Setting up a "Writing Mac"

I've got a basement full of Macs in various states of repair, which shouldn't surprise you. One of my hobbies is re-purposing those old machines. For instance, there's a G3 All-In-One on my workbench which runs iFixIt.com when I've got a project. Additionally, I use a G4 iMac as a Daylite server.

I've also had a G5 iMac for a while, but nothing for it to do. Earlier this week, I gave it a fresh install of Mac OS 10.4 and thought I'd use it for blogging and other writing. No web browsing, Twitter, iPhoto or the like. Call it a "Writing Mac." Here's how I set it up.

Reduce distractions

The Dock and drives are hidden from the Finder. No Twitter clients are installed, and only a few bookmarks are in place. The home folder contains only the default items and there's no music in the iTunes library. In other words, there's nothing to compete for my attention.

Streamlined for work

I've populated the dock with apps that support writing and nothing more. I've moved it to the lower left-hand corner by choosing "Position on screen > Left" from the Dock preference pane and this little bit of command line editing from Shawn Blanc:

defaults write com.apple.dock pinning -string end

Now I can have the dock tiny yet accessible as I run my writing software. Speaking of which ...

The software

You'll see a few icons in my Dock. After the Finder and Mail, is Scrivener. If you've got a large writing project to complete, Scrivener is the companion you'll want on your side. Research, outlining and organization is a pleasure with such a great application.

I've also got Apple's Dictionary in the Dock because, believe it or not, 'ol Dave isn't so good with the spelling.

Next is Yojimbo (I had to upgrade to 10.5.7 to get this to run. D'oh!). I only started using this app recently, but I can see the appeal. When running, it puts a small tab on the edge of the desktop. It's easy to drop bits of text, images or URL's in there to use as reference. The good stuff, once reviewed, gets moved into Scrivener.

Finally is my beloved ImageWell for editing images for use here on TUAW. It runs on 10.4 and is just the tool for quick-and-dirty cropping and resizing.

At last, iTunes streams Radio Paradise, my favorite Internet radio station.

The best part is that there's almost nothing to back up (other than Scrivener projects, which I drop in my Dropbox). If this machine's HD croaked tomorrow, I'd be able to pick up where I left off with minimal fuss.

So there you have it, my Writing Mac. Aren't legacy machines fun?

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I've got a basement full of Macs in various states of repair, which shouldn't surprise you. One of my hobbies is re-purposing those old...

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songwriter

MasterWriter 2.0 is a great writing program, but after upgrading to Snow Leopard it will not work for me. Their support, unfortunately, is terrible. :(

October 04 2009 at 2:00 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

donnacha

I hear that, generally, Evernote is a lot better than Yojimbo - are there any particular reasons why Yojimbo might be better for writing research?

September 09 2009 at 8:09 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

tayker

I've recently read in MacWorld about using Spotlight in lieu of the dictionary. Have you tried both? What are the pros/cons of each?

September 09 2009 at 12:53 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to tayker's comment

jfish

spotlight just accesses the dictionary

September 09 2009 at 9:02 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Catatonic

Ah, so you're the reason I can't connect to Radio Paradise's 192kbps stream anymore. :)

September 09 2009 at 10:15 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Mark

Dave -

Do you run into any issues with Scrivener/Dropbox? I've tried using that combination, and I sometimes end up with Scrivener projects that aren't quite synced up correctly. I've had friends experience the same.

September 09 2009 at 10:14 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

SeB

Awesome setup. This is the beauty of old hardware. I really have to do something like this. By the way, I'm also a huge fan of Scrivener. Best $40 I've ever spent on software. Dropbox is also great- ALL of my documents are in my Dropbox. I've deleted my regular documents folder, created a documents folder inside my Dropbox, made a symbolic link to that folder and put it in my home folder. The only thing I would add to this would be Evernote- it always comes in handy. Nice work!

September 09 2009 at 9:59 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

InSaNeBoY

My favorite machine for writing was a Powerbook 180 and write now 4. Portable, could run fine with the HDD spun down for silent operation(only spun up when saving a file) and that greyscale active matrix screen was nice and crisp. :)

September 09 2009 at 9:48 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jake

I had an old iBook that I used for writing my last three books. It was great. With a 12" screen, it wasn't much fun for anything other than writing, so it sort of had an internal governor on goofing-off. Plus every year, web stuff got more and more resource dependent, so that the iBook did fewer things online speedily and thus discouraged online meandering. Now I have a MacBook Air that I bought with proceeds from book #3. I think it is the best writing laptop yet. With the quick power-up and silent operation (SSD) it nearly (but not quite or will it ever I think) replaces my paper notebook as a place to scribble things out. And I have just Word and Lightroom on it. On to #4.

September 09 2009 at 9:19 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jordi Romero

The Dropbox link is wrong, it's pointing to Radio Paradise.
About the software, I would also add TextMate.

September 09 2009 at 9:00 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

gorka

One more addition. For songwriters, check out Masterwriter at: http://masterwriter.com/songwriters.html
Overpriced, in my opinion, but great piece of software.

Cheers.
g

September 09 2009 at 8:51 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply