Most of you will not find this interesting, I know. A few of you, however, are like me, overly interested in other people’s workflows. As such, here we are…

Desk setup & Hardware

My desk looks a bit mad in the above photo. This is because I turned on both iPads and the MSI Claw. Usually if a screen is on, then it is being used.

Working from left to right, here are the objects on show

1. iPad Air M2, 13 inch with 512 GB storage. With Magic keyboard - I use this daily for drawing, mostly, however I do write with it, and sometimes use it as second screen.
   1. Behind it is a large Bluetooth speaker from DOSS, I really like that.
2. MSI Claw A8+ AI Copilot- Worst named product ever, however it’s a good gaming handheld PC that serves my purposes. I upgraded it to a 2 TB SSD.
3. MacBook Air M2, 13 inch, 1 TB of storage and 16 GB of unified memory. I am considering changing it in June, as birthday gift to myself. There likely isn’t a reason to do so, but I would like a slightly larger screen. This is out of character for me, as I like small things but the 13 inch, as my main computer, well, from time to time, it feels a little snug. Also, M5 is MBA is out.
   1. Magic Mouse, black.
4. iPad Mini 6, 256 GB Storage. No one needs two iPads. I ended up with it very cheaply. I like it a lot for games and reading news. While I enjoy it, I don’t feel like it’s a ‘mission-critical’ item for me.
   1. Above the iPad Mini you can see my Apple Watch charger, hanging on the wall.
5. Fan. I don’t need a fan this time of year, but where the heck else can I put it for a few months? I just leave it there.
6. Lamp. It’s a USBC chargeable one. Battery lats about three evenings at my desk which is about 10 hours I would guess.

You may notice that aside from the fan, everything at my desk is battery powered. I really like having a desk which keeps going in a power cut (I get them from time to time, especially in the winter) and because I’m all in on the Apple ecosystem it switches to a phone powered hotspot with one button, should my internet go off.

I would love one of those large solar charging batteries. I would put the panel in my window and charge everything for free forever! But they are about £400 for a good one. Maybe I’ll get one next year.

Bonus items: Not photographed are the following essentials

• Dog - Mine is a chihuahua called Backup.
• Miyoo Mini+: Still my favourite retro handheld.
• External SSD: I have a 2 TB Corsair and a two 1 TB Samsung drives to back up important documents, files and BandCamp purchases.
• Sketchboard Pro: I love my Sketchboard, It’s a big plastic stand that the iPad goes in to make to make it better for drawing. I use it most days and while it was overpriced, it has since proved its self.
• Phone and watch: I still use an iPhone 14PM and an Apple Watch Series 11. Like both, not changing them until there is a legitimate feature upgrade that I want.

Software

I love MacOS. Honestly, I think it’s damned near perfect for my needs and habits. Though, contrary to fashion, I don’t hate Windows 11 either. I use it on buy MSI Claw, and it’s honestly ‘fine.’ Anyway the applications and tools…

• Writing: I have been using Ulysses for about a year now. It has everything I want. While I have a lot of respect for Scrivener, it is a single device piece of software. Ulysses lets me jump between iPad, Mac, and phone without any issues and has nice grammar tooling built in. I also really like Markdown, so it’s ideal for my habits. No plans to change any time soon. I am interested in the fabled ‘new app’ form the Scrivener team, which may launch some time before the rapture.
• Notes: I have jumped around note-taking tools more than any other tool. I think I realistically started being a serious notetaker on Notion, then I jumped to Obsidian, DevonThing and dipped a toe into Craft and UpNote. I was on Apple Notes for ages, but I can’t have nested Smart Folder there and it finally for too disorganised to use. I’m now on Bear notes. Bear feels like a strange thing to pay for when It’s using my iCloud but, its tag-based folder structure (with nesting) has made it an ideal home for my notes as I can have single notes in multiple locations. It has markdown support too, which is outstanding! Bear lets me export all my notes as dot MD text files, should I ever desire to move.
• Link saving: I was using an app called Anybox. It’s great but appears to be functionally abandoned now. I have had one or two synching issues too. I realised recently that Bear’s web clipper offers me all the functionality I actually need and has good global searching. So I migrated my 1,018 links over to Bear. There is no tool. I had to do this manually. I am happy with this solution.
• Drawing: I use Procreate on My iPad and Pixelmator pro on my Mac. I also have the Affinity suite while us usually overkill for my needs. For pixels, I use Pixaki which is outstanding, not that I draw pixel art that much. I did use ClipStudio for a while, but I really don’t like its brush engine. Everything feels sort of ‘off’ to me.
• Bible Study: Still on eSword and I still really like it. My only issues (still) is that notes and bookmarks don’t sync between devices.
• Task management: I have used loads of things for this, but I keep coming back to Todoist. While I really like Things, I require web access to my task list so I can use it on my work PC. I think if they ever update Things to have this, I’ll go back. Structured is also good, I highly recommend it, but Todist appears to be my home. Ironically, I find structured to be too, well, structured for my day-to-day workflow.

Future changes?

I may get a new MacBook Air in June. That’s it. Really… I like my setup. I like buy software and I like my website.

Thanks for reading, and I am absolutely interested in your setups! Please do share.