Uses This

Who are you, and what do you do?

I'm Kirby Ferguson and I'm a filmmaker, writer, and speaker. I made the series Everything is a Remix and I'm now producing a feature documentary called This is Not a Conspiracy Theory. I've spoken at TED, SXSW, Google, NYU, Columbia, and a bunch of other fancy places.

What hardware do you use?

I use a Retina 4GHz i7 iMac with pretty much everything except the hard drives maxed out. I actually have five external hard drives: my major work drive, three back-up drives, and a system back-up. Aside from it requiring a lot of ports and being a bit clunky looking, it works well.

I have a Logitech K750 solar keyboard. I love that it's solar, but otherwise find it merely adequate. I prefer the wired Apple keyboard (which this replaced), but keyboards generally seem like unloved, forgotten devices. I wish someone would make a wonderful keyboard that isn't some plastic monstrosity.

And what software?

I do almost all my writing in Scrivener. I compile my research with DEVONthink. For filmmaking, I'm almost entirely in the Adobe suite. Most of the time I'm in Premiere, Photoshop or After Effects. I use Google apps for mail, calendaring, etc. I use Slack for teamwork communication and Asana for tasks. I use SuperDuper! and ChronoSync for backups.

What would be your dream setup?

I'm pretty much there. Of course, more cores would be better, but I've got a pretty robust system. I'd love a single RAID drive rather than the small herd of drives I currently use. I'd love to a have Google Fiber-ish net connection. But really, if I were to make a major investment in my business it'd be for a new camera or a superb microphone for narration.