Apple users: do you desktop or laptop?

Help my dilemma! Made the move over to Apple 12 months ago with an 13” M2 MacBook Air and I’m totally sold. It’s so much better than my work PCs. Problem is I now exclusively work on my laptop and don’t use my desk set up at home – I’m getting a sore shoulder and have a history of bad backs, so know this is stupid. So I ordered a decent spec’d M4 iMac for working from home (I have a decent home office with sit-stand desk). I travel quite a bit so the MacBook is still required.

But let’s be honest an iMac is a lot of money – that I could spend on refurbishing our garden. I had a play with a M3 iMac in the store yesterday and of course it was lovely. In the aim of balance, I went home and plugged my MacBook into my standard spec (non 4K) 27” screen with my Anker USB-C hub and it didn’t play nicely – had to keep MacBook open to run second screen (I don’t want to keep it permanently on charge as that seems to kill my Dell laptops), changing settings was a bit of faff and then it kept blacking out for a second (HDMI cable and hub has been fine when I’ve given presentations at work). Plus of course not being as good resolution as the MacBook screen it felt a bit ‘sad’.

What are your home set ups for your Macs? I’m a University Professor and can spend far too much time at a computer – this isn’t occasional use. I do have to be on campus about 3 days a week in term time but use my work PC (through gritted teeth).

I can still cancel the iMac! I guess that’s the question…

#firstworldproblems

Laptop with a decent desk setup – most importantly separate screen in good position, my wife also has a separate keyboard and trackpad but I haven’t bothered with that. Best of both worlds but price of only one.

MacBook Pro plugged into LG 5K screen with a suitable cable (that part is essential). I wouldn’t buy an iMac as it’s (obviously) less flexible. If I wanted a desktop setup I think I’d buy a Mini.

MacBook Air on a laptop stand hooked up to a Lenovo 4k 32” monitor via Thunderbolt (no hub needed). Open all the time and on charge all the time, the battery management is pretty good so I think you are over worrying about that.

Standing desk and Mac trackpad and keyboard. You can sometimes pick these up in Black Friday Amazon warehouse sales and now there are usb c versions the lightening ones might be a bit lower in price.

When I moved to Mac I was still using Windows for work 🙂

+1 on plug the Mac into a screen, add wireless keyboard and mouse. Problem solved.

Macbook Pro M2 Max 15″ and a good monitor. Apple keyboard and Magic Mouse….

This works with the laptop closed and displays on the second screen and automagically self manages the battery at 80% charge.

Whatever you use will be poor if the desk and chair put you in an uncomfy work position… If its Mac for home, Mac Mini and two good sized monitors? Guess you have keyboards and stuff….

Mac mini M2 and 2 decent screens plugged in. I too have a MacBook for travel.
My static system does the day to day (including backups to external HD’s) and runs 24/7.

It seems the keeping a MacBook plugged in (and charging) knackers the battery. A portable’s also a far more expensive way to buy a mac

Plus I’m a colourmanagement consultant, so need a decent screen like Eizo added anyway.

Then there’s the poor ergonomics of a MacBook / laptop format. Unless you use a stand & separate keyboard / mouse.

The iMac is very nice but an all in one is restrictive.

With the MacBook, a nice 4k monitor with USB C connectivity makes life easy, a single connection to the display provides the extended display and power, and most of the  monitors on the market will also act as a USB hub if you need to connect external devices etc.  Then you can use any bluetooth keyboard and mouse, if you don’t want to pay the premium for the apple ones.

It doesn’t sound like you need a top-spec monitor unless you’re lecturing in a graphic industry.

With that setup if you still want to have a separate desktop and laptop you can easily add a Mac mini at a later date, either the very small one they released this week or an older model that’s still fairly unobtrusive.  Hoxton Macs and CEX sell refurbished ones at reduced cost, I picked up an M1 Mac mini from Hoxton at the start of the year for just over £400 to fill this purpose as it just needed a low spec model for media hosting and occasional browsing/email.  I’m typing this on my MacBook Air  and the laptop & desktop combo synch well, with browser history and email etc appearing on which ever device I’m using.

My work setup is a M1 Pro 16″ Macbook pro plugged into 2 x 27″ 4k Samsung displays – all displays are used for software development. Personal setup is a M2 Pro mini hooked into the same two Samsungs.

When I have to travel to the office I just unplug the laptop from the OWC thunderbolt dock and pop it in a bag.

I don’t want to keep it permanently on charge as that seems to kill my Dell laptops

Don’t worry about this. Dell power/battery management is absolute rubbish in comparison to many other windows machine as well as Apple. Macbook are very much built to be used this way.

IIRC, MacBooks will only go into ‘clamshell’ mode – lid closed, display on an external monitor – if they’re running off mains power.

I have used iMacs for years (all the way back to CRT model). If I have to have a screen on a desk in a house it may as well look as nice as it can.

What everyone else has said – get some monitors to plug your mac into – be aware tho, if you want to use more than one monitor you will need either a dock with display link compatibility (you’ll need to download the display link drivers) or 2 cables running out of your mac.

I used to have USB-C dock with HDMI & use the onboard HDMI port on the laptop to achieve this – I now have a HP G5 dock.

I wouldn’t recommend an iMac at all – they are only adjustable on the tilt access – they cannot move up & down, so they are not DSE compliant & if you have back issues you’ll spend an age stacking them on just the right amount of books to get the height right.

If I have to have a screen on a desk in a house it may as well look as nice as it can.

I have to admit there is certainly a bit of that. Haha. I hate clutter.

Thanks all. Maybe I need to just try a better cable as the cheapest starting point, and look at a 4K screen (I bought my current screen in 2020 to use with my work Dell laptop when there was supply/price issues). One 27” screen is fine for me. I’m happy just running two documents in split screen. Any recommendations that play nicely with a MacBook? I don’t game and only produce graphics for academic papers so nothing too fancy.

We do already have keyboard etc – though the external speakers have died and the keyboard is starting to head the same way (they are at least 17 years old as they were p20’s as part of his old desktop before we moved in together!!).

You can set up the behaviour of the video feed closing the clamshell in settings. I do this all the time when I’m working away- both on charge and charging. Done it with a few MacBooks/Mac-Airs and never seemed to be detrimental to long term battery life.

I do have both (pic from the show us your desk thread)- the iMac is an M1 I think and before that I had an intel one that I still use for Zwift. I don’t expect I’ll change it for another 3-4 years as it’s absolutely fine for everything I need (incl. some video editing). I prefer the keyboard on the MacBook (and the camera) but I really wouldn’t want to work on it all day.

Refurb store could be your friend to get an M1 or M2.

I use a MacBook Air at work and home (and I also work in a university). At work I have a USB hub (Anker USB C Hub, PowerExpand 6-in-1) that means I only need to plug in a single adapter for an external keyboard, mouse, monitor, plus it also gives me ethernet connectivity. Definitely one of my more useful purchases…

Laptop at home, desktop at work.

There’s a new Mac Mini coming in December so you get more ports and more  memory and M4 chip – just attach peripherals of your choice…

https://www.apple.com/uk/mac-mini/

I only need to plug in a single adapter for an external keyboard, mouse, monitor

Same. In my case it’s an LG screen which uses a single USB-C cable for all that stuff and power. So I can come home, plug the laptop in with a single cable and have a great home desk setup.

In my case the screen is a 34” ultra wide which I LOVE. My workflow when I was doing academic stuff was to have Zotero (ref manager), Word, and a browser all open alongside each other. For me, that was a big time saver vs using a single window at a time. If you don’t want a big screen I’m sure they (LG) do similar connectivity with smaller screen sizes.

I went all in Apple earlier this year, with an M1 MacBook Air and liked it so much that I bought a second hand base spec M1 Mac Mini to replace my Windows desktop. It does everything I need and I’ve hung it under my desk so it’s a pretty tidy set up.

I was concerned about the small storage but I’ve just plugged a couple of USB drives in.

I don’t do any work on either though, just personal use.

It seems the keeping a MacBook plugged in (and charging) knackers the battery.

Not sure about that.  We had an old 2011 MacBook for 12 years (!).  It spent most of its time plugged into the mains rather than on battery and recharging.  I don’t know how much battery life it had lost but it was on its original battery and still very usable when we sold it.

Currently have a 2019 (last generation Intel) Air that spends nearly all its time on mains power.  Like the iPhone it now does some sort of automated ‘battery saving’ – rather than fully charging it only charges to 80% by default and you have to tell it to top up the last 20. (if you have a regular daily schedule it can work out it tops it up automatically – iPhone charging overnight goes to 80 quickly then does the last 20 just before the time it knows you get up.

I’ve done both a iMac and laptop with screens over the years.  If you’re using a computer at a desk in one place then an iMac is just a nicer experience.  (currently ave a 2021 M1).  Fewer cables, simple power up, very good screen (I had 2x 20″ HD monitors for years but find the 24 on the iMac is enough), great built in speakers (I output to an amp via the headphone jack, but its easy to switch to system sounds through the speakers if want sound from Mac while listening to radio in background).  Webcam is built in and in the right place for zoom calls.

80% mechanical wired  keyboard (so much better than any laptop keyboard, or apples wireless keyboard) with both and Apple trackpad and a Logitech Mx master wireless mouse (switch between them for different tasks or mood)

I spent quite a while considering a Mac mini plus screen but there just wasn’t anything that played really nicely with Mac.  The Apple monitor is as much as an iMac. The few ‘Apple optimised’ third party monitors all seemed to either have issues or work out more than an iMac once you’d added on a mini.

The bottom end m4 iMac is ‘only’ £1300 – that’s only £200 more than the 13″ m3 MacBook Air.

For mobile work we’ve got the Air or you can do a fair bit with an iPad, especially with a wireless keyboard (and it’s smaller/lighter than a laptop)

worth getting a nice monitor as the screen on the laptop will shame anything else!

iMacs have their place…where they can be seen. If i had to have a computer in a living room (or somewhere like and office reception) it’d be an iMac.