When Apple released new revs of the MacBook Air and the Mac Mini, I decided to go for it and get one of each. \u00a0As I find migrating my old stuff to a new computer distasteful and somehow unclean, I set them up from scratch. \u00a0Here’s a rough description of what I did, pretty unedited, and mostly so I can remember what to do next time.<\/p>\n
First, there are a bunch of settings in control panels that I had to change:<\/p>\n
Language & Text Preferences<\/p>\n
Mouse Preferences<\/p>\n
Sharing<\/p>\n
Energy Saver<\/p>\n
MobileMe<\/p>\n
Mail, Contacts & Calendars<\/p>\n
Network<\/p>\n
Sharing<\/p>\n
Trackpad<\/p>\n
As an aside, regarding Mission Control, I am really not a fan so far. \u00a0It takes too much power away. \u00a0No vertical spaces? \u00a0Dumb. \u00a0I’m not on a fracking iPad. \u00a0I can use the up and down arrow keys, thanks.<\/p>\n
Anyway, at this point run Software Update to get system updates and run App Store to get updates for preinstalled apps. \u00a0Then open mail to start syncing. \u00a0It’ll take a while to get my whole account.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
So now I’ve got my mail, calendars, and contacts. \u00a0Everything is syncing nicely. \u00a0I’m on the home network. \u00a0Next step is to get my essential apps:<\/p>\n
First, the ones that aren’t in the App Store and are therefore a pain to get:<\/p>\n
Dropbox<\/a> is completely essential to my computer use nowadays. \u00a0I store all kinds of stuff, sync, app state, store my 1Password info. \u00a0Yet I still use the free account. \u00a0If i need more space I’ll sign up for the pay version, but so far it hasn’t been a problem. \u00a0When I installed it, I got a weird error that said “URLs with the type ‘nwnode:’ are not supported.” but everything still seems to be working fine, so no big deal.<\/p>\n I use Dropbox to sync my papers for Papers2, my 1Password data, my Delicious Library content, scans of important documents. \u00a0Various files for projects I’m working on. \u00a0Important images like copies of my passport and license, etc. \u00a0It’s great. \u00a0Sometimes to sync an app’s content you need to use some symbolic link action. \u00a0Like for Delicious Library 2,\u00a0I’ve got a ~\/Dropbox\/AppSync\/Delicious Library folder and I use a symbolic link to point Delicious Library 2 at the right spot.<\/p>\n At this point I opened the Mac Mini box about 1 hour ago, just to keep track of how long all this is taking.<\/p>\n Sonos<\/a> Desktop Controller — I’ve got Sonos all over my house. \u00a0It’s fantastic. \u00a0Get it. \u00a0My computer audio goes through the Sonos in my office, so this is necessary for me to get sound turned on.<\/p>\n PandoraJam<\/a> — Great app if you listen to Pandora.<\/p>\n Papers2<\/a> (and Open In Papers Safari extension) — When I find a journal article I want to read or a spec I need to keep track of, or even an Intel manual, I stuff them into Papers 2, which is kept in sync with my iPad whenever I remember. \u00a0I sync the papers between my Macs using Dropbox.<\/p>\n Mathematica<\/a> — I don’t install this everywhere. \u00a0Just laptop & home. \u00a0But it’s totally sweet. \u00a0However, it seems to be a bit of a pain to move from one machine to another, copy-protection wise.<\/p>\n R<\/a> — I’m just learning to use this, but it seems pretty killer for analysis of large datasets.<\/p>\n VirusBarrier<\/a> — \u00a0All those dimwits that say Macs are totally safe and only Windows users need to fear are living in a fairy land. \u00a0Malware is going to hit Macs hard and when it does, people are going to be totally caught by surprise. \u00a0Anyway, VirusBarrier seems to be the best of the lot and, what I particularly like is that it claims to try to prevent ssh attacks. \u00a0I’m not 100% sure I believe it yet, but at least it’s trying.<\/p>\n Rosetta Stone — I mean to learn French & Italian at some point… Maybe Mandarin?<\/p>\n ScanSnap software — I’ve got a ScanSnap 500. \u00a0It’s critical. \u00a0I scan bills, documents, prescriptions, reports. \u00a0All kinds of stuff.\u00a0Indispensable.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ok. \u00a0That’s it for non app-store apps.<\/p>\n Now the apps that are in the App Store and are super incredibly easy to install:<\/p>\n Xcode<\/a> — Hm. \u00a0It says “In order to continue installation, please close the following application: iTunes”. \u00a0But iTunes isn’t running. \u00a0iTunesHelper was running, but I killed that, too and it still didn’t continue. \u00a0So I tried killing the alertAll window directly. \u00a0That let the install continue to completion. \u00a0Crazy. \u00a0Did they test this OS at all? \u00a0This would never have gotten past a Windows Beta cycle. \u00a0Anyway, it all worked out. (Update: They’ve fixed this with a new release of the Xcode installer.)<\/p>\n Evernote<\/a> — Syncs and has notes. \u00a0Easy and good.<\/p>\n Reeder<\/a> — Great for reading your google reader blogs.<\/p>\n Kindle<\/a> — I use this to look up stuff in technical books on my compy.<\/p>\n MarsEdit<\/a> — I’m using thsi to help write this blog. \u00a0It’s not really that great, but it seems like there isn’t any decent mac blogging application. \u00a0Nothing to compare with the superb Windows Live Writer for PC. \u00a0I almost want to install Windows in parallels just for that.<\/p>\n Coda<\/a> — Great for web page editing. \u00a0I don’t use it much, though. \u00a0Mostly just to upload the 1st version of WordPress I put on. \u00a0But now WordPress has update right from the webpage.<\/p>\n LimeChat<\/a> — Best Mac irc client.<\/p>\n Scrivener<\/a> — Amazing for working on big text research projects or, perhaps someday, a novel.<\/p>\n Things<\/a> — My personal todo list. \u00a0I tried briefly to use Wunderlist, but it just wasn’t up to the task (it is basically a prettied up Fisher Price My First Todo List App — no contexts, no tags, no recurring tasks. \u00a0Bah.). \u00a0And now that Things has cloud sync in beta, I don’t think I’ll suffer too long before everything is syncing around with Things. \u00a0I use taskwarrior at work since I spend so much time at the command line. \u00a0But I use Things for my personal todos.<\/p>\n Day One<\/a> — A diary app. \u00a0On 1st run sees that I’ve got my journal in my Dropbox, and everything is ready to go.<\/p>\n Delicious Library 2<\/a> — I actually didn’t buy this on the App Store, but the App Store is so convenient that I purchased it again via the App Store, just so I can install it all around without worrying about serial numbers and licenses and such nonsense. \u00a0This program is great for keeping track of my books, movies and games. \u00a0I wish it did something with comic books and barcodes, but it doesn’t. \u00a0I’ve got the bluetooth infra-red barcode scanner and that makes entering books a breeze.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n And now the super nerdy command line things — these need to wait, really, until Xcode is installed.<\/p>\n Homebrew<\/a> + brews:<\/p>\n git<\/a>\u00a0— Looks like this comes ready to go! \u00a0No need to do anything.<\/p>\n zsh<\/a>\u00a0— Lion comes with zsh 4.3.11, but the latest is 4.3.12 (from 5\/31\/2011) and it has some fixes I want, especially for syntax highlighting at the command line, so I’ll get it with brew.<\/p>\n macvim<\/a>\u00a0— Not quite as necessary as it was with Snow Leopard, since Lion comes with 7.3, but it’s compiled without python support, ruby support, etc. \u00a0And I want those. \u00a0So with brew again! \u00a0The brew automatically gets perl, python, ruby, tcl interpreters, sets features=huge, etc. \u00a0But it doesn’t come with cscope support automatically, and I want that. \u00a0(Speaking of which, Lion keeps trying to autocorrect cscope –> scope, which is annoying as hell.)<\/p>\n So I’m going to run: brew install macvim –custom-icons –with-cscope –with-envycoder –override-system-vim –enable-clipboard<\/p>\n ack<\/a>\u00a0— Soooooooo much better than grep.<\/p>\n auto jump<\/a>\u00a0— Sooooooo much better than cd.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My dotfiles First, I need to get github ssh keys set up on this new machine. \u00a0 Here’s a fun tip to get it to your system clipboard ready for pasting with no fuss.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n then I also have to update my oh-my-zsh submodules. \u00a0I’m not yet 100% great at git. \u00a0I’ll say that. \u00a0But I’ve got a pretty cool setup.<\/p>\n Edit \/etc\/shells to add my newly installed zsh in \/usr\/local\/bin\/zsh<\/p>\n I’ll write a separate post about my dotfiles in their entirety and why I uses certain vim plugins, zsh settings, etc.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Optional stuff (ie: only on some computers)<\/p>\n Prey<\/a> — Only on the MacBook Air. \u00a0If someone steals my computer, I can do all kinds of cool stuff to track them down with Prey. \u00a0I’ve never had to use it, but I almost want to leave an old mac somewhere just to see it in action.<\/p>\n Isolator<\/a> — Only at work. \u00a0It’s a productivity tool that blanks out everything but the frontmost window. \u00a0I’ve found it useful for focusing on a single app \/ window.<\/p>\n Vitamin R<\/a> — another productivity aid. \u00a0Keeps track of what I’m currently working on and for how long.<\/p>\n Time Sink<\/a> — again, just at work. \u00a0Keeps track of what you’re doing so you can see where you spend your time<\/p>\n Skim<\/a> — pdf reader<\/p>\n Microsoft Office<\/a><\/p>\n Parallels<\/a> — VM where I can run windows 7 (or windows 95 maybe for Atomic Bomberman??)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Other thoughts<\/p>\n Flash MacOS 10.7 (Lion) really shows Apple’s distaste for Adobe Flash. \u00a0When you see a webpage that has a flash plugin, it’s much harder to tell than on previous MacOS versions or in Windows. \u00a0And it’s much more annoying to install now as well. \u00a0Oh well. \u00a0You can’t really get away from it, so I need to install it. \u00a0Wow. \u00a0Worse than I thought — you have to close Safari to install it. \u00a0Good grief!<\/p>\n Online backup — right now I use time machine for all my macs at home to one destination or another. \u00a0But having an online backup solution would be really great. \u00a0I’ve been using Arq, but am thinking of switching over to Backblaze.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Other content I need to sync over still:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What I still need to do \/ get:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Things I left on the old box:<\/p>\n ShareTool<\/a> I access my home network from work using this. \u00a0I mean to set up a VPN using my dd-wrt router, but I haven’t gotten to it yet.<\/p>\n SecuritySpy<\/a> I look at my home security cameras with this.<\/p>\n Drobo<\/a> An old drobo used for long term stable storage of old files.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Apple released new revs of the MacBook Air and the Mac Mini, I decided to go for it and get one of each. \u00a0As I find migrating my old stuff to a new computer distasteful and somehow unclean, I set them up from scratch. \u00a0Here’s a rough description of what I did, pretty unedited, … Continue reading Setting Up A New Mac<\/span> ie: ln -s \"~\/Dropbox\/AppSync\/Delicious Library\" \"~\/Library\/Application Support\/Delicious Library 2\"<\/pre>\n
I really couldn't get online without 1Password<\/a>. \u00a0My passwords are too complicated to remember and they're all stored in here. \u00a0So are my credit cards and all kinds of other important information. \u00a0It's a\u00a0great app and makes all my info available on my iPhone, Macs, Windows boxes -- everywhere. \u00a0However, I can't really start using it until my data syncs down from Dropbox, since that's where all my encrypted info is maintained. \u00a0And, that's going to take a few hours to sync.<\/pre>\n
cat .ssh\/id_rsa.pub | pbcopy<\/pre>\n
mighty:~ john$ git clone git@github.com:jsholmes\/vimwiki<\/pre>\n
mighty:~ john$ cd .dotfiles\r\nmighty:.dotfiles john$ rake install<\/pre>\n
mighty:.dotfiles john$ git submodule update --init<\/pre>\n
mighty:oh-my-zsh john$ git submodule update --init<\/pre>\n
MondoMouse<\/a><\/del>\u00a0Zooom\/2<\/a> — lets you move & resize windows more easily (MondoMouse wasn’t compatible with Lion and it turns out Zooom\/2 is just as good if not better)<\/p>\n\n
\n