikerukun]

You guys will laugh at this. But I interviewed for a job along with 34 other candidates for a work at home job back in 2019. They hired me and told me they loved that I had sent them a photo of my home workspace set up. I sent it to them tongue-in-cheek as a joke with their company name on my white board. Kind of silly but it got me the job.

That was thinking above the curve! Would love to see the setup

 

[maikerukun]

Nothing fancy

That's all you need my friend. If the environment stays out of the way and allows you to CREATE, then it's the best environment to be in

 

[maikerukun]

View attachment 2122312

As of right now. I'm super simple and keep the rest of the tech on some nearby shelves.

I ordered a new desk and a few other things recently. The entire setup will change this weekend.

Don't ask me about cable management, it is non-existent at this moment

I LOVE that we all have to throw an aside about our cable management skills LOL!

 

[maikerukun]

View attachment 2122329

My setup - the MBP in my signature hooked up to a LG UltraFine 5K via a Thunderbolt 3 dock from Belkin. The Monitor Audio speakers (Radius 90s) are amazing and are appreciated during Zoom calls
Looking for a better Class D amp to drive them, if anyone has any recommendations!

Great setup!

 

[maikerukun]

Me too love seeing everyones setups. Tidy, dirty or OCD way, I don't care. And I don't care about cable management that much nowadays, because it changes every so often anyways, at least for me.

View attachment 2122339

My late night setup as of today. I'm running 5K2K split 50/50 MacOS/Win10. Apps for both sides of the split screen; ArchiCAD 25, Calculator, Performance monitor and MS Teams. If I didn't ran dark mode on Mac, would you even see the difference?

Mac Pro 6,1 left. HP Z4 right ..and then some collectibles of mine on the background..

But I feel compelled to show the whole truth too..
View attachment 2122344
So it's a mess and then some more collectibles. Wondering about it myself too..

Please recognize my 4,1 under the left table please. Chucking away allright still. Just did a 5x pram reset to tidy up the ROM chip. It worked. Reported me up from 10k to 40k free space after that trick.

I almost reported you for being too cool I LOVE your office, it's like a nostalgic museum to all the monitors and systems of yesteryear!

 

[maikerukun]

All y'all's setups are so neat. Mine looks like I've worked here for the past twenty years. Oh wait... I have.

LMFAO! Prove it!

 

[maikerukun]

I was going to say the same, it's a powerful painting.

A better look at it

 

[maikerukun]

M1 Mini mounted under the desk!
View attachment 2122383

Beat Lab!

View attachment 2122384

I've been thinking about getting a few arcade cabinets! Also, I peeped that Zelda Amiibo on the shelf and Optimus! Great setup!

 

[maikerukun]

Very impressive setups here. I will have to clean up my desk before posting as it is a complete mess.

I’ve got three mac pros (5,1, 6,1 and 7,1), multiple screens and Surface Pro all jammed on the one desk.

Looking forward to seeing this when you post it!

 

[maikerukun]

Here’s my setup:
M1 MacBook Air, crappy AOC 24V2Q 24" 1080p monitor (will be replaced by a Studio Display in a few weeks), Space Gray Magic Keyboard + Magic Trackpad, iPad Pro 11" 2021 + Magic Keyboard & Apple Pencil
Not nearly as cool as some of the crazy setups posted on here but it does what it should and I’m quite happy with it View attachment 2122420

The wallpaper along with the space grey really ties it all together, minimalist but very clean and cool! I love the purple and how it reflects off the wood nice and Gaussian blurred like moonlight on water. Very cool

 

[maikerukun]

My father’s setup is way more interesting than mine, he has a 2015 5K iMac, a Mac Studio + UltraFine 5K and he also uses his 2017 15" MacBook Pro off to the side sometimes. View attachment 2122433

This is what makes these things so cool. A peek into people's lives...there is a random Honda perch under the custom wood desk along with an aluminum space fan and I have so many questions about the potato family on the wall I love it and thanks for sharing!

 

[Choco Taco]

Some of you guys setting up your desks ...

 

[maikerukun]

I love these threads as they motivate me to clear the built-up bills and junk mail off my desk so I can take pictures.


View attachment 2122431

M1 Mini, Dell monitor of some kind, Caldigit hub, AudioEngine speakers, Flexispot desk that occasionally even spends time in standing position. Also a butt mousepad because I am mentally twelve years old and it makes my wife roll her eyes. Or used to. She's become immune. We'll call this the "productivity" desk to maintain the illusion that I am ever productive.

Bonus photobomb by cat who showed up in our backyard one day and convinced us to feed him for several months before we gave up and let him inside. He's the reason I had to turn off Apple Watch to unlock because I would be sitting in the living room and know he walked across my keyboard when I felt the click on my wrist.

View attachment 2122430


Gaming area with comfy chair, Xbox, PS5, Switch and a Surface Pro 8 hooked up to an eGPU. The TV is a 42" Sony 4K screen, which means by my math that you could fit four of them comfortably into the screen area of that 85" monster that lead me to this thread.

And for this blessed moment in time, no stack of junk mail. I solemnly pledge to go through it and properly recycle it instead of putting it back on the desk.

First of all, nobody knows APPLESEED so THAT'S AWESOME And now that I know I'm around other nerds, I will share my game cave "the lighting is all off right now and there's a popcorn machine and organ in there too but not shown here", and I love that you are similar to me...all 3 gaming systems can live harmoniously LOL. Also included a random work shelf as well as "collectible corner" even though it has mostly been piling up with a lot of stuff covering most of it lolol.

Your setup is awesome! Here's my game cave "for scale the tv is 75 inches".

 

[maikerukun]

View attachment 2122444 Here's mine! Culmination of a few years of upgrades and building my computer. It's a hackintosh in a very good Mac Pro clone case that is water cooled (the stack of four fans behind it is an external radiator). Computer is an Intel i9-10900k, AMD 6900XT, with 128GB of RAM. Dell OLED ultra wide monitor, and a little OLED external monitor right next to it.Stream using this PC fives days a week using Windows, and I do all of my CAD and design work using MacOS! The desk top is a table top I got at my local hardware store that I cut to size and used old IKEA Gerton legs.

I love all the custom work in all of these. Very cool!

 

[maikerukun]

Bit of a mess right now as I'm preparing to change to a bigger desk.
Also getting wall racks for the guitars so I can use the closet without the hassle of moving the floor rack each time.
Two MacBook Pros (16" 2019 Core i9 32GB, 14" 2021 M1 Pro 16GB) 27" iMac Core i7 32GB, Acer HD display (for reports, no need for hi res), Dell Core i7 32GB Inspiron w/touchscreen. The touchscreen works great with Studio One.

View attachment 2122435

SHEESH! That's a TON of guitars! VERY COOL! You prefer acoustic or electric?

 

[maikerukun]

Some of you guys setting up your desks ...

LMFAO!

 

[maikerukun]

View attachment 2122503 Some wonderful setups on display here, love it!

Here’s my current setup.

I love the green in the chair and on the desk. Haven't seen much green in these yet. Nice!

 

[maikerukun]

I’m an editor for TV and film, and also an artist and I love crystals and being surrounded by colors. Using an iMac Pro 2017 and a MacBook Pro from 2013.

Love it!