Macpreneur

Using a Mac for Software Development with Brian Childress

• Damien Schreurs • Season 6 • Episode 124

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In this episode, you'll learn how accomplished technologist Brian Childress uses his MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and iPhone 13 to effectively run his business from anywhere in the world.

Links and video version at: https://macpreneur.com/episode124

Connect with Brian:


Highlights:

  • [00:00] Teaser  
  • [00:36] Introduction  
  • [01:05] Brian's Current Tech Setup  
  • [01:42] Using iPad Pro for Team Communication  
  • [04:07] Brian's First Mac and Professional Journey  
  • [05:01] Software Development on Mac  
  • [06:46] Note-Taking and Productivity Tools  
  • [09:32] Online Services and Tools  
  • [11:12] Mac Tips and Tricks  
  • [12:22] Brian's Mac Wish List  
  • [14:43] Connecting with Brian  
  • [15:18] Applying to be a guest too  
  • [15:45] Outro  

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MP124 - Using a Mac for Software Development with Brian Childress


Teaser

Brian Childress: I'm running potentially multiple applications or developing against multiple applications at a time. So I need a lot of horsepower and a lot of RAM available to me to be able to develop effectively. It's one of those things; it's not even a decision of whether I go with another platform or a Mac. It's just, you know, how much RAM am I going to put in the new machine that I'm ordering.

Nova AI: Welcome to Macpreneur, the show for seasoned solopreneurs looking to streamline their business on a Mac. Unlock the secrets to saving time and money with your host and technology mentor, Damien Schreurs.


Introduction

Damien Schreurs: Hello, hello. Today, I have the pleasure of introducing Brian Childress. Brian is an accomplished technologist who has successfully built and scaled software. He is an avid adventurer who enjoys skiing and rock climbing. Brian, welcome to the show.

Brian Childress: Damien, thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

Damien Schreurs: Yeah, thanks for coming on the show. I'm happy to have a fellow technologist as a guest on the podcast; it's really nice.


Brian's Current Tech Setup

Damien Schreurs: So let's dive deep into your current setup. Which Macs are you using today to run your business?

Brian Childress: Right now, I have a 21-inch M1 MacBook Pro and an iPad Pro. Those are the two main devices, along with my iPhone 13. These are the key components that allow me to run my business from anywhere in the world.

Damien Schreurs: What's the split for you between the MacBook Pro and the iPad Pro? Can you share some use cases for the iPad?

Brian Childress: Most of my work is done on the MacBook Pro.


Using iPad Pro for Team Communication

Brian Childress: I've really started to use the iPad Pro as a way to draw and illustrate the things I'm discussing. In my work, I collaborate with teams all over the world, and many of us recognize that if someone isn't sitting right next to us and we can't point to the same exact physical object, it can be really difficult to communicate what we're talking about, especially when discussing complex topics. I use the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil to create very rough sketches, and I have found that this has been an absolute game changer in how I communicate with my teams.

Damien Schreurs: So you share the iPad screen via Zoom or Teams, or something like that? That's how you do it?

Brian Childress: Exactly. I'll share the iPad screen, and we can draw together. It's amazing what we can accomplish by drawing boxes, triangles, and circles to illustrate more complex topics, whether it's a software system architecture or a strategy for scaling the sales and marketing process within the business.

All of that can be communicated effectively. Then I take those notes and transform them into something more high-fidelity, which becomes part of the documentation for that team.

Damien Schreurs: For listeners who may be used to using Zoom but not so much, you can share much more than just the Mac screen. I remember there are two ways, right? You can either connect the iPad or iPhone with a cable, or you can do it wirelessly.

Brian Childress: Yes, what can be tricky sometimes is how to share the screen on different platforms. Sometimes you have to use something like QuickTime to start a movie recording, using the iPad screen as the source, and then share the QuickTime window as what you're displaying. Recently, I've started using OBS Studio, which I believe stands for Open Broadcaster Software.

I use that to create an overlay of what I'm drawing on the iPad. This way, you can still see me and communicate, while I can draw over my own image. I have found that this approach offers a different way to discuss things.

Damien Schreurs: That's very interesting.


Brian's First Mac and Professional Journey

Damien Schreurs: If we go back in time, what was your first Mac? When did you discover the Mac and start using that platform? 

Brian Childress: I started using a Mac professionally in 2010. I think that's when I first got my very first MacBook Pro. At that time, it was fully spec'd out; you know, it still had the CD drive on the side. That was also when the Apple monitor first came out, so I had both of those.

I think it was a 27-inch monitor. Man, I was ready to go. That's when I was really writing a lot of software professionally, and having a Mac really enabled me to write better software, just because of the way the systems I was interacting with worked. It made a big difference in my workflow.

Damien Schreurs: So maybe we can dive into that immediately. 


Software Development on Mac

Damien Schreurs: In your line of work, what do you find the most interesting? What's useful for you on the Mac from a developer's perspective?

Brian Childress: A lot of the systems I'm building are based on a Linux architecture, so we're deploying to Linux servers. The parity there is really nice. Now, I know Windows has certainly come a long way, but the Mac has always just made it easy for me to develop. I'm confident that the hardware will be there.

It can handle running multiple applications or developing against multiple applications at the same time. So I need a lot of horsepower and RAM available to me to develop effectively. It's not even a decision of whether I should go with another platform or a Mac; it's just about how much RAM I'm going to put in the new machine that I'm ordering. 

Damien Schreurs: Mm-hmm. How much do you use the Apple-provided developer tools like Xcode compared to third-party apps on your Mac?

Brian Childress: Almost exclusively, I'm on third-party platforms. I'm using things like Visual Studio Code and iTerm for different terminal applications. I'm also using Docker, and there are multiple ways to run something like Docker Desktop on the Mac. Most of my workflow involves using third-party apps. 

Damien Schreurs: Apart from the software development side of your business, what other apps do you use on your Mac?


Note-Taking and Productivity Tools

Brian Childress: The other big one for me is actually Obsidian. I use that as my "second brain." That's where I collect all my notes, whether personal or professional. I'm tracking information about clients I'm working with or my five-year vision for my life. All of that goes into Obsidian, and those simple markdown documents are synced with my Dropbox account, so I can easily share them across multiple devices. 

Damien Schreurs: A long time ago, there was Evernote. It was basically everything, right? It was almost the only solution, and since then, there has been an explosion of note-taking apps. Evernote has also, in my opinion, degraded in terms of user experience. Do you have experience with Evernote? Did you migrate from another tool to Obsidian? How did you end up with Obsidian?

Brian Childress: Absolutely. I remember using Evernote professionally with a development team many years ago. That was our shared wiki; you got access to Evernote. I think it's a great platform, but what I was looking for was something that didn't require me to sync with a platform all the time. I use platforms like Notion with a lot of my teams; that's our preferred place for documentation. However, I always found challenges with not having internet access, which meant I might not have the most up-to-date version or might not be able to access something at all. So I landed on Obsidian because I can run it locally and easily sync using something like Dropbox. 

Damien Schreurs: Hmm hmm.

Yeah, I've dabbled a little with Obsidian. When I decided not to renew my Evernote subscription, I was looking for a way to export and back up my Evernote database. In the end, I didn't go with it; I went with Joplin, which I think is an open-source alternative.

Everything in Evernote that was in a tabular format, I migrated either to Excel or to Numbers because I realized it made more sense. For mainly textual notes, I easily copied and pasted some of it into Apple Notes, which made sense for me.

Brian Childress: Yeah, absolutely. 

Damien Schreurs: Okay, what else? Maybe we could move on to online services.


Online Services and Tools

Damien Schreurs: What kind of online services do you use and access from your Mac? 

Brian Childress: Most of what I'm interacting with comes from Google. I use a lot of Google Drive and Google Sheets because I have several different clients and companies that I work with. I have many different email addresses and Google profiles that I switch between daily. I also use Notion, FreshBooks for my accounting, and Dropbox to save, sync, and share files with others.

I think those are really some of the bigger platforms that I use regularly throughout my daily workflows. 

Damien Schreurs: I'm using FreshBooks as well. As soon as I started EasyTECH in 2013, I hired an accountant. That was my first business decision. The second thing was to find an easy-to-use tool to create invoices and manage everything online. I've never looked back; it's really a great platform, FreshBooks!

Brian Childress: Yeah, it's simple. It does exactly what you need from an accounting standpoint, at least in my experience. 

Damien Schreurs: We'll put a link to all the tools that we discussed in the show notes. I will also include a link to an episode from a previous season where I covered a bunch of online accounting and bookkeeping tools. Very good. 

So let's move on to the next segment of the show.


Mac Tips and Tricks

Damien Schreurs: So, what tip or trick did you discover on your Mac recently that you wish you had known before?

Brian Childress: I don't remember how recently it was, but it has really changed a lot of my workflow. That's just Spotlight—using Command and the space bar to pop open Spotlight. I can search for anything, from my applications to even searching the internet or documents. I found that to be one of those things that make me think, "Man, this is so simple, yet it really speeds me up in switching between applications or opening new ones." 

Damien Schreurs: One thing that I discovered after learning about the search functionality of Spotlight was the currency conversion, as well as any kind of conversion. It's very good at that. For me, converting from euros to US dollars or similar tasks is incredibly useful. Just Command, space, a few letters, and you have your answer.

Brian Childress: Yeah. 

Damien Schreurs: Very good. Let's move on to the next segment.


Brian's Mac Wish List

Damien Schreurs: So your number one Mac wish. If you were in charge of the Mac division at Apple, what would be the first thing that you would create or improve upon? What would be your first priority?

Brian Childress: I have to say that I'm so happy the MagSafe adapter came back a few years ago. I held off for as long as possible on buying a new Mac because I wanted MagSafe to return. I think my biggest challenge with the Apple ecosystem is primarily in the software space. For example, I’ve struggled with Apple Notes. While I think applications like Freeform are fantastic, they can be very laggy, and they don’t feel like they receive the same level of attention that goes into the hardware. Typically, that’s where I turn to third-party applications. When I'm drawing and sharing information using the iPad and the Apple Pencil, I prefer platforms like Notability. I find it to be very crisp and quick. I'm able to leverage that without getting frustrated that something like Apple Notes or Freeform isn’t accurately capturing what I'm trying to draw.

Damien Schreurs: Yes, that's something I’ve realized and noticed as well about Apple. It is primarily a consumer hardware company. Even though they make an effort to appeal to professionals, I have a theory that this is why they use the Pro moniker—not necessarily for professionals. On the software side, I have the impression it's more of an add-on than the main product.

What I’ve noticed is that they seem to follow the 80/20 rule or the 90/10 rule, right? They offer the features that will appeal to maybe 80 percent or 90 percent of the user base, and the rest is why we have third-party tools and apps.

Brian Childress: Yes, absolutely.

Damien Schreurs: Very good. 


Connecting with Brian

Damien Schreurs: Thank you, Brian. Where can people find you online?

Brian Childress: I'm most active and prolific on LinkedIn right now, so I always encourage folks to reach out and connect with me there. It’s brian-childress. I share a lot about what I’m learning with the clients I’m working with and how to scale and build software, so that’s a great place to connect. 

Damien Schreurs: Very good. Thank you. I will put a link in the show notes. 

Thank you, Brian, for being on the show. 

Brian Childress: Damien, I really appreciate the chance to chat. 


Applying to be a guest too

Damien Schreurs: My pleasure. If, like Brian, you would like to share how you are using your Mac to run your solopreneur business, it’s easy. Just visit macpreneur.com/apply. If you’re already on PodMatch, just click on the button, and you will land on the show profile. Otherwise, fill out the application form, and I’ll get back to you within a few days.

Once again, it’s macpreneur.com/apply. 


Outro

Damien Schreurs: If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a fellow solopreneur and tag both Brian and me on LinkedIn.

Until next time, I'm Damien Schreurs, wishing you a great day! 

Nova AI: Thank you for listening to the Macpreneur Podcast. If you’ve enjoyed the show, please leave a review and share it with a friend right now.