My Minimal Mac
Yesterday morning Patrick Rhone launched Minimal Mac, a Tumblelog dedicated to all things minimal and Macintosh. After reading his tweet regarding Minimal Mac, I decided to send him a picture of my minimal desktop. To my luck and surprise it was the third user provided screenshot he published to the site and I must admit it felt pretty damn cool. But that isn’t the reason I’m writing this post today. I’m writing about the effect the existence of this Tumblelog had on me.
After reading and submitting my photo I spent the majority of the day thinking about how important it is to have an uncluttered desktop and how minimalism really affects your mood when you are using your computer. I then focused my thoughts on how I could take my existing desktop and make it even more minimal. The first thing I looked at was my dock and it consisted of the following applications:
- iTunes
- Mail (Personal)
- Microsoft Entourage (Work)
- iChat
- Tweetie
- Safari (Default)
- Firefox
- Photoshop
- Espresso
- Pages
- Mars Edit
- Yojimbo
- and Spamsieve
My Dock Before
Inspired by Minimal Mac I managed (with the help of Stunt Software’s Overflow) to whittle the apps on my dock down to Mail, Entourage, iTunes, iChat, Tweetie, Safari and Firefox. The rest of the apps, and some that I use less frequently moved into Overflow’s application launcher.
Overflow’s Application Launcher
Overflow is great because it allows me to group applications together and is activated when I press a keyboard shortcut. If it’s not in use it’s out of my way. Another thing I did was set the keyboard shortcut to activate Overflow on my mouse’s thumb button. I had already programmed my mouse for volume and web page navigation so this was really more icing on the minimalist cake. Everything is just a thumb or finger click away and it is awesome.
Now that I look back I wonder why I didn’t figure this out before. Having my computer set up and customized to fit my needs was something I always wanted to tackle but never really got around to, and now that I have I can feel the difference. If you are interested commanding your desktop I suggest you look into the various apps and hardware that is available and find what best works for you.
As for me, I’m happy with my Minimal Mac and I’m eager to see what other people are doing to make their computing experience work for them.
