While Oliver works from his home office most days, having the setup powered by a 16-inch MacBook Pro means he can work from just about anywhere.
I’ve been a full-time writer of words for coming up to seven years now, and I’ve had a few home offices in that time. Right now, my office is what would otherwise be a small bedroom which means it’s also a small office — but one I like to think has everything I need to get the job done.
As someone who writes rather than podcasts or creates videos, my needs are relatively simple. I like to have a big monitor so I can have multiple windows open at any one time, and I like a good mechanical keyboard so that I can annoy everyone else in the house as I type.
Beyond that, I don’t need much else, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a few aspects of my setup that make me more productive or just offer me the chance to do things my way. The first of those is my MacBook Pro.
Crafting sentences and putting them into a web browser isn’t exactly the most taxing of workflows, and I was doing it on a 2018 i7 Mac mini until it was replaced by this 16-inch M1 Pro MacBook Pro. It comes in Space Gray with the standard 16GB of RAM but more GPU cores than the standard model, as well as an upgraded 1TB of storage.
Realistically, I need neither but they’re definitely nice to have.
I went with a notebook rather than a new Mac mini or even an iMac because I wanted to leverage the fact that I can actually work just about anywhere by using a Mac, that makes that possible. The 16-inch MacBook Pro is as big a portable Mac as Apple makes, and that also comes with enough battery life that I literally never think about it — and that’s magical in its own right.
At my desk, the MacBook Pro is connected to a Ugreen Thunderbolt 4 dock that allows me to connect my monitor, external SSD (nothing exciting, it’s my Time Machine drive), and an Ethernet cable. It also handles 98W of power so it can happily keep my laptop charged without the need for any extra cables, too.
As much as the MacBook Pro is the heart of my setup, and it’s great when away from my desk, it’s only part of the story. I also have a handful of accessories that make working from my desk better than working from anywhere else.
My monitor, mouse, and keyboard
The first thing you likely notice in the hero photo at the top of this page is the monitor. It’s big, weighing in at 28 inches and it has a 4K display that offers just enough pixels to get the job done without venturing into the world of 5K offerings like the Apple Studio Display.
Don’t ask me what model it is, because I can’t remember and at this point, it’s coming up to eight years old. I’m more than sure it’s been discontinued, and it wasn’t hugely expensive even when it was new, but it gets the job done.
The keyboard that I use can change from time to time, and I’m a sucker for a new one, but the keyboard I gravitate to is always my Keychron K6.
I swapped the keycaps out for some that I found on Amazo. I also installed some Gateron yellow switches which feel great, sound good, and more than get the job done.
While the keyboard might change, the mouse never does. I use the Logitech MX Anywhere 3 which is, for all intents and purposes, an MX Master built to be small enough for use with laptops.
I tried the Logitech MX Master 3 and I can’t abide it. Controversial, I know, but there’s one simple reason that I prefer the smaller mouse of the behemoth — I have the hands of an average 10-year-old.
For that reason, the MX Anywhere lineup is perfect for me thanks to its combination of Logitech’s customizability, extra buttons, and magnetic scroll wheel. I love this thing, and when it breaks, I’ll buy another without hesitation.
That’s the majority of my go-to hardware, but it isn’t everything. As you might expect, I use a few other things as well.
You’ll notice a pair of OG AirPods Max on my desk, although I admit I don’t use them all that much. I also have a pair of original AirPods Pro that until recently were my preferred audio option, too.
These days though, I’m a big fan of the ANC AirPods 4 and I’ve been using them for a couple of months at this point. They sound great without the downsides that a lot of people don’t like about the Pros, including the claustrophobic feel in-ear earbuds can cause.
Next, there’s a 2018 11-inch iPad Pro, a tablet that I don’t use all that often but does come in handy when I’m working but also want to keep tabs on the football. And I’m in the UK, so that’s proper football!
Other accessories that I use, but not necessarily for work, include a BackBone One controller, a GameSir G8 controller, and a GameSir Cyclone 2 controller. I use all of those with my iPhone 15 Pro Max, a phone that I have so far seen little reason to ditch for this year’s refreshed model.
What comes next
So now that you know what I use, you might be wondering if I have any plans for an upgrade or two. And that’s a complicated question.
If you’d asked me when I started writing this piece I’d have said that I was very happy with how things are and I have no need to, or interest in, replacing any of it. But since then, things have gone a little awry.
My MacBook Pro recently took an unfortunate dive off a table, followed by a jug full of water and, as you can probably imagine, it didn’t go well. While initial inspections suggested I had gotten away with it, the fall did leave its mark.
That MacBook Pro that was once my ticket out of the office and to just about anywhere is now very much a desktop machine. The display doesn’t work and the ports are finicky, to say the least.
As you can imagine, that’s less than ideal in a number of ways, but once it’s connected to my hub, everything generally works OK. Most of the time.
This is all to say that I need a new laptop, so the MacBook Pro will be going sooner or later. I don’t know what it will be replaced by just yet, but it’ll either be another 16-inch MacBook Pro of some description or a 15-inch MacBook Air. Time will tell.
For now though, I’ll have to make do. And I finished writing this at my desk, using that waterlogged and battle-scarred MacBook Pro.
I just have to mop the water off my desk every once in a while, that’s all.