Ha!!! What is up Tom!!! What a great treat for my Saturday in between mowing my lawn & tending my garden. (it is 90 plus F here so I have to take breaks!!) I am so glad you are making more videos - they are all so very entertaining & interesting . My best wishes to Jess and those precious boys!! Your friend across the pond.
Larry, hope your gardening is going well! That is some series heat my friend, I would most certainly end up cooking myself if I stood out in that for too long. Thanks as always for your lovely comments. Hope you're having a nice weekend :)
What about a cheap dual monitor mount. it frees up the place where the monitor stands are now? If your monitors support VESA mount it might be an easy but effective improvement.
Good suggestion! I have a couple of Duronic poles and arms, could probably even cobble one together with what I have. If I get the urge, I'll go for it. Let's see what the next few weeks bring.
Your channel is one of my favorites and it satisfies my geek need completely. I live with people who don't get my techie nature and it's RU-vidrs like yourself that give me a sense of community.
Seeing the PowerHack go is really sad, but we all hope it'll be replaced with something great just as much! Great video Tom! I salute you and Jess for keeping the little adorable troublemakers busy while filming.. And you almost got away with it! if it wasn't for 17:56 ... :)
tom on that superdrive there is a command in terminal when u boot into recovery that will let u sue that superdrive on any usb port even hubs thats what ive done with mine on my imac 2015
Tom, it's been 10 years man, it's been a crazy ride. Glad to see you are still doing well and making quality content from a quality mind. Don't ever lose focus on your life's endeavors.
If you go on ebay and search for "hp thunderbolt Dock" there is a seller selling them for 15 quid you need a psu and thunderbolt cable but they shouldn't cost more than 20. I've bought two ad they've been great.
Hi Tom, definitely something I need to do, my desk needs a spring clean too! I've a MacBook Pro late 2016 which has the dreaded butterfly keyboard, its been replaced already under warranty and once again i've 3 keys that have come away. It needs another warranty replacement however with the current situation you can't take it into Apple and it has to be sent away for around a 10 day turn around. So due to that i've got myself a Amazons basic laptop shelf, a wireless mouse and a wired keyboard, that way I can still use the laptop without all the pain for the dreaded keyboard! Also looking at a possible new MacBook Pro with the new Apple Silicon ones due at the end of the year, however I was almost pushed to get the current 16 inch MacBook Pro from Amazon, especially as they are doing this '5 months payment' scheme with no interest. A good way to get a new MacBook, however its only for the standard builds, so if you want more than a 1Tb SSD or more memory then you can't get them with this offer. I also started to look into Thunderbolt systems, especially as my current and probably future MacBooks only have USB-C ports. Anker do a good one and there are so many others around too. www.anker.com/uk/a8396launch?search=masterbanner&keywords=master_ukA8396launch061520
So sad to read about these keyboard issues. What a complete fail on Apples part. Still can't believe how wrong they got it. That loks a nice piece of kit. I have a few Anker things and they're all great.
looking good mate, but personally it could be even better. if you use a dual monitor stand/ of amazon they are around £20/25. just a thought, you might even be making an updated video adding the monitors to the duel desk stand. will be much cleaner and better cable management
Would hugely recommend the Thunderbolt 2 hub, it will eliminate your bandwidth concerns compared to the 2 USB ports. Apple are usually great when it comes to thunderbolt, so I wouldn't be surprised if you were to have 20 gigabit bandwidth through both thunderbolt ports, compared to the measly 5 gigabit bandwidth of USB 3.0. Love the content keep it coming!
The idea of using my MacBook Pro 2015 in a clamp shell mode crossed my mind too. I too use two external screens although in slightly different layout. In the end I decided not to do that because of thermal throttling I experienced running CPU heavy tasks with MacBook closed. Could you do some test on your MacBook to compare temperature curves with lid closed and opened? I would be very interested to see if my experience was true and decision I made correct.
Looking good Tom 👍. I have to say though that I would find it difficult having the monitors in those positions as I need a primary display right in front of me but I know you're limited by space. Seen it mentioned in other comments and agree a dual monitor mount would be a good shout for a cleaner look. Just about to purchase a as second one my self for stacked displays in my set-up. 🙂
You can get those optical drives to work in USB hubs. You can do it via terminal or I think via something called superdrive enabler if it's still around.
Does the MacBook Pro Retina really make a difference being in Desktop mode? I have a 2015 version and it's my main machine. I use it for Photoshop, Sims, Streaming Movies and running my iTunes Library for my Apple TV and it works great though i would like to be able to up my graphics on Sims 4.
Not for something like Sims 4. Presumably you're running the game at a lower res than the native res of the rMBP, which is a whopping 2880x1800 (2560x1600 if you have a 13"). In a case like that, it wouldn't make any different unfortunately.
Thanks, Tom! Can't seem to find anywhere else to put it to be honest. Originally I wanted it off to the side, in the left hand corner but there's just no room. At least in the middle it's easy reaching for all the cables and easy to whip off the desk if I need to bung it in my bag.
@@ItsMyNaturalColour That's what I would go for. I have a 27" iMac now and apparently there could be a new iMac redesign coming as early as the end of this year possibly early next year around the summer.
@@TYOPRO02 I honestly can't believe they're still selling iMacs with 5400rpm drives in them. I bought a Mac mini for work a few years back with a 5400rpm 500GB drive and it was the worst machine ever. Beachballing during first boot and all the way through the setup installer haha! Really sorry to hear about your screen. So unfortunate.
@@TYOPRO02 I would not be surprised if they finally kill off HDDs with the Apple Silicon Macs. For all we know, they might not even have SATA in the ARM Macs, other than maybe whatever the ARM Mac Pro will be.
I've thought about the MX Master actually... One thing I can't stand about my current mouse is the very 'click' scroll wheel. It's loud and stiff. Does the MX Master have a nice smooth scroll wheel?
@@ItsMyNaturalColour I've used the MX Master 2S before and it has two types of scrolling, it has normal scrolling which isn't the smoothest thing ever but it's still really nice. Also, you can scroll really fast as well and it has a scroll wheel on the side which is very customisable along with all the buttons on it. You could set the side scroll wheel to zoom in on webpages or set it to scroll through your timeline in Final Cut. I definetly recommend it.
I use the 1st generation and I don’t find it too bad you get a choice between a free spinning scroll wheel and a ratchet based scroll wheel in the control software. Another really useful thing is the mouse supports 3 computers via Bluetooth or using there USBs meaning it’s really easy to use for multiple machines. I use mine with my MacBook Pro via Bluetooth then can use it with the usb when testing other systems
@@ItsMyNaturalColour Hey, I actually have the MX Master 3 on my iMac setup and think the scrolling has improved a lot over the 2 (I have the 2 at work). The scrolling on the 3 is way smoother and uses some kind of magnet system to get a much softer "click" feel. It also has the option to scroll without any clicks at all either through scrolling very fast, or toggling it with the button. Would totally recommend it for you, especially for editing videos the horizontal scrolling has been amazing for me :D If you have any questions I can try my best to answer them for you :D
@@ItsMyNaturalColour From whay I gathered, they wont switch right off the bat... For starters they will only introduce ARM to the lower end MacBooks then move from there... I still think they have a ways to go until they can produce a x86 level proc...
@@neccros007 Yeah the current ARM chips in iPads and iPhones are a great replacement for most laptops and maybe the Mac Mini but I'd expect at least a few years before they can develop a worthy chip for the Mac Pro and maybe the iMacs.
That stand has definitely paid for itself! Also was just thinking how it might not be the worst idea for you to just buy a new apple silicone based mbp. That way you’d only need to buy one machine and it’s not like you’ll be buying a mac pro or a real desktop that can actually be upgraded. Just an idea obviously but seems possible imo.
They already have a Mac Mini with the apple SOC in it ready, they've sent them to developers, you could have one now if you want! Purely speculating here, but I say we'll probably see the final mini on sale by the end of the year. If we're lucky a low end Macbook and iMac refresh too at the same time or pretty closely following. MBP probably next year, the Mac Pro though, I think that quite a ways off.
Alec from Technology Connections has made very similar switch recently (going from desktop to laptop setup) and now this. I think laptop-desktop setups make a lot of sense and I would seriously consider it myself, but.. I love me some PC gaming :D Looking forward to the new Macs. I am not really a Mac person, but I am seriously excited for ARM SOCs in these.
It’s the future, gone will be the days of hulking great behemoths and towers, mostly being taken up by drive and power supply space. To be replaced by what you’d briefly talked about in your Networking video; slim units. You’ll probably have removable M.2 storage and thunderbolt/USBC hubs to connect peripherals too. With maybe the exception being a mini tower like the New MAC Pro but with server like sleds to contain multiple units, like the old distributed computer you’d get with Tiger and Leopard back in the day.
It’s funny, all of the time I’ve watched you I’ve had a laptop setup and you’ve had a desktop mac. Now that I’ve got a Mac Pro (inspired by you, as well) you go for a laptop setup.
you got a bottom shelve were you could put the laptop and reroute the cables underneath the table or behind the table? or wall mount both monitors or go to a large screen tv i have my laptop attached to my 75 inch 4k tv
If you want a mini project, you can actually buy replacement shells for those logitech mice! Don't know if they are as good as the original, I think they're copies. They also still make the MX 518 today, with a newer sensor and stuff. But why not change things up ey? Well I don't know of any mouse I prefer over the MX and it's descendents, though that new MS Intellimouse Pro looks pretty cool...
All rounder at my local independent venue (theatre & cinema), mainly tech duties; projection, sound, lighting etc, but I also handle their website, social media and general digital advertising. Closed at the moment due to the pandemic.
Awesome video Tom! Given the MacBook's age though it might be a good idea to open it up and give it a clean before you get too settled. I have almost the exact same model as yours but the slightly higher end one with the dGPU and it began to stress out a couple of months ago when I was doing a lot of editing. But after giving it a dust the temperatures never get too high now no matter how hard I push it.
Definitely. I have a plan to make a future video, opening, cleaning and re-applying thermal paste to the MacBook Pro. Should definitely see me through for a little while longer.
Please tell me you turned the usb hub round so the cables are going straight behind the desk Edit: okay it's not as full as I was expecting, having to reach round to add to it is probably worse than just looking at the cables
Might I recommend Auralex MoPads for the speakers? I've owned a set of them for years and they isolate my speakers from the desk COMPLETELY. No sound transference whatsoever and nice options for angling up or down. You can pick them up off eBay for a very decent price and they last forever Edit: ha nevermind just got to the next section of the vid and you've already got some pads
Lovely setup, some monitor mounts would definitely complete it and possibly could allow you to use your MBPs lovely screen too? Also speaking of the screen I had success using listerine and metal polish to get rid of staingate. PS Hope you can see comments from this account.
Trying no to do anything too permanent as I'll be buying a new main machine as soon as the new Macs are released, but an arm is a good shout and I do have some spare Duronic monitor mount kit floating around.
@@ItsMyNaturalColour The arm would clear up more desk space by not having the two monitor stands. You can raise both monitors up just a little and push back the laptop. Always nice to talk with a RU-vid celebrity.
I'd LOVE to have a close up overhead shot of your keyboard with the keys visible... I am STILL looking for those caps... I want to see what the font looks like to help ID the caps
@@ItsMyNaturalColour Thanks!! I'm watching this video as we speak and I am thinking "Hey he has his desk clear and has a clear shot of the keyboard!" But I forget this was filmed days, weeks, months ago!!!
Nope :D Just years of slowly gathering things together, a few good deals here and there, and some bits and pieces from very generous viewers that have been sent my way.
I just notices that i have the same monitor on my desk in my new work. Dell refreshed that monitor in 2017, the sharpness improved but the colour on that old model is just so much better. Any chance you could link to that pop filter ? It looks nice. way better than the metal mesh held together with hot glue i am using . my MXL 990 is not happy with me for that. Also pro tip , if you want a nice power strip for your desk , get a rack mount PDU and flip round the ears and screw it to the under side of the desk , it works well. I have a 12 socket one ( designed for running up the side of a rack ) under mine , so much nicer than a normal power strip.
Lovely monitors, I still get impressed by them. It was tough going from 3 months on a retina display to these, though. Don't get me wrong they're great, but damn I got so accustomed to that hi res look. I just searched my Amazon orders and found it, but there's no longer a product page for it it seems. If this is at all helpful, the title of it was: Studio Microphone Mic Wind Screen Pop Filter/ Swivel Mount,360 Degree Flexible Gooseneck Holder - Black
Great video as per usual but just one slight comment and please don’t take this the wrong way but playing background music while your talking makes it rather distracting. But hey perhaps that’s just us keep up the great work.
