Software, tools and gadgets I love to get things done.
One of my favourite things to use when working is… Procrastination. One of the best procrastination tools is spending countless hours researching the latest, greatest, most excellent toolset, new SaaS, gadgets, apps, or whatever I can spend my money on that, in turn, makes me HAVE to work to pay the credit card bill. I will try and write articles on each, to give a little context and an honest ‘review’ of each. For now, here are a few of the most notable.
Hardware
16” MacBook Pro, M1 Max, 64GB RAM (2021)
Ok. So, every piece of hardware I use is Apple. Mostly. I have fallen into the Apple trap and, therefore, the Apple ecosystem. And you know what, I don’t even care anymore. I’ll go on a little later about what I use as a development computer, but this is the one I’m on 80% of the time. The M1 Mac does it all and does it all without breaking a sweat. When it comes to design, software development for fun, or just wasting time looking for new Apple stuff to buy, it is the go-to. But that 20% of the time unaccounted for is spent on my Microsoft Surface Studio. Why? Because I take Windows more seriously. For no reason than MacOS seeming like fun and Windows seeming like work.
Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 14.4” i7 32GB
If I’m done playing on the Mac and it’s time to get serious, I turn to the Surface Studio. Not because it’s more powerful (it’s not), not because it has a touch screen and makes Creative Cloud a little more hands-on (it does), but because I’m a little old school and writing ARM templates, Bicep, using Powershell, or doing any form of DevOps on anything but Windows just hurts my brain. Doing anything serious on anything BUT Windows hurts my brain. I’ve used many Windows devices, including several Surface devices, which are a little bit of a letdown. Fans will run like jets on a 737 if you have more than one browser window open. But this one hasn’t let me down yet. There is something that feels super portable about this Surface and makes ‘work’ a little more agile. pixel you can get counts.
Apple iPad Pro
Yep. An extension of my Mac. Quite literally actually, with SideCar. An essential bit of kit for any executive on the go.
Samsung Odyssey G9 49inch 240Hz Gaming Monitor + Ergotron Desk Monitor Arm
Why? Because you just need a big arse monitor.
Herman Miller Aeron Chair
I don’t actually own this yet. I mean, have you seen the price of them? But, if you’re spending 18 hours a day in the worst possible postures for your back, we’ll why not do it on something worth more than the rest of your kit. Plus, Anthony Nguyen uses one. And that dude can write code like an SMS message saying he’s going to be late for dinner.
Development tools
Visual Studio Code
I’ll just leave this one here.
Vercel
Game changing.
Anthony Nguyen
When there is no other tool to get it done.
Design
Adobe XD
WHY is everyone going on about Figma!?
Productivity
Monday.com
Like learning a coding language in itself, but wow it’s good.
Salesforce
I have used Salesforce for many years across many companies. I thought I knew my way around it. But then, I actually learnt Salesforce. There is a reason Salesforce is so special. It is the world wide business web and if they keep innovating, it’ll stay that way. Tools like Hubspot have a nice user interface and is a little easier to use. But, nothing beats the satisfaction of taking on the Salesforce beast - and winning.
Microsoft Everything
Azure. 365. 366. Whatever. Microsoft has it, and it’s all pretty cool. I mean, Azure Space? I’ll do an article on it - but yep, we’ve gone beyond cloud. We’ve literally gone to infinity and beyond.
The rest
There is so much more, and I’ll get to them soon enough. Let me just procrastinate a little first.