My Mac Setup

Firstly, I’m not one that could be described as an early adopter of new Apple products. The reasons for this are twofold; initial cost, and early teething problems with both hardware and software.

My Mac

My first Mac was a 2nd revision G5 iMac. I’d been pondering on getting a Mac for some time, even before the G4 iMac was replaced with the G5.

When the G5 was released in 2004 there were some issues and concerns over heat control in the all new form factor and some Mac’s were recalled. I therefore held out for the 2nd revision, released in May 2005, before handing over the cash for a 17″ model with 2GHz processor, 250GB HDD and 512MB Ram. I upgraded the Ram to 1.5GB myself with 3rd party Ram.

This Mac served me well and, as an introduction to the world of Apple, it was fantastic; I loved it. I did have the Logic Board replaced under a warranty replacement scheme although mine hadn’t shown any problematic symptoms. Other than that though it was flawless.

I replaced this Mac in 2009 with a used 2007 20″ iMac with 2.33GHz intel Core 2 Duo processor, 500GB HDD and 4GB Ram. The model is the last one Apple made in white before switching over to the aluminium models. I still liked the white model, which is why I sought out a good used one at the time, as Apple were no longer selling them. This is the Mac I’m using now, running Snow Leopard 10.6.8. I have Lion installed on another partition. As for Mountain Lion, this Mac won’t support it.

This Mac is still going strong but is being held back a little now by the relatively low amount of Ram and it’s lack of support for Mountain Lion and future versions of OS X. So, I will be looking to replace it sometime soon.

Other Hardware

30GB black iPod 5.5G

Lacie 320GB HD for archived stuff
Western Digital MyBook 1TB HD used for Time Machine Backup
Western Digital Elements 1TB HD with several partitions used for my iTunes library and various other things such as other versions of OS X

iPad 1 16GB WiFi + 3G
iPhone 4S 64GB (my latest purchase)

A few Airport devices that handle WiFi and AirPlay duties

Canon IP4500 printer
Canon IXUS 220 HS camera
Grado SR80 headphones

Software

OS X:

I use quite a few of the Mac’s built in apps such as Safari, Mail, iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and of course Time Machine.

Other regularly used apps include…
LaunchBar A ‘launch’ app that opens webpages, apps and files by using abbreviations. Can do a whole lot more too.
Twitterific For Twitter on my Mac.
Dropbox Stuff in the Cloud.
Notational Velocity A simple notes app (which syncs with the Simplenote iOS app).
Mactracker A neat little app for getting info on Apple products old, and new.
Chrome For when Safari can’t do it.
EasyCrop Neat little app for quickly cropping images. Used mostly for cropping artwork for iTunes.
TextExpander A brilliant text expansion utility.
PopClip An iOS-like copy/paste utility. Well worth the couple of quid it costs.
Soundsource Simple utility for switching sound output devices.

iOS:

Again, I use a bunch of the built in apps such as Safari, Mail, Twitter, Reminders, etc…

Other notable iOS apps, on both the iPad and iPhone unless stated…
Simplenote Notes app that syncs with Notational Velocity on the Mac.
Fantastical For iPhone. Really good calendar app.
Facebook Oh, you know!
Weather 2x Good alternative to the built in app.
Instapaper A ‘read it later’ app.
Dropbox Cloud syncing
Camera+ For iPhone. Advanced camera functions.
Appflow For  iPhone. Nice app for discovering new apps.
iA Writer Nice, clean app for writing.
Mactracker Apple product history app.
Tweetbot For iPad. Twitter client on the iPad.

What Next?

Hopefully, my next Mac will be a new iMac with an SSD and at least 16GB Ram.