My Current Tools

Hardware

• Macbook Pro M1
  This is my workhorse nowadays. The lack of ports is a nuisance but other than that, an incredible machine, the best computer I’ve ever had. But the ports are a little headache and as soon as there’s a new model with four ports instead of two, you should get that.

• LG 27” UHD Display
  All video production gets done on this display, which I connect via USBC.

• G-Technology G-DRIVE
  This is my drive for video work, which I connect via Thunderbolt 3.

• Wacom Intuos Pro Tablet, Medium
  I’m totally addicted to this thing, even though it introduces some quirkiness to input. It can lag occasionally or need to be reset. But for me, it’s the most comfortable way to edit video or do graphics work. If you operate a computer a lot, it’s just a matter of time until your wrist, elbow, shoulder or whatever starts acting up. For me, the pen creates minimal stress on my arm. Highly recommended, but as I said, the trade-off is a little bit of quirkiness. I also use a MagicPad for more routine tasks.

• Plugable USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 Dock
  The lack of ports on the M1 MacBook Pro means you need a dock. I tried a bunch of cheap ones and had strange and sometimes alarming issues. I don’t think it’s wise to go cheap on something that powers expensive gadgets. Even this one has issues and needs to be reset occasionally, but the issues are a small nuisance and it mostly works great. This was the best solution I could find. I plug my display and the G-Drive directly into my MacBook, then the dock plugs into the G-Drive. This dock gives me ethernet, card ports and USB ports, which I use for the Wacom and backup hard drives.

• Shure BETA 87A Microphone
  I’ve had this mic for, boy, seven years? Honestly can’t recall. Excellent sound at a modest price and it’ll last forever.

• Audio-Technica ATH-M50X Professional Headphones
  I’ve also had these for many, many years and I see them everywhere. Seems like everyone uses them. I love the boomy, roomy quality they have, along with superb clarity in the highs. I mostly don’t edit with headphones, though, and don’t recommend it. It’s tiring and in the long-term potentially damaging to the ears and it’s just too much information. It’s like doing graphics work while zoomed in at 200% all the time.

• M-Audio Studiophile AV40 Monitor Speakers
  Another old purchase. They still work just like when I bought them. Excellent clarity, good bass. There are speakers vastly better, but these strike a nice balance of price and quality.

• Apogee One
  This is my audio interface for connecting to my computer. Sound quality is superb. Build quality is a little bit chintzy. Unlike many of my other audio equipment, this isn’t something that will last indefinitely. Nonetheless, it has held up many years now.

• Zoom H4N
  My portable audio recorder. Again, these strike a nice balance of price and quality. Mine is a bit noisy and gets some frequency interference nowadays.

• DJI Pocket
  I shoot my direct-to-camera bits with this now. It’s roughly equivalent to a great camera phone, though it’s better than mine. It’s optimized for shooting video, though, so it’s not as fussy to operate as a phone and it uses removable cards for storage. It’s also tiny and super portable. Awesome for b-roll too and actually performs best at wide shorts. I don’t use the built-in mic but it’s surprisingly good and many people might find it useful.

• SanDisk CF cards
  I’ve always stuck with SanDisk. I’m sure other cards work great too, but storage is something you can’t experiment with. These are trustworthy so I buy nothing but.

• Brother HL2270DW Wireless Monochrome Printer
  Laser printers are underrated. My wife and I use this almost every day. Inkjet printers are disposable items. I’ve had this one for ages and it still works great. Excellent value per printed page too. A toner cartridge lasts me well over a year. Set-up is annoying, but once it’s done you’re all set.

Software

• Tana

  This notes app is new in my workflow and it’s taken over much of what I used to do in Obsidian. I now use Obsidian mostly for writing and managing my documents. Tana is not only my notes app, it’s also my project manager. This app is still a beta and it has a learning curve, but I was immediately drawn to the way you create notes on a daily page, so everything you do is logged in time. I find this adds some real structure to something that can often feel too fluid and hard to grasp. Anyway, bit of a hard app to explain, bit of a hard app to grasp, but if you’re geeky about notes and productivity, this might be the one for you.

• Things
  I’ve never settled on a task manager that I liked. I’ve tried ‘em all. Many are very good but I just don’t stick with them. I never really tried Things because I balked at the price and I thought a to-do app is a to-do app, who cares? I figured it was my own shortcoming that I never stuck with one. Welp… whoops! As soon as I really dug into Things, I knew it was the one for me. It’s still early, so I could stop using it after a while, but I’ve never actually been enthused about a task manager. It’s actually a pleasure to use, which is a big deal because tasks mostly aren’t fun. Things makes doing your work a bit more enjoyable. Anyway, we’ll see what happens in the coming months.

• Obsidian
  This is the new writing app in my workflow that I’m spending a lot of time in. It’s still fairly early and my system is fully settled but I think it’s very promising. I used Scrivener for ages and I still do sometimes. It’s excellent too and you can’t go wrong with it. Obsidian is similar in that it allows you to arrange text documents. However, is built on the traditional files-and-folders paradigm and Obsidian is a much more fluid thing where you can build documents and indexes and link everything up in a more complex and comprehensible way. I’ve learned a lot from the Linking Your Thinking channel. I still use DevonThink for clipping full articles as PDFs.

• DaVinci Resolve Studio
  I used Adobe Premiere Pro for many years but ultimately left for two reasons: stability and price. Premiere crashed a lot for me, getting back up after a crash was slow, and I sometimes lost work. The more complex my projects got, the more fragile they felt. In addition, I can sometimes go for months without doing video work so paying a monthly subscription felt like too much. The free version of Resolve is hugely powerful and more than most people need. The full version, what I use, is just $300 and then it’s yours forever.

• Affinity Photo, Designer & Publisher
  It’s simply incredible how powerful these apps are for what they cost. Each is just $50 and they can be found on sale for half that. I don’t do vector art much anymore so Designer works fine for me. I do even less publishing so Publisher is way more than enough for me. But I do plenty of graphics in a photo editor, so Affinity Photo has been tougher to adapt to. Affinity Photo does have some interface advantages over Photoshop, but mostly, I find its interface clunkier and its performance poorer. And it crashes fairly regularly for me. I found Photoshop to be always fast and pretty much without bugs. Affinity Photo is not as good as Photoshop but it’s very good and I’m sticking with it and I’m getting better as time goes on.

• Arc Browser
  A better way to browse? YES. I used to hop around from browser to browser, but I’ve been using Arc for many months now and I haven’t looked back. I made this video with Nick Milo about Arc.

• Raycast
  This one’s a newcomer. Basically, it’s a launcher, like Alfred, which I used to use. But it can also do text expansion, like TextExpander (although it is a bit quirkier). And it’s a clipboard manager, so you can paste from the history of what you’ve copied. (I also used Alfred for that.) It’s also a very good calculator. It does lots of other stuff and it’s FREE.

• Drafts
  This is where I do transient bits of writing, like messages or posts, temporary references, and notes from meetings. Actually, I’m writing this in Drafts! Obsidian is more like a personal library or a “second brain.” Drafts is more like a notepad.

• Default Folder X
  I use Default Folder primarily for shortcuts to commonly used folders. I suspect there are other ways to do this nowadays, but I’m accustomed to this and it works well.

• PullTube
  For anyone needing to download YouTube videos, I've been using this app for years. It's superb and seems to get updates every couple weeks.

• TextSniper
  I often need to get text out of screencaps from videos and presentations and I’ve never had a good, quick solution. This app entirely solved this for me. You can screen cap a section of the screen, it converts that to text and copies it to the clipboard. You can also get it as part of SetApp.

• Chronosync
  This is how I back up my work drive. I use TimeMachine for my internal drive.

• 1Password
  Another old-timer. Essential for managing passwords and the family sharing feature works great..