What we reach for.

Daily driver. The 12-core CPU + 36GB unified memory handles parallel Next.js builds, Three.js scenes, and an iTerm with too many tabs without breaking a sweat.

5K Retina + the camera and speakers a remote-first studio needs without an arm’s reach of dongles.

Travels back and forth between desk and lap. The Touch ID is the killer feature when 1Password asks you to verify for the tenth time today.

For long design sessions where the trackpad starts to ache. Per-app DPI presets are silently brilliant.

USB + XLR, dynamic capsule, voice that sounds like a podcast even on a Tuesday afternoon. Plug-and-play with macOS audio.

Daily commuter cans. Transparency mode for cafés, ANC for the train.

Wired, open-back, twenty years of production credits. For mixing and the deep work where wireless latency would be felt.

VSCode-based editor with first-class LLM integration. The agent flows have changed how we approach refactoring — pair-programming with a model that actually knows the codebase.

Native macOS terminal, GPU-accelerated, sane defaults. Replaced iTerm + Warp.

The colour scheme. Cool blues, lime accents, low-contrast comments — survives long sessions without eye fatigue.

Monospace typeface for everything code-shaped. Same one rendered in /colophon’s editorial chrome.

For shared design files, comments, and handoff. Auto-layout has eliminated 80% of what design-to-code translation used to mean.

When Figma feels like the wrong tool for the job — illustration, vector logos, anything with bezier nuance.

Screenshots, screen recordings, and annotated walk-throughs for clients. Replaced the system Cmd+Shift+4 chord on day one.

Daily-driver browser. The split-pane and Spaces are how we keep client work, code, and references separated without 47 tabs in one window.

Dev browser. Latest DevTools features, View Transitions API, Speculation Rules debugging, the Lighthouse CLI.

For checking how features degrade on the WebKit side. Reliably catches the things Chrome lets us get away with.

Hosting + auto-deploy from GitHub. Edge functions where they make sense. Speed Insights for real-user CWV.

Postgres + Auth + Storage. The "Firebase but Postgres" pitch turned out to be exactly right.

Subscriptions for retainers. Customer Portal for upgrades / cancellations so we don’t build billing UI.

Transactional email + Audiences for the studio newsletter. Templates as JSX, no MJML.

Cookieless analytics. Open-source, GDPR-clean, the only analytics tool we don’t need to apologise for.

Source for everything. Private repos for client work, the studio repo is private too — but happy to walk through any pattern on a call.

Bookings live at /book. Open-source, self-hostable, the embed slots into our editorial chrome cleanly.

RSS reader. Beats every "AI summarises everything" alternative because it shows you what was actually written.

Ben Thompson, every weekday. Gold standard for reading the strategy underneath what tech companies actually announce.

John Gruber. Mostly Apple, occasionally writing-craft. Twenty-something years and still a sharper edit than most newsrooms.

For platform updates that ship to real users — Core Web Vitals, View Transitions, Speculation Rules, the things this studio uses next.