My Setup

Inspired by Wes Bos's uses.tech, Here is my current setup. I'll update this page whenever my setup changes.

Some of the links to these products may be affiliate program links.

Home-Office Setup

I've always loved having a fully equipped home office. That only got more important ever since the Coronavirus pandemic has hit the world, and I started to work almost only from home. Here is how it looks like (well, sort of... it isn't 100% up-to-date with what you're about to read, but I promise to take a new one soon):

Home Office

  • 15" MacBook Pro, 2.9GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, 16GB Ram, Radeon Pro 460 4GB Graphics (2016)
    After years of using PC, I finally made the move in 2016 and got myself an edged (besides SSD size, which I regret) MBP. Other than issues related to the nutoriously known butterfly keyboard (which I had to replace), it has been serving me well. My next one will probably be an Apple Silicon MBP (hopefully 14").
  • Two Dell S2715H Displays
    Although I wouldn't recommend buying this model now, it more than does the job. The main cons of this model is the lack of flexibility. Its height is fixed, and the orientation can't be changed. Of course all of these can be done using an external mount, but that's something you'd expect to get out of the box these days. Anyways, I'm planning on trying to use one 32/34" inch display in addition to my MBP's built-in display and see if I can manage myself to use 2 displays instead of 3.
  • Apple Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad (Space Gray)
  • Apple Magic Mouse 2 (Space Gray)
    Can't imagine myself using anything else. The gestures are implemented deeply in my daily workflow.
  • DGRule Invisible Hub for MacBook
    A great docking station for the MacBook Pro. I got it on Kickstarter so the price was lower, but still, it provides a simple plug-and-play solution if you travel with your MacBook a lot and don't want to reconnect everything when you're back.
  • PureShape mousepad for Apple Mouse
    Guess where I got this one... yup, you're right, Kickstarter again... It's a great mousepad that makes the Magic Mouse smooth to work with.
  • Rain Design iLevel2 Adjustable Height Laptop Stand
    My laptop sits on this great stand which is adjustable and puts the laptop in the same height as my monitors.
  • Pawtec Neoprene Protective Sleeve
    When I travel, I use this sleeve to pack my Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse. It's just the right size for the keyboard and has pockets for the mouse and other stuff.
  • IKEA Malm Desk
    I got this table when I moved to my previous apartment. It was very small and this desk was one of the only ones that fit. I've been eager to buy a new one for a long time, but I'll wait until I move to my next apartment by the end of the year to see what fits best.
  • LA-Z-BOY Executive Chair
    I couldn't find the exact model anywhere other than the website of the Israeli company from which I got it, so sorry that it's in Hebrew. Anyways, It's a comfortable chair (although it gets pretty hot when you sit on the leather for a while in the summer). I bought it because I needed something to be good for my back (which I suffed from for years now). I hope the next one will be HermanMiller's Aeron Chair, but it's really hard to get here in Israel, and even if you find a place that sells those, it's way more expensive than it should be (~2,000 USD).

Portable Office

Remote Office

After seeing Simon Vrachliotis's setup, I put up a portable office setup to allow myself to work from pretty much everywhere using my iPad as a second screen to my Macbook Pro:

Development

  • PHPStorm
    After working with Sublime Text 3 for years, I finally made the move to PHPStorm in 2016, and I've been using it ever since. The large amount of customization options, plugins and refactoring tools make it perfect for me. I still use Sublime to open single files, but whenever in a context of a project, I'll go with PHPStorm. I've tried multiple times to move to VSCode, but still found myself more productive using PHPStorm. Among all the plugins that are installed in my IDE, here are some that worth mentioning:
    • Material Theme UI with Atom Material Icons
      Whenever it's possible (not only on PHPStorm), I'll use this theme. Love the colors.
    • Laravel Idea
      This plugin provides with a set of tools for working with Laravel applications, such as code completion, code generation etc. For $39 a year - it's totally worth it.
    • JetBrains Mono
      This isn't a plugin, though I find it worth mentioning since I really love working with it (and with its ligatures).
  • iTerm2 with Oh My ZSH
    Installed this when I setup my Mac, never needed to look for an alternative. Great terminal, great predefined aliases with oh-my-zsh, great customization options.
  • TablePlus
    After years of working with SequelPro (which is great!), I made the move to TablePlus. The straw that broke the camel's back was that annoying crash when you close a tab, and since then I found TablePlus to be a great DB client.
  • Laravel Valet
    My local development environment. Moved from Homestead last year for its simplicity. I really love how simple it is to setup new hosts, local ssl certificates etc.
  • Takeout
    A relatively new tool by Tighten to easily spin docker containers for MySQL, Redis, and many more services instead of installing them directly on your machine.
  • Tinkerwell
    If you use Laravel, don't think twice and buy Tinkerwell by BeyondCode. It's a great quality of life app that lets you run PHP code, inside or outside your application's context, and with a code editor rather than a terminal if using Laravel's tinker tool. It's priced only at $29.99, so again - don't think twice.
  • Helo
    Another great product by BeyondCode. It's basically an email client for local testing. Saves so much time in testing emails.
  • FileZilla
    From time to time, when I have to use FTP, I find FileZilla really simple to use. And it's free.
  • GitHub
    Always used it for public repositories, and ever since they made private repositories and organizations free, I moved all my code from GitLab to GitHub.
  • Postman
    I use Postman to test APIs.
  • Google Chrome
    Chrome is my browser of choice, both for development and for surfing the web. Here are some of the extensions that I use:

Hosting

  • DigitalOcean
    I use DigitalOcean to host all of my projects. Its interface is simple and the documentation is great, I can only recommend them.
  • Laravel Forge
    While DigitalOcean is great, Forge makes it so easy to manage the server and deploy any project, especially when it comes to Laravel applications.

Productivity Tools and Softwares

  • Alfred
    It's so much better than the built-in spotlight, and the workflows is a killer feature. Here are some that I use:
    • Laravel Docs to search the laravel docs directly from Alfred.
    • Numi for quick calculations and conversions.
  • 1Password
    If you're not using a password manager, you should definitely start now. Besides the convenience of logging in to any website on any platform (I use it no my Mac, iPhone and iPad) using a simple keyboard shortcut, it allows you to generate a unique and random password for each website, which adds a lot in terms of security.
  • Notion
    Although sometimes I get the feeling that I work for Notion instead of Notion working for me, it still does a great job in most cases. Especially since they extended their free plan's feature set.
  • Numi
    Great calculator app.
  • Calendar I use the default Mac calendar app to manage my schedule. From time to time I'll also use the Google Calendar web interface.
  • Gmail's web interface and Google Workspace (formerly GSuite, formerly Google Apps) for my custom domain emails. I'll probably give Basecamp's Hey a try when custom domain support is launched.
  • ProtonVPN
    I find ProtonVPN to be a great VPN service. It has servers in many countries (including mine) so it's pretty quick, and they have good reputation.
  • Rectangle
    Great tool for moving and resizing windows on Mac.

Design

I don't do a lot of design work, but when I do, these are the tools that I use:

  • Pixelmator Pro
    Its simplicity is what got me. I saw it on Freek's /uses page and never touched Photoshop ever since.
  • ImageOptim
    A great (open source) tool for optimizing image sizes without losing quality (at least not at a noticable level).
  • Sip
    Great simple tool for picking colors and working with palettes.

Communication

Misc

  • Fathom Analytics is used for this blog's analytics. They're truely privacy-first, and I love how the share everything on their blog (if you haven't already, you should take some time to read this post).
  • iPhone 12 Pro.
  • iPad Air (3rd generation, 256GB) which I mainly use outside.
  • AirPods Pro are my earphones of choice. Love how compact they are and the noise cancellation is great to my needs.
  • Apple Watch Series 4 (WIFI).
  • Logitech Z333 are my speakers. They come with a cool remote control that you spin to control the volume, which is a nice addition.
  • YubiKey 5 NFC
    It's a 2FA USB key with NFC (so it can be used with my iPhone easily) that I use if I want to add an extra layer of security to some accounts.
  • Most days, I drink 2 cups of cortado coffee throughout the day. One as soon as I wake up in the morning, and another one in the afternoon. I make them using my Breville Barista Express with fresh coffee beans I usually get from a local cafe called Cafelix.
Hosted with DigitalOcean. Analytics by Fathom.