The Setup Series: What do people use to get stuff done?

Mark Jardine

Designer (Tapbots)

Who are you, and what do you do?

My name is Mark Jardine. Most people know me from my work at Tapbots, a tiny iOS software company. I’m sort of a jack of all trades, master of none kind of guy. I struggled as a web designer for 10 years and finally realized that I’m a tiny bit better at designing user interfaces for software. In another life I’d be an illustrator or photographer.

What hardware are you using?

On my desk I have a 27” Core i7 iMac with 8 GB of ram. I interface with it via an Apple Wireless Keyboard and Magic Mouse. I also have a Magic Trackpadbut don’t use it often. My desktop is extended to an external 24” Apple LED Cinema Display and the audio is sent to a pair of M-Audio Studiophile AV40’s. My system is backed up to a 1TB Lacie d2 Quadra over FW800 and my work is archived to a Drobo with about 6TB’s of space. I’ll occasionally have myAudio Technica AT2020 USB Condenser Mic connected when being a guest on a podcast or for recording voiceovers in demo videos. Once in awhile I’ll connect my Microkorg XL or M-Audio Radium 61 keyboard to play around in Logic or Garageband.

When I boot into Windows (via Boot Camp) to play Bad Company 2, I grab my Logitech MX1000 and communicate with friends over my Creative Fatality USB Headset.

When I’m on the go, I choose between my second generation iPad or my 11” Macbook Air depending on the type of work I plan to get done. It’s a good thing they both fit into my tiny Tom Bihn Ristretto: bag (though not at the same time). I also never forget my Shure SE530 earbuds to drown out the outside world.

Related to my portable life, I also have a Sony PSP-Go and a Nintendo 3DS. But I rarely take them anywhere since my trusty iPhone 4 is what I always have on me. I take it EVERYWHERE except for in the shower. If only it were waterproof.

When I feel like pretending to be a photographer, I take out my trusty Canon 5D Mark II. People think I’m a real photographer when I set up my 430ex and580ex Speedlites on stands firing through 2 shoot-through umbrellas. And I really impress them with my 35mm 1.4L, 50mm 1.2L, 16-35 2.8L, and 70-200mm 2.8L IS lenses. When it comes to video, I’ll occasionally use mySteadicam Merlin or indislider Pro.

And what software?

Obviously, my main OS of choice is Mac OS X. I try to stay away from 3rd party software as much as I can. Apple’s software just works and works great for my needs. I love Safari. It syncs bookmarks to my iOS devices and I think it renders text the best out of all the browsers. I rely heavily on iCal,Address Book, and Mail. They all work very well with each other and with my iOS devices. I also use iChat for IM. I think it’s the best chat client by far.

I keep my notes in Notational Velocity because it’s fast and it syncs withSimpleNote on iOS. Also, life would be unbearable without Dropbox. It is the key to being able to own and use more than one computer. I usually haveTwitter for Mac running, but I don’t have much time to keep up with it these days. iTunes is the center of my media life. Besides music, I keep all the ripped (that I own) and digitally downloaded movies in iTunes format so they can play on my iOS devices as well as on both of my Apple TV’s in the house.

On the work side of things, Photoshop is key. 99% of my design work is done in Photoshop. For more complicated vectors, I’ll launch Illustrator. When marking up websites, I switch between Coda, Espresso, and Textmate, but the latter is my pick if I could only use one. Transmit is also a very handy tool that gets a good workout on occasion.

When dabbling in video, I use the full Final Cut Studio suite. I import all my photos to Aperture, but still rely on Photoshop for my heavy image editing. I’m trying to learn Logic, but I always get frustrated and drop back down toGarageband. I really do love Apple’s Pro Apps.

What would be your dream setup?

Two “27” Cinema Displays connected to the top of the line Mac Pro with 16GB of ram, a big SSD drive for the system and a redundant raid setup for my data. Oh, and for gaming, I’d want to build my own top-spec PC. But in reality, I just hope the next generation iMacs are significantly faster with some sort of SSD + HDD setup. I think they provide the best bang for the buck.

This post is part of our The Setup Series, made possible by the folks at UsesThis.

(Source: mark.jardine.usesthis.com)

The Setup Series: What do people use to get stuff done?

Vijay Pande 

Stanford Professor and Director of the Folding@home Distributed Computing Project 

Who are you, and what do you do?

I’m a professor of Chemistry, Structural Biology, and Computer Science at Stanford University and Director of its Biophysics Program, but I’m perhaps best known as the Director of the Folding@home Distributed Computing project. Folding@home brings together millions of computers throughout the world to perform calculations in biophysics and medicine that would other wise be impossible.

What hardware are you using? 

Currently it’s a late 2009 17” Macbook Pro with a 3GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. I carry it in a Kenneth Cole brown shoulder bag, which looks slim but yet holds this (relatively big) laptop. When in my office, the laptop is supplemented by a 30” Apple monitor, a multi-drive 4TB RAID (for storing data and backup), and an Apple wirelesskeyboard and mouse.

My phone is a 32GB iPhone 4. I use it heavily during the day writing emails and keeping track of pending issues and often doing video Skype calls. This drains the battery pretty heavily, but I’m happy that I rarely drain it completely and it holds up much better than my previous iPhone 3G.

I also use a flash drive almost daily and so having it be high performance and high density is important. I use a PATRIOT drive, although I wish it wasn’t so wide since it can’t sit in the Macbook Pro’s USB slot and still allow neighboring slots to be used.

I also use a 64GB iPad 2 daily, usually at home in the early morning and late evening to read email and keep track of various web sites. I like using it since I don’t have to drag out the laptop, especially since I’m usually covered with cats or kids in the mornings and evenings and using my laptop seems to be too dangerous in that line of fire. The iPad works great in that setting, but I also find it really useful on long, international flights such as SFO to Frankfurt, Germany, which comes up surprisingly frequently.

And what software?

I’m using OS X 10.6.8, but waiting for 10.7.2 to come out to upgrade the OS. I use Word 2011 pretty heavily, since a lot of my work involves writing or editing papers and grant proposals. I like Word’s markup capabilities for editing very much and use them frequently. 
I also give a lot of presentations and use Keynote ‘09 (looking forward to upgrading that too). I find Keynote much more elegant to use than Powerpoint as well as faster and more responsive, which is important for fast editing which I frequently do. I also really like its transitions.

The Papers app is also a fundamental part of my day, helping organize scientific journal articles, which otherwise would be a major mess. I’ve been curious about Papers 2.0, but haven’t seen a compelling reason to upgrade just yet.

I use Evernote pretty heavily for just about everything, from todo lists to notes, to shopping lists. Its ability to sync on all of my platforms allows me to capture information quickly (even on my phone, even with taking pictures with the camera), but have it everywhere (laptop, phone, iPad). I use the free version for now, but am curious about the pay version to allow for sharing of notes.

Finally, I use the standard Mac tools for the rest, including its address book,calendar, and mail. All of them sync nicely with Stanford University’s core mail and calendar tools as well as integrating with each other well. I do use the Letterbox extension to make Mail.app usable and useful on big screens and am curious what OS X Lion will bring in terms of all of these.

What would be your dream setup?

I’m waiting and dreaming of a 15” Macbook Air/Pro, i.e. a 15” Macbook Air style machine, but lots of RAM (at least 8GB) and a big drive (at least 512GB), connected to two 27” screens and a very fast RAID via Thunderbolt. That would allow me to have an amazing powerful machine that doesn’t give me shoulder pain on the way back and forth from home to work.

This post is part of our The Setup Series, made possible by the folks at UsesThis. 

(Source: vijay.pande.usesthis.com)