Uses This

Who are you, and what do you do?

I'm Greg Maletic. I work on various projects at Panic, though Status Board might be the one people know the best. I also do some illustration and design work on the side, and in the past have done work for Walt Disney Imagineering. I made a documentary about the pinball industry, and I used to co-run a Java software company called Zero G Software that made an app called InstallAnywhere. A long time ago -- in the Michael Schindler-Gil Amelio era -- I worked at Apple Computer, as a product manager on OpenDoc and Apple Guide.

What hardware do you use?

At work I use one of the new, cylindrical Mac Pros. It's more machine than I need, but I'm happy to take it.

For my Status Board work, I use somewhere between two and four iPads. The iPad 2 and 3 are the best: 30-pin iPads are perfect for Status Board because they have flawless video-out. Lightning iPads have gross artifacts, which I'll admit aren't noticeable to most folks, but still bum me out.

I just use one monitor on my Mac, an Apple Cinema Display. I have a hard time with multiple monitors: I end up spending all my time managing windows. OS X Spaces work great for me.

I use an old, wired Microsoft mouse, because I can't stand the extra weight of batteries-required wireless mice. I draw a lot with my computer, but I never learned how to use a stylus, so I use the mouse, and I think that may never change.

At home, I use an old-ish 13" MacBook Air. When necessary, I sometimes plug it into a pretty old Cinema Display. (I just discovered my MacBook's AirDrop isn't compatible with iOS AirDrop, so its days are probably numbered. I love AirDrop.)

I have a Mac Mini that runs my house: Insteon-based lighting, and iTunes-based music that connects to speakers around our house. There's an external LaCie Thunderbolt drive where I store iTunes media; a second one stores Time Machine backups. I'm about to upgrade the internal hard drive to an SSD because the Mini is just insanely slow whenever I have to actually sit down and use it. (As a server, its performance seems fine.)

And what software?

Xcode 6 for iOS programming. Dropbox: it's essential for everything I do. (I'd be happy for iCloud Drive to usurp Dropbox's usefulness, but the phrase "not holding my breath" hardly seems up to the task.) 1Password does a decent but important job. We use Slack for intra-company communication, and it's very useful, though 1) it's a firehose of information; it feels like a full-time job to keep up with it, and 2) their "native" client is a little too HTML-y for my tastes. But on the whole I like it. iMessage has a ton of flaws, but unified messaging between all my devices is so useful that I still love it. Rdio for listening to music, though I don't often do that at work.

To draw, I use Adobe Illustrator almost exclusively. (I can't stand workflows that incorporate Photoshop in tandem with Illustrator, so I try to do everything I can in Illustrator.) I'm a big fan of Creative Cloud: I think software subscriptions are the future, and we'll all be better off for it.

I do a Disney podcast with some friends; I point this out primarily to bring attention to the fact that there is no good podcast creation software. I edit ours in Adobe Premiere, and I know it's not even the best audio editing software in Creative Cloud, but it's what I know.

I run a quarterly movie club with friends, where we rent out a theater and show some cool, underrated film that no one has seen. I do our movie promos in Apple's Motion. After Effects is probably better, but for some reason I've convinced myself that Motion's behavior-based approach is superior, even though in practice I haven't found that to be true.

What would be your dream setup?

I would like a retina display on my Mac Pro. None of the current solutions for doing this seem very appealing, sadly.

Looking way-out, I'd like a 32" iPad: one that basically looks like an iMac today, but that sits on my desk at about a 30 degree angle, sort of like a drafting table. And a whole slew of pro-level, touch-based software that replaces today's Xcode, Illustrator, and others.

Uses This is supported by ZSA, makers of the Moonlander, ErgoDox EZ and Planck EZ keyboards. They also publish an awesome newsletter.