Mac Setup: Dual Display MacBook Pro Retina with Custom LED Backlighting

It’s time for another featured Mac setup! Let’s visit the excellent Mac workstation of Paavan G., a student designer who has a great dual-display desk with some really fancy customizable lighting to add some flair. Let’s jump in and learn a bit more about this setup:

What hardware is included in your workstation?

The Mac

• MacBook Pro 13″ with Retina Display (Early 2013 model)
• 2.6GHz Intel Core i5 CPU
• 8GB RAM
• 256GB SSD – dual boots OS X & Windows 8

Displays & Accessories

• Dual Monitors – iiyama ProLite XU2390HS 23” IPS displays (connected via DVI)
• Allcam MMS05 Dual Monitor Table Stand
• Rain Design mStand Laptop Stand
• Apple Magic Trackpad
• Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad
• 1TB Time Machine and data drive – Samsung M3 (not pictured)
• 2TB Time Machine & system and data clone – LaCie Box fitted with a 2TB Samsung SpinPoint F4EG
• Logitech x210 2.1 speakers
• iPhone 4S (used to take picture)
• Generic iPhone dock for iPhone 4S
• TeckNet Webcam
• Belkin Ultra Slim 4 Port USB Hub (so that all of the accessories can actually connect to the Mac!)

Network

• TP-LINK WR710 wireless router

Gaming 

• Xbox 360 Elite (connected to the left monitor)

Lighting

• Koolertron Color Changing LED Strip Lighting (16 colours, remote controlled)
• Lloytron L946Bh Hobby Desk Lamp, Black Chrome (as seen behind the monitors)

What do you use your Apple gear for?

I currently study BSc Product Design & Management at Aston University, Birmingham. I went for this setup since I needed a portable computer for when I’m travelling and actually in the university buildings, but also needed a decent amount of screen ‘real-estate’ when I’m doing the main bulk of my work in my room. I actually started with only one external monitor and used it in conjunction with the MacBook’s screen (hence the Rain mStand), but the 13” screen started to feel a bit too small to look at, but now using two matching screens seriously boosts my workflow and productivity. 

The Mac is running OS X Mavericks but also has a Windows 8 Boot Camp setup for when I need do work on SolidWorks for CAD. Alongside my degree, I also design and operate a few websites, along with occasional video work.

The Lloytron lamp is as good as any fancy Anglepoise lamp and when I need to do sketch work I just rotate it from behind the monitors to the empty desk space to the right. Otherwise usually, it just provides pleasant ambient lighting along with the LEDs which I set to a different colour depending on my mood (white or blue is usually best when I’m working). 

As a student, we all need to have a bit of fun as well, so this room is regularly used for movie nights where the screens are mirrored and pulled out as far as they’ll go so that all our flat can watch a film -with the LEDs dimmed of course! The Xbox is also connected to the left screen which is then pulled out allowing for some serious combat between within the flat! 

What apps do you use most often? What apps could you not do without?

I absolutely wouldn’t be able to live without Adobe InDesign CC and Photoshop CS6 since these help me create some pretty hefty design portfolios. 

Recently, Pages has also become a ‘must-have’ app, since I’ve also needed to compile quite a lot of reports and analysis’s for the engineering side of my degree, and this is far easier to do on Pages than MS Word.

Other apps I rely on include:

• Transmit – by far the best FTP client for Mac
• Tagalicious – within which my music collection would be an absolute mess
• Final Cut Pro X – really powerful and yet easy to use for my video projects
• Reeder – helps me check up on hundreds of website that I subscribe to including OS X Daily!
• TotalFinder – I appreciate my folders being on top, items actually being sorted alphabetically, and progress bars in the dock so this is a must!
• Dropbox – it may be more expensive but it supports symbolic links meaning I can keep my files where I actually want them and not just restricted to the Dropbox folder.
• SuperDuper! – it’s what I use to create the bootable system clone and also live data clone onto the 2TB backup drive
• VLC – who doesn’t need VLC to survive? 

Do you have any Apple tips or productivity tricks you want to share?

My workflow would be a complete mess without the use of Spaces (Mission control), where apps that are always open and I refer to such as Reeder, Mail, iTunes and Safari are allocated fixed desktops on the secondary (right) screen, with the remaining spaces on both screens left for whatever I’m working on. 

I used SwitchResX to ‘hack’ the 13” rMBP to run scaled at 1920×1200 – something that the displays preference pane doesn’t allow as it only goes up to 1680×1050. I like my screen real-estate.

An awesome screensaver I recently found is called ‘Soundstream’ which responds to audio being played through the Mac. It’s actually kinda mesmerising.

I’d say that lighting is one of the most important aspects to a setup, it can totally change how you feel about a space. Especially if you work a lot at night like I do, the right sort of ambient lighting can make the room still feel open and welcoming. The next most important is ergonomics, those screens are high for a reason; so that my eye-line is around 3/4 up the screen making it comfortable to work here for several hours at a time. 

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Do you have an interesting Mac setup or Apple workstation you want to share with OSXDaily? What are you waiting for! Take a couple pictures, answer some questions about the hardware and how you use it, and mail it on in to osxdailycom@gmail.com – Still working on your setup and not ready to send yours in? Browse through our past Mac setup posts for some inspiration!