Famous Mac User Setup: Adam Betts

Adam Betts is a 23 year old freelance graphic designer well known for his work on MacHeist, his own person blog Art Of Adam Betts where he keeps his personal portfolio, a blog full of useful graphic tips, and more. A popular icon designer who has designed icons for such applications as Overflow, The Unarchiver, and Yojimbo, Adam Betts is envied by many for his killer Photoshop & Cinema 4D skills.

Here we take a look at where he gets his work done. The Mac setup of Adam Betts.

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View a zoomed in photo with increased resolution of Adam’s setup.

What does your current Mac setup consist of?

My current workstation is setup with an 8-Core 3Ghz Clovertown Mac Pro, with 2GB of RAM, stock 250GB 7200-rpm HDD, ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB video card, Airport/Bluetooth, running Mac OSX 10.4.9 Tiger.

Hooked up to the Mac Pro are Dual-23″ Apple Cinema Displays.

Why have you chosen this machine?

While the Ghz upgrade is really nice coming off my previous PowerMac G4 tower, multiple cores is exactly what I’ve been needing all along. I love to be able to multi-task without quitting apps or putting other tasks on hold until first task is completed.

As I’m moving into 3D modeling/rendering and video composition departments, this kind of power is absolutely necessary. Slow or non-realtime rendering is my biggest barrier to a smooth creative flow, I need to be able to experiment with many different styles and see which fits the best to a project I’m working on without waiting for my computer to catch up.

What other Apple gear do you own?

I also own a stand alone iSight which is placed between my Dual-23″ Apple Cinema Displays, an Apple TV, AirPort Extreme Base Station 802.11n, and millions of white Apple logo stickers.

A few other third-party accessories I use include the Macally Icekey Keyboard, Logitech MX510 mouse, Wacom Graphite Tablet, Western Digital MyBook 250 GB External Firewire 800, Griffin Technology PowerMate, and Belkin ErgoPADs for my mouse and keyboard.

What is your next planned upgrade to your workstation?

I don’t plan on upgrading for the next 2-3 years. After that I’ll have to see what’s latest on Apple’s menu and see if it’ll be a worthy upgrade. I’ll be upgrading my Mac Pro over the coming months to house more internal hard drives, more RAM, and a better video card.

What do you think of Adam’s setup?

Comments

  1. #1

    Josh → maconlyreview.wordpress.com

    I remember when I saw the set up on his own blog I was jealous. Two displays is just greedy!

  2. #2

    Andre → winnopeg.com

    One of the best setups out there. 8-core MacPro, Wii, 360, PS3, LCD/Plasma TV, DS all in one room…

  3. #3

    Joe Jacobs → www.causingshadow.com

    Love it. And as much as it is nice, I could never justify the need for me. All I want is a new Macbook Pro.

  4. #4

    wphj → wphj.wordpress.com

    I saw his post about it on his site, these Mac setup posts are making me jealous! My MacBook fells inadequate…

  5. #5

    mike

    when working on graphics work, dual monitors is very nice. as you can see, you can use an entire screen for your image, and the other screen for your pallets. i envy his setup!

  6. #6

    Marvin Sum → 50volts.com

    Awesome stuff. Would really like to get my hands on two 23″ monitors.

    Wonder what sort of apps he uses for 3D/video composition.

  7. #7

    William Wilkinson → www.williamwilkinson.com

    I absolutely love all his work. Good read.

  8. #8

    Conner Downey → connerdowney.com

    I love his setup, must be really sweet. His whole room rocks, actually.

  9. #9

    shadownight → thomasgvl.50webs.com

    Is the only purpose of this post to tease us? ;)

    Oh, and I’d love to have a *rortfolio” too, that sounds like something exotic:
    “…his personal rortfolio, a blog full of…”

    :)

  10. #10

    alej744

    Bo-ring

  11. #11

    Chris Neuman → www.chrisneuman.com

    Mac Pro 8 Core pr0n! What a nice simple clean setup as well. Another great post Glenn and thank you very much for the high res version of the setup. That was perfect! Keep up the great work.

  12. #12

    Andreas → xgrape.net

    That’s one sweet setup! Dual monitors is just awesome. I replaced my “desktop” PowerBook with a new quad 2.66Ghz Mac Pro this week (awesome btw), and already I’m missing the extra space.

    It would be nice if our “famous setups” would also have some info on what software they are using, as mentioned above.

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