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.

Laptop (MacBook Pro Intel) with two extra monitors hanging off it. When I get to the office I can do the same thing.

Isn’t this what the Mac mini is for?

Ask around for a monitor, or check Marketplace – there always seem to be lots around.

If anyone’s seriously bothered about keeping it plugged in 24/7 (though ld say there’s no problem with this) you can always pull the plug at night.

The only reason *not* to go laptop + screen is that you can get better bang for your buck with a pure desktop approach if you don’t need the portability.

Remember that Macs have very good optimised charging so they don’t just blindly charge to 100% needlessly – they learn from your usage just like they do with phones and headphones etc. We run around 15 Macs, all laptops, all using external monitors, we have done so for years and we have never had one with battery issues.

I’ve had Mac minis for ages (currently still on intel so the new M4 may be in my future)

Absolutely fine on a Dell QHD 27 inch monitor and quite pretty on my gigabyte 32inch 4k.

There’s a bit of an issue with screens failing on current iMacs – I’d avoid an all in one unless you have a need for something pretty.

Isn’t this what the Mac mini is for?

Yeah I have looked at these. I’d speced a 24gb, 1Tb SSD iMac for £2k with educational discount. Mac mini at same spec comes out at £1.2k (for some reason I can’t see the educational discount at the moment, so let’s assume £1.1k). Plus screen, new speakers, thunderbolt cables and keyboard (as all these things are/have died), it ends up being about £1.6-1.7k depending on spec. At which point it was very tempting to have the clean lines and uncluttered set up of the iMac for a bit more.

Or just do as others have suggested above and have plug my MacBook in and just get the new screen and peripherals as needed. Have plug it back into my current screen this morning and it has played a bit better – just need to serious rearrange my set up to make it a lot more streamlined.

And in doing so, the feet on the current keyboard gave up…

I would go for the plugin option with a rigourous backup – you’ll always have your files with you without having to worry about cloud storage etc

Under Uni policy all my work is on OneDrive. Which is fine, I’ve worked like that for years.

Graphic Designer here. Always been Mac based.

I’m 99% home-based and really love my Mac Studio hooked up to an older 27″ Mac display. I have an older Mac Book Pro but if I’m away, my iPad/iPhone/sketchpad is fine for most tasks, and occasional lightweight edits until I’m back home. I’ve never really enjoyed working on a laptop (for an extended period) for some reason – cramps my creative juices!

Recommended usage time for a laptop as a laptop is 30 MINUTES. My vintage (2012) MBP is plugged into an ultra wide monitor running picture in picture over 1/4 of the screen, and I am typing this using a posh Mac bluetooth keyboard. I almost NEVER use a laptop as a laptop, always as a desktop.

Portability is the thing, not usability. I take my hp work laptop (about the same as a MacBook Air) to and from the office, but alway use it in desktop mode. A Mac mini could work the same, but just occasionally you may want to look at the screen whilst away from a desk. Modern laptops charge and port via USB-C, so there is literally only a single cable out of the monitor to plug into the laptop. No docking station, no power adaptor to take along. Just. The. Laptop. (and for work I carry a small folding bluetooth keyboard, mouse and wrist rest, and wired Apple USB-c EarPods, all in a little bag). It works really well.

apple mouse for scale  I use a Logitech mouse for work

I’ve got an M1 Mac Mini plugged into a 28″ 4K monitor. Previously had my 2019 Macbook Pro plugged into the monitor but the noise from the fans was really distracting, seems that running an external monitor gave my laptop some heat issues.

Mac Mini is in a cage which is screwed into the VESA mount on the back of the monitor so I’ve essentially got a cheapo iMac but with a bigger screen. Wireless keyboard and mouse complete the setup.

Has worked fine for me for three years now.

EDIT – the internal storage on mine is only 256GB. Picked up a 2tb m.2 ssd and a caddy and use that as an external drive (its just balanced against the back of the monitor)

Those new Mac Minis look like an absolute steal! The base level M4 is £499 with an educational discount. That’s cheaper than the M2 was last week. And apparently the CPU performs comparably to the Mac Studio…

Mac Mini M2 and 32″ screen. A very capable set, I rarely push it, but it handles the very little video editing I do,  with  ease.

Ok I’ve done some epic work avoidance and cleared out my work laptop (which I never use) and the dead speakers and have reasonable working set up with my current set up, 2560×1440 screen and existing HDMI cable. The display resolution is a bit odd – sharpish but rather small (and increasing the font size doesn’t help on every app).

Because I don’t have any speakers the sound has to come out my MacBook at the moment. My Anker hub only has two USB ports so I can only run the keyboard and mouse, and not the external webcam on the monitor as the Mac won’t see it plugged into the screen like the Dell could.  I’m thinking I probably would get an Apple trackpad so I don’t have to change the settings on the MacBook every time I plug it in (I’m trying to right click on my mouse….!).

Some more playing to do but I’m very close to cancelling the iMac.

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.

It depends on the macbook. Most of the intel ones can drive two displays, some of the M series ones can only drive a single display, some two, some more than that – it’s down to the hardware.

My setup is 2x Dell 31″ 3K monitors side by side, with a work intel macbook pro connected to a thunderbolt dock. The dock has 2x display outputs – it’ll drive both external displays and the onboard screen at once.

I’ve also got a personal M1 Pro macbook, which if plugged into the dock will also drive all 3, no drivers needed.

The work laptop lives on a stand on the LHS of the desk, and typically runs the built in screen and one monitor.
The home laptop lives on a stand on the RHS of the desk, running the built in screen and the other monitor on the secondary monitor input.

If I want focus on work, I can change input on the second monitor to run all three screens for work, and even ‘take over’ the personal laptop screen as an additional monitor if needed.

Mac has ‘universal control’ options – the mouse and keyboard are shared pretty seamlessly between the two systems. Scrolling to the edge of the personal monitor ‘pops’ the mouse out onto the work display, so if you didn’t know they were actually two different laptops you would probably not realise. You can even copypasta between the two.

The display resolution is a bit odd – sharpish but rather small (and increasing the font size doesn’t help on every app).

Could you try changing the resolution in the ‘Displays’ setting?

Buy yourself a decent ultra wide Samsung monitor with speakers and a USB-C charging port and built in USB hub. You will never look back. Sound out of the monitor, ease of reading multiple documents, and ability to pick up the laptop and leave without power pack. And get a bluetooth mouse and keyboard, or use the monitor as a USB hub (mine has camera and mechanical keyboard plugged in permanently). And don’t use a laptop on the desk in laptop mode. It violates all DSE policies. 30 minutes is more than enough hunching!

I never switch off my 2012 MBP. If you can read this, it is still working fine 🙂

Thanks @Johndoh – if I knock it down it is more readable, but pretty fuzzy!

I’m also an academic, with a focus on scientific computing and AI.

I have a MacBook Pro (M1 Pro) and a Mac mini (M2 Pro) with a studio display and a Dell 27″ 4k monitor, which lives at work. I like the flexibility of being able to leave the laptop at home some days, and my research benefits from the extra grunt the Mac mini has. Note I’m in the office 5 days a week as I can’t stand working from home.

Bought the “desktop” setup with proceeds from consultancy work, wouldn’t normally splash that much on a monitor.

EDIT: you could also check out BetterDisplay for more tweaking of display settings. Helps me get the output of the Dell monitor as close as possible to that of the Studio Display.