I shared my new work from home set up a few days ago. Well, I ended up making some adjustments. The double giant screens — iMac Pro and XDR Display are not for me — I need a single screen. The folks at Apple are letting me keep the XDR Display for a few more weeks — can’t pack and ship this thing without leaving the house — so I packed up my iMac Pro. For now, it is sitting in a corner, waiting to be called back to duty.
I have it paired with my MacBook Pro 16-inch with an AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8 GB graphics card and 64 GB of memory, and is powered by 2.3 GHz 8-Core Intel Core i9 processor. The machine is a screamer and is ideal for what I like to do most — editing photos. The XDR Display is sublime when helping find details on my images and help me subtly enhance parts of the image.
As you might have noticed, I switched to the Logitech’s MX Keys keyboard and MX Master 2S mouse. This is a very comfortable to use keyboard and I am enjoying typing on it – that extra lift makes it very comfortable. The mouse too is amongst the best on the market. You might see a new boom arm for my Shure mic — this is definitely going to improve the quality of the Stuck@Om podcasts.
I also bought a LED standing lamp from Taotronics for $65 on Amazon — it is pretty amazing and provides good light when working early in the morning or late at night. Plus it looks very elegant and takes five minutes to assemble. It will make you look so much better on Zoom.
And lastly, I switched away from the Focal Clear headphones and have now opted for Grado Labs’ GS1000, which were gifted by a friend. I can’t underscore the importance of weight when deciding what headphones to buy. Focals are great and all for an hour or so, but after that, you gotta take them off, no matter how great they sound.
Grado Labs’s headphones are so light, and I can go for hours without taking them off, and they sound fantastic — especially when listening to jazz, which is my preferred music form anyway. Is it as good as Focal Clear? No, it isn’t. Not even close. However, I prefer the way my ear sits in Grado’s foam cups and gives them room to be enveloped in the sound.
And yes, that is a Magic Keyboard for the iPad you see on my desk. I just got it, so don’t have much to say except — goodbye Smart Keyboard.
April 23, 2020. San Francisco