Justin SearlsInterview
Programmer
Adapted from Justin Searls's interview on Uses This, published 28 October 2021. The kit is drawn from their answers and each reason is an excerpt, lightly edited. Shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read the full interview ↗
Is this you? Claim this kit →Hardware
I variably sit, kneel, perch cross-legged, and lean on a Steelcase Leap.
Since I bought my first Mac in 2004 (a 12" iBook G4), I've always traded-up aggressively to each new model on the theory that a Mac's resale value is usually high enough that the marginal cost of each new machine is relatively low—especially for a device that I'll often use for 10 or more hours a day.
Given the above rationale, the current answer to the question of "what computer do you use?" is a maxed-out 14" M1 MacBook Pro.
LG 34" 5K2K ultra-wide Thunderbolt 3 display.
I keep a Magic Trackpad 2 on my desk, but only for scrubbing audio & video timelines.
A shattered-beyond-all-recognition iPhone 11 Pro serves as my webcam, since its front-facing camera still works.
And because I have a window behind the desk, my face is illuminated by a pair of Elgato Key Lights Air (along with a spiffy HomeKit automation that turns them on and closes the shades)
Security Gateway which serves as a router
Cloud Key Gen2 which serves as the router's (and all your switches') administrative controller
Switch Lite 16 PoE which provides 8 normal ethernet ports and 8 power-over-ethernet ("PoE") ports which can send enough power over the wire to allow downstream switches and WiFi access points from needing their own power supply
4 Switch Flex Mini switches, each connected to a wall and powered over ethernet
4 Access Point HD devices for great WiFi coverage throughout the house, which miraculously happened to already have capped ethernet drops in the ceiling
A UPS small enough to cram into the box in order to prevent the network from going down every time the power hiccups, which happens an awful lot in Florida, apparently
Communication
Productivity
The only notable exception being Things, which will just always have a faster and more keyboard-friendly UX than the stock Reminders app, despite its worse Siri support and lack of sharing and location tagging.
Divvy for window management, with keyboard shortcuts configured for full-screen, half-width, and 1/3rd-width window arrangement.
Browser
Notes
Coding & Development
As for programming, I just can't quit vim.
Media
Storage
I dropped Dropbox and Google's file sync applications years ago and never looked back, for example.
Other
Oh, and for the handful of (bad!) apps that require horizontal scrolling but ignore the macOS setting to always show scrollbars and don't give you any other way to navigate them
It's connected to the Mac via lightning and in conjunction with the fantastic Reincubate Camo app, which provides a driver so that macOS treats it as a normal camera input.
A Raspberry Pi 4 running Homebridge, so I can make all my non-Apple-blessed stuff work with HomeKit