I have been rocking my 15" MacBook Pro since 2010 and after nearly 7 years of use, it’s finally time for it to retire1. Unfortunately it’s been plagued with near-constant GPU panics for the last year or so, which makes it almost unbearable to use since it would just crash and restart every so often. I have been extending its lifespan for as long as I could. I upgraded its storage twice, first to a 1TB hard drive and later to an SSD. The RAM was also upgraded to 8GB and both of the fans were replaced.
But a laptop upgrade was long overdue and I couldn't be more excited.
In setting up my new MacBook Pro, I made a checklist of all the applications and settings I need to be able to use it normally:
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Remove everything from the Dock
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Open Sytem Preferences
- General → ✓ Use dark menu bar and Dock
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Desktop & Screen Saver → Screen Saver
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Select Aerial
- ✓ Play Different Aerial On Each Display
- Start after: 10 Minutes
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Hot Corners…
- ↗ = Start Screen Saver
- ↘ = Put Display to Sleep
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Dock
- Size: around 25%
- ✘ Magnification
- Position on screen: Right
- ✘ Animate opening applications
- ✓ Automatically hide and show the Dock
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Mission Control
- ✘ Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use
- Dashboard: Off
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Language & Region
- Add ภาษาไทย
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Security & Privacy
- ✓ Require password immediately after sleep or screen saver begins
- ✓ Allow your Apple Watch to unlock your Mac
- Allow apps downloaded from: App store and identified developers
- FireVault → On
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Keyboard → Shortcuts → Spotlight
- Show Spotlight search: ⌥Space
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Mouse/Trackpad → Point & Click → ✘ Scroll direction: Natural
- Down means down
- Trackpad → Point & Click → ✓ Tap to click
- Set up Time Machine backup
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Accessibility
- Display → ✘ Shake mouse pointer to locate
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Mouse & Trackpad
- Trackpad Options… → ✓ dragging without drag lock
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Install Alfred
- General → Alfred Hotkey: ⌘Space
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Features → System
- ✓ Eject
- ✓ Eject All
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Workflows
- Install Alfred Spotify Mini Player
- Install Units
- Install Dash
- Install alfred-weather
- Install alfred-toggl
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Appearance
- Install Dark Mode
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Install iStat Menus
- Set to only show date, time, battery status, and CPU usage
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Install Bartender
- Hide everything so it looks like this:
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Install iTerm 2
- Install Solarized Color Presets
- Preferences → Profiles → Colors → Color Presets → Solarized Dark
- Install Homebrew
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Install fish shell
brew install fish
chsh -s (which fish)
- Install oh-my-fish
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Install Powerline fonts
- Change font to 12pt Meslo LG S DZ Regular for Powerline
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Change theme to agnoster
omf theme agnoster
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Install Chrome
- Just for Flash
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Install Firefox
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Install Sublime Text
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Install Material theme
- Color Scheme: Material-Theme-Darker
-
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Install Karabiner
- Remap caps lock to escape only for built-in keyboard because escape key on the Touch Bar is unusable
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Install 1Password
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Install RescueTime
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Install Evernote
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Install Pastebot
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Install Tweetbot
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Install Moom
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Install Day One
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Install TextExpander
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Install Telegram
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Install Airmail
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Install Xcode
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Install Eclipse
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Install GitKraken
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Install Dash
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Install VLC
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Install Plex Media Server
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Install Backblaze
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Install f.lux
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Install Dropbox
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Install Google Backup and Sync
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Install Microsoft OneNote
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Install Slack
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Install Byword
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Install Hazel
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Install Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
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Install Steam
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Install Cyberduck
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Install Sketch
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Install Skype
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Install Todoist
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Install Toggl Desktop
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Install Ghostery
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Install FruitJuice
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Not really, since I’ll be using it as a dedicated Plex Media Sever. ↩︎