My Productive iPad Desk Setup: No More Mac

minimalism is boring there I said it I said the thing now I used to be against having anything but my computer and the absolute bare minimum accessories sitting on my desk but that like I said is boring make your death space personal have some fun with it it should be a joy to sit down and work at this video is sponsored by surf shark let's get into it between all the software changes we got this year for the iPad I no longer have a Mac I sold my MacBook Pro earlier this year and the Mac Studio review unit that I have sent back to Apple no more mac the big key things for me were Final Cut coming to the iPad and the stage manager changes we got so this desk setup is all about using the iPad and making it your main device the desk itself I've talked about a bunch it was built by my dad I absolutely love it today death underneath the desk I have a rack that's from Ikea it's just like a cable organization Rack in fact it's actually two of them they're 3 ft long a piece put right there holds all the cables up looks good now the iPad I am using as my main computer is the 12.9 in iPad Pro it is the 2 tbte model because I edit video on my iPad and photos and a bunch of different work I want the most amount of space I can possibly get and right now that's 2 terabytes where I put my iPad when I'm sitting at my desk is in the mag float Pro iPad stand what I like about the mag float Pro is I'm able to set it to be the same height as my monitor so the mag float Pro we'll get into this in a little bit more it sits on my monitor stand and I'm able to raise it up to be the same height and I use it in vertical mode I do this for a couple of different reasons personally I would ra rather just have one Monitor and just work from one space because ADHD and focus issues and all sorts of different things but I can't do do that because the iPad doesn't support clamshell mode so what I do is I use my iPad screen as sort of a dashboard I have all my widgets up there sometimes I'll open up apps like threads or mcadon or discourse or when I'm editing I'll have good notes open and have my script on that side and then Final Cut on my main monitor this way I can reference my script in the b-roll shots and in my shot list now with iPad OS 17 we got way better external monitor support than what we had an iPad OS 16 the iPad does a much better job at remembering window positions when working from an external monitor when you unplug and plug back in it'll it'll try and remember those positions it also doesn't try and snap windows to the center of the screen you can move things off to the side get it out of your way bring it back in when you want it's not always trying to like group everything towards the center now I've been using the Apple Studio display since day one and I absolutely love this monitor since it's coming out I've looked around at other monitors but there's nothing that matches what it can do it's one of the few monitors on the market that is a proper retina monitor for iPads and Macs it has great color reproduction it's bright but it is a bit pricey and I will fully be the first one to admit it is pricey but the way I look at it is I am using this monitor to make things that I in return make money from so it's it's paying for it self it's it's definitely already paid for itself in the long run uh just because of color reproduction the size retina resolution the speakers are great camera's not so great coming out of the studio display is a thunderbolt cable that gets plugged right into my iPad Pro now for the studio display I do use the Tilt and height adjustable stand I'm 61 62 depends on how how confident I feel in a given day typical monitor stands are way too short for me so so I absolutely needed the the Tilt and height adjustable one uh but I'll talk about that more in just a bit this video is sponsored by surf shark surf shark is a VPN service that protects you and your data I worked in it for 9 years and at one point one day we decided hey let's set up a fake coffee shop with a fake Network and see if we can snoop on you know people's like web traffic and see what we can actually well see and it was scary how much data we were able to get with surf shark your traffic is completely encrypted from your device to its destination protecting your privacy data is the new gold and some really scary people will do some really scary things frankly to get a hold of that data one thing I really appreciate about surf shark is they don't keep logs of your traffic those VPN services that do keep logs they're literally defeating the purpose of using a VPN with surf shark you can change the location in which your computer is coming from and this is Handy for a few different reasons say you're traveling abroad but you're watching a show you just got done walking ton of miles or kilometers depending on where you're traveling and you're just like oh I'm beat I just want to sit down and watch my show but oh no the streaming service that doesn't have your show anymore well you can use surf shark to go back to the country that you're from and finish your show it also works vice versa as well I actually like surf shark so much I paid for it myself a couple of years ago and I'm still using it to this day right now you can get an exclusive surf shark Black Friday deal get up to six additional months for free at surfshark dodeals and use code LLY at checkout now there are three extra USBC ports on the back of the studio displays I use these instead of a thunderbolt Hub these are the full 10 gbit per second USBC Port so they're not as fast as Thunderbolt but they're not the slow 5 gbit per second USBC ports either now none of my regular accessories that I use throughout the day are thunder bolt accessories so this is plenty fast enough for me the first thing I have plugged in here is the prograde card reader this is both a CF Express and an SD card reader uh I use CF Express cards these are like little memory cards that are really really fast I use those for all the video stuff I shoot and SD cards for all the photography stuff I shoot I do this because my Canon R5 takes both of those cards so I just programmed it so video goes to CF Express photos goes to SD cards and this helps me keep my media organized now this card reader is also magnetic so it sticks to my monitor stand that I'll talk more about in later in this video so this way when I'm plugging in or removing a card it's not the card reader itself isn't moving it's stuck to the monitor stand and that's really nice the next thing plugged into the studio display in the back is the anchor 2.5 gbit per second ethernet adapter this is an ethernet adapter that goes to USBC and it's faster than a standard gigabit adapter this gives me a much faster connection than what I would get just over Wi-Fi it also helps me keep my connection to my Nas running faster so this way would I need to back up uh Final Cut projects or Media or whatever I can upload those to my Nas Snappy now the next thing plugged into the studio display is a USBC Hub because the studio display is a few USBC ports away from being just absolutely perfect so I found this guy this is a belon USBC Hub it has four four USBC ports and all of them are supported at the full 10 gbits per second connection but for the accessories that I do have plugged in here I don't need that full speed connection uh I've tested it with all of them running and it runs just fine this is just kind of a way to give me more USBC ports without needing to put a thunderbolt Hub somewhere on my desk now the first accessory plugged into this Hub is my keyboard you may have noticed I have a couple of mechanical keyboards now most of the of these are custom mechanical keyboards that I have built myself but my current favorite right now is the mode Envoy the mode Envoy is a 65% custom mechanical keyboard typically I do like bigger keyboards but I've really been enjoying this one lately this is a build-it-yourself keyboard it comes completely disassembled if you're looking for like a beginner custom mechanical keyboard look at keyron now I really like mechanical keyboards because you can customize them in really specific ways you can customize the sound they make when you click a key you can customize the feeling when you tap on something you can customize H there there's just so much the key caps the look The Design everything and I have a lot of fun putting them together but not all of my keyboards have media keys this is where I use the BN 009 macro pad this is just a nine button programmable keyboard I got some custom media keys from WD along with four blank keys from them as as well I programmed it through via so I'm able to have all the media keys right there play pause skip go back volume up volume down right there and then I have four blank keys that I have programmed up with different macros and shortcuts for Final Cut via does unfortunately require a Mac or a PC underneath my keyboard I have the sidekick notepad this is a notepad that's kind of the length of a 10 keyless keyboard you can use this as a wrist rest while you're typing I also o use this as a place to jot down notes while I'm working this can be stuff I need to re-shoot while I'm filming a video notes for a project that I'm working on or notes from a meeting I'm in a quick reminder to do something or whatever there's also a task list on the side I use this to keep track of all the projects I'm working on for that week this is the perfect tool for somebody like me that's has an ongoing fight against ADHD you know sometimes I'll get something that pops into my head and I talk a lot on this channel about being able to capture things quickly because if I get a thought that pops into my head and say oh I'll come back to that in 10 minutes that thought will be gone in three minutes like there is no way I'm going to remember that so I have different things around me to just constantly be able to capture thoughts and ideas and whatever I just absolutely love this notepad the fact that it serves multiple purposes it can be a wrist rest as a utility but also a notepad to jot things down it's very clever now now there is a trick to using this when you're done with your page don't throw it away or put it in a drawer or something take it and put it underneath the notebook that way the page height still stays up so you can keep using it as a wrist rest now when I do write long scripts and I'm talking like over 5,000 words like really big things like my iPad OS walkthroughs I will take that and put it to the side and use a traditional wrist rest just because I'm typing for a really long period of time but if I'm doing emails writing script outlines whatever I I just leave this right here on my desk underneath my keyboard now obviously I use this mechanical keyboard that is on my desk for all my typing but there is an annoying bug with iPad OS when you use an iPad with an external Monitor and you plug it in it quickly reaches out to detect if there is a keyboard and trackpad connected if you have the keyboard plugged into a monitor and then the monitor plugged into your iPad it doesn't detect the keyboard board quick enough it will just mirror the iPad's display it'll treat it like it's in a projector mode so you would then have to go into settings display a Arrangement and then turn off mirroring so what I have is an extra keyboard and I use this keyboard for a bunch of different testing and stuff like that but I leave it primarily paired to my iPad Pro so right before I plug my iPad in I just tap the space bar it connects it sees that there's a keyboard it sees that there's a trackpad and I don't have to go in and turn off mirror mode it's the most annoying bug I frustrate it's the dumbest thing I have on my desk for the dumbest possible reason but it keeps me from going insane speaking of trackpads I use the magic Trackpad it's the only good trackpad out there on the market uh it supports all the gestures with iPad OS it has good scrolling I do not know why iPad OS it supports mouses but the scrolling with a mouse and iPad OS is horrible I really wish it wasn't cuz I would much rather use a mouse than a trackpad but scrolling wise you can't beat a trackpad so if you can't beat them join them and the gestures for a magic Trackpad are really important you have three finger swipe up to go home three finger swipe to the left and the right to to go back to the previous stages those are all really important and then for Final Cut uh you have uh horizontal scrolling how to think about that one for a second but you have horizontal scrolling through your timeline the desk mat I'm using is from a company called grov made this is their extra-large wool dark gray desk pad I really like this as a way to add some contrast to my desk so obviously the desk Mac is a little darker it's not black but it's a little darker and my desk is made out of really light wood I went with the extra large one because it's the same width as my desk so that way it didn't look like it was getting cut off at some point you have the light wood pieces on the left and the right so you get that nice contrast I think it looks really good I did mod if y this because it's the same width as my desk I wasn't able to get to my cable management holes so I just took out my trusty pocket knife slashed some crosses or some T's whatever you want to call it right into where the holes are for my desk this way I can just pull cables right through I did this years ago it hasn't fallen apart it's work it's held up together great if we jump all the way back to the Balon USBC Hub there is a couple more devices plugged in there so the next device I have plugged into that Belin USBC Hub is the opal C1 now full disclosure they sent me this as part of a sponsorship but ever since I got it and took it out of the box it's just been on my desk I absolutely love it this is a webcam and with iPad OS 17 the iPads got support for external webcams I've been using this for a lot of my FaceTime calls and and video calls and things like that it's just really nice and it's much better quality than the studio display now there's a couple of annoying things about using an external webcam with the iPad this isn't opal specific this is just in general the first is you can't select your webcam there's no menu like of like hey here's all the webcams you have plugged in let you select which one you want there is no menu it's the last one detected so if for some reason this isn't the last camera detected you have to unplug it and plug it back in the other issue is WebEx and zoom still do not support external webcams at the time of recording this video and it is very frustrating because oh boy are those apps still used a lot and I have to go over to my iPad tilt it to landscape and have those calls that way now this is plugged into my Hub but I have had zero issues with it no stuttering no lag no audio drops or anything like that it it's worked perfectly fine plugged into the Hub the last thing that is plugged into that belon USBC Hub is my Scarlet solo audio interface again this is another thing that works perfectly fine plugged into that USBC hub no audio drop issues no issues of any kind now this is an audio interface and I use this for a couple of different things first I use this whenever I'm recording podcasts or uh recording voiceover for videos and stuff like this this is where I plug in my mic and record this I don't use my mic very often so it's not something that stays on my desk anymore it's actually in this closet behind me and I just pull it out when I need it the second thing is I have my desk speakers plugged into my audio interface and I can control the volume for those here now the desk speakers I am using are the krk studio monitors these are the 5in versions they sound amazing now these aren't just regular desk speakers these are studio monitors they're they're high quality speakers that are meant to be used for you know music production podcast production video production things like that but you absolutely can use them to playback music they sound great I actually bought these years ago but took them off my desk when I got the studio display but I was starting to get a few complaints about my audio being unbalanced when I was using the studio display speakers because when I edit video I check the audio against two devices headphones and speakers once I put these back on my desk I did a bunch of testing changed a lot of my audio presets and stuff in Final Cut and I haven't had any complaints sense so I also use these speakers while I'm filming b-roll I like to have music going on when I'm filming b-roll I'm in in this room by myself it's boring it's quiet I got to have something going on but because of the dynamic Island it will show whatever song I'm playing so if I'm playing a song and I'm doing like this sequence of like touch here touch here touch here touch here that may be five different shots that I need to do and it may take me five minutes 6 minutes or something like that to shoot that I don't want the songs jumping around up in the dynamic Island so I've kind of had a stop using my homepods while I film b-roll and I've been using these speakers instead and they sound really good for playing music now to switch audio on the iPad you have to go into Control Center and you can long press on the now playing screen or you can tap on the the speaker icon and you can select from your different outputs the center piece of my desk setup and I've alluded to this is my monitor stand and this is from The Gather collection this whole gather setup was sent to me to review I want to say last year you may notice I don't put my monitor stand on the actual monitor in fact I put the monitor stand in front of my monitor like I mentioned I use the Tilt and height adjustable monitor stand so I got that before I got this whole gather set up so I didn't even have a monitor stand then but what I like about The Gather stand is I'm able to put it in front of the monitor stand and when I'm sitting at my desk it you can't see the stand so it just kind of looks like the monitor's floating there it gives it this nice effect the monitor stand is kind of an accent piece for me you know I put different things on there but it's it's definitely there for looks primarily and a little bit of organization as well now I really love this gather setup if they hadn't sent it to me to review I definitely would have bought the whole set I love the look of it but it is very pricey uh it's handmade here in America I believe it's actually made in Pennsylvania uh it's made out of metal and wood the Metal's magnetic so I was able to stick my card reader to it and I was also able to stick this newest device on there as well this is the 2o smart home button now this is a device I heard about from my friend Federico vtii he runs Mac Stories the the website this is a single button homekit device and the bottom of it is magnetic so I was able to stick it right to the bottom of the gather uh monitor stand now this works with both homekit and matter now it has one button but three different modes so there's single press double press and long press I just got this earlier this week so I haven't like really come up with my final solution of how I'm going to use this but right now the way I have it set up is a single button press starts playing music to the two hom pods I have here in my office uh because this works with homekit you're able to actually assign shortcuts to it so when you go in and start to assign things to the button you can scroll all the way down and select convert to shortcut in here I was able to set up using the home actions to start playing music to my two home pods double press toggles the lights in my office it uses an if action to see if they're on if they're on it turns them off if they're off it turns them on and long press I'm working on something for long press but I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to get it to work I haven't figured out all the details but it'll probably end up being a whole video kind of like my action cut shortcut video Now shortcuts through the home app is very limited you do not get access to all the actions you would normally get but what you do get access to are actions like run script over SSH so if you have a computer like a Mac Mini or Mac Studio in your home or your office on all the time you can do some really cool things with that okay so outside of the monitor stand there are a couple of other gather accessories that I use that I really like first is the magsafe charger uh this is one of those magsafe stands that you have to bring your own magsafe Puck to the the stand itself magnetically attaches to the monitor stand so this way when you're putting your phone on and off it doesn't wobble it doesn't come with the phone it stays in place really nice touch it's also the perfect accessory for standby uh I use this all the time when I'm working at my desk I just put my phone there in landscape and you standby and uh if you have the new airpods Pro Gen 2 model those charge via mag safe as well and have the magnet in them so you can attach them to Vertical stands like this and charge them up then the center piece is The Gather organizer this is a great place to put different things the first is a box with a lid this is where I throw SD cards and CF Express cards that I've used but I don't want to format like I have media on them I want to just make sure they'll stay on there until like I'm done with a project or something like that so I throw them in this box the second is a pen and pencil holder uh I have a couple of pens here I also keep my reading glasses here because I'm over 30 now and then the last thing is actually a holder for Post-it notes but this is where I keep my airpods Pro case when it's not being charged having a specific place for those has been really nice because it prevents me from losing them I used to be really against knickknacks and personalizing your workspace and I realize how dumb that is now have fun with your space I have a lamp and a fake plant because there's not a lot of sunlight in here the real plant I used to have died because there's just not enough sunlight in here uh I have like my WWDC and Final Cut Summit conference media badges candles lightsabers my YouTube plaque Legos books all sorts of different things in here to just make this space feel like mine and and let me enjoy sitting here because if you don't enjoy where you're sitting down to work you're not going to want to sit there and work and you're not going to work and I just found I wasn't getting things done now the last thing I want to talk about and I'm going to be quick about this one is the wall of keyboards behind me so all of these but two keyboards on this wall I built myself uh they're all custom keyboards except two of them now what is holding them up is a pegboard style wall those are there I have hooks I put all my keyboards up there just kind of as a display thing I really like them so that's it for this video thank you all so much for watching let me know what you think about my desk setup in the description below I'm going to put links to everything I mentioned down there as well my thanks to Surf shark for sponsoring this video if you liked it hit the Thumbs Up Button subscribe if you haven't already and have a great day

Channel: Christopher Lawley

Views: 116,562

Keywords: Apple, iPad, iPad Pro, iPad Pro 12.9, iPad Productivity, Getting things done on iPad, Working off iPad, iPadOS, iOS, App, Shortcuts, Automation, Desk Setup, Workspace, iPad Desk Setup, iPad Pro Desk Setup, M2 iPad Pro, New iPad, External Monitor Support, Mechanical Keyboards, Desk Accessories, Must Have, New, Workflow, Video editing, Standby, iPhone Stand, Headphones, Speakers, Audio, Accessories, iPad Accessories, Keyboards, USB Hub, USB-C Hub, Thunderbolt Hub, Thunderbolt, Productivity

Id: Q6lvaSg4jFE

Length: 23min 36sec (1416 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 24 2023