Most efficient Setup for getting things done?

By Dennis Westphal, 25 August, 2025

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Hi

I have been wondering: What would be the ideal setup for getting actual work done? Most of us like to play around with different configurations. Be it on the Apple side or on Windows/Android. But playing around and see that things can be done on a device is not the same as getting actual work done as fast as possible without mistakes. I realize that there will not be one answer that fits all. So please tell me about what you use, why you use it and how it helps you getting things done.

At the moment I am using an iPhone 15 Pro, a Windows Laptop with JAWS and NVDA, a Mac mini and a Fairphone 5.

The iPhone is my daily driver. Responding to messages and quickly read messages is just so fast with BSI.
The Windows Laptop is my go-to-Device for getting Office-Stuff and Audiowork done. MS-Office, Zoom, research, writing papers, all that.
The Mac mini is attached to my TV to watch some YouTube with my partner on the sofa. It also has gPodder running which downloads all the new Podcast episodes which get renamed by Hazel and moved to a directory which periodically gets scanned by our Music-Server which also runs on the Mac. That then gets picked up by our Home Assistant to control our various Squeezebox Radios with the very handy Philips Hue switches.
Last but not least: The Fairphone is used for using open street maps. We have OSMand and brouter installed on the device for touring with our Tandem and on walks adding to the Open Street Maps Data.

If you want: Let me know what you are using and why. Maybe we could go into tweaks and customisations which actually help to get stuff done faster.

Greetings from Germany

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Comments

By Bruce Harrell on Monday, August 25, 2025 - 16:27

It would be helpful to know specifically where you think you might be wasting time and effort. Otherwise, we're guessing. the only thing we could tell you is what we do and what we like, which may or may not be relevant. Also, if you switch to MacOS, there is a learning curve. You would have to invest time and energy to learn before you can start using and only then would you begin to learn where you are inefficient, which itself might simply be the result of using a new operating system.

By Oliver on Monday, August 25, 2025 - 18:55

I use ulysses on mac for long form writing as, pretty much every other text editor is either completely lacking in professional grade tools and standards, or has issues with accessibility.

I have a mac mini running libation, which downloads both my audible UK and US books, and audio bookshelf server. This means I can combine audio book libraries to access on the go as well as adding hard to find audiobooks from places like the RNIB. It uses google books to grab the meta data, which is great. It's still in its infancy and requires docker to get it set up, but once it is, everything appears automatically after book purchase in Prologue Beta.

Oh, also, to access my mac mini, which is my home serve, I use TaleScale and screen sharing on mac 26, which are both very accessible.

By Justin Philips on Monday, August 25, 2025 - 23:51

How accessible is the Fairphone, and what are its advantages?

By Tara on Tuesday, August 26, 2025 - 08:05

Hi Dennis,
I know this might be stating the obvious, and you probably know this anyway, but I'm just throwing it out there, but the faster your screen reader speech, the quicker you'll be at doing stuff. I've sseen people have their speech at about %20, and I wonder how on earth they get things done quickly and efficiently. I have /NVDA with Eloquence on Windows set to %45, and my Apple devices with VoiceOver set to about %65. These speeds would still be considered slow by some, but it's still quicker than everything at about %20. When I was doing proofreading work on Windows a few years ago, I used to speed up my Eloquence to about %65 or more sometimes, because the quicker I could read stuff, the quicker I could correct things and get the work done. Learn as many system-wide and screen reader specific keyboard shortcuts as you can, both for Windows and Mac. The more keyboard shortcuts you know, the quicker you'll get things done. I wouldn't personally get this myself, but check out Leasey for JAWS from Brian Hartgen.
https://hartgen.org/leaseycentral
Leasey is basically a platform in conjunction with JAWS that provides shortcuts for doing different things. Personally I'm happy with NVDA as my daily driver, but it's just a suggestion. If you can give us a specific scenario where you feel you're not as fast as you want to be, then maybe people can give you better suggestions.

By Dennis Westphal on Tuesday, August 26, 2025 - 09:53

Thank you all for your answers. I did not have a specific usecase in mind where I am not fast enough. I was wondering what people are using and like to tweak.

For Example I personally could not work fast enough with an iPad. Maybe others do. But as I stated: Mainly I am just curious about other peoples setups.

By Brian on Tuesday, August 26, 2025 - 10:16

I have a Windows 11 laptop from HP as well as an Xbox, both of which I gain on quite regularly. I have both Xbox titles that are, "play anywhere titles", as well as PC exclusive games. I probably spend more time gaming on the laptop, than I do on the Xbox with the inclusion of the "play anywhere" titles plus GamePass. Primarily, I play fighting games, but I dabble a little bit with Forza Motorsports for Xbox. Sadly though, racing games just don't hold my interest for very long anymore. Fighting games, however, will never die. I also have my iPhone connected to my PC via Phone Link, which benefits me very well for file sharing purposes. Everything else is connected to Alexa. I also have a fire TV, so if I want to watch YouTube, for example, I just tell my Alexa device to play something on YouTube on my fire TV. If I want to schedule an event on my iCloud calendar, that two is connected to Alexa, so I can do it all through my Alexa device as well.

With Audible and Kindle both being part of the Amazon family, I can have my Alexa device also play any of my books, both Audible and e-book versions, through my Alexa device. Alternatively, I can do the same with the Alexa app on my iPhone.
Basically if it can be connected to Alexa, it is connected to Alexa. πŸ˜€

By Dennis Westphal on Tuesday, August 26, 2025 - 10:33

The Fairphone is just like any other Android phone. I've installed eOS on it and am using it without Google services. I have a case made of wood for it and love that it is easily repairable. The speakers on it are very bad though. Hope that helps at least a bit.

By Michael Feir on Tuesday, August 26, 2025 - 13:22

I do absolutely everything on my iPhone. My writing is done in the Ulysses app. I use the Notes app and have come to really appreciate the quicknotes feature. I have the action button set to quicknote so I can quickly type or dictate a new note and then save it if I end up wanting to keep it or cancel if not. That gets rid of empty notes which used to bug me if I decide I don't ultimately need to keep something jotted down in a hurry. Smart folders and hashtags keep it all nicely organized. I use Gmail and the Gmail app to handle all email.
I use a Bluetooth keyboard for typing but tend to use the screen gestures rather than keyboard commands when navigating, editing, spellchecking, etc. All of my books are on my iPhone. I use Kindle, Audible, and Voice Dream Reader for the majority of my reading.
The biggest advantage is that it's aways with you and there's less hassle if it's all on one device. You can pick and choose when to carry, upgrade and use accessories like keyboards, Bluetooth speakers, etc.
If you're employed, you need to take what your business uses. this might make it impossible or less optimal to stick exclusively to your iPhone to get things done. Certain hobbies might also benefit from having a PC as well. This is the case for my wife. However, I've honestly not missed Windows in the slightest when it comes to productivity. There are a fe things I wish Apple would streamline. For one, there should be an option to have audio ducking not duck the volume of phone conversations. I have to quickly turn off ducking to fix that. Also, there really should be chime options in the Clock app. There may be other gripes which aren't coming to me off the top of my head, but I've been pretty happy on the whole.

By Bruce Harrell on Tuesday, August 26, 2025 - 17:15

Ah, now that is a question I can answer. I have an iPhone 15 pro with 512gb and a Mac Studio with M1 ultra with 128gb random access memory and 4tb internal ssd.

My wife has an iPad and her own iPhone 15 Pro. We are networked via wi-fi and sync with icloud.com. All automatic. I also backup to a couple 18tb hard drives using time machine, also all automatic.

For my Mac I use an Apple keyboard with touch id, but I'm not happy with it and am thinking of going back to a mechanical keyboard. Too many typos on the Apple keyboard. I don't do much text entry these days, though, except emails and posts. Most of my hard core use of my computer is for composing music using Sibelius Ultimate, and producing music (recording, mixing and mastering) using Logic Pro and a host of plug ins etc.

I left windows 12 years ago because it had too many issues.

Hope this helps.

By TheBlindGuy07 on Tuesday, August 26, 2025 - 18:41

Good to know about fairphone accessibility! Thank you. It's a shame that the more privacy conscious forks of android like graphine are literally not accessible as they remove everything google from it including the accessibility suite...

By Dennis Westphal on Wednesday, August 27, 2025 - 11:44

Most custom Roms have Talkback preinstalled. It is the open-source variant. There are ways to install the Google stuff though, if one would want to. I personally only installed the Google TTS though.