Starting on a New Mac

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:

• Remove everything from the Dock

• Open Sytem Preferences

  • General → ✓ Use dark menu bar and Dock

  • Desktop & Screen Saver → Screen Saver

    • Select Aerial

      • ✓ Play Different Aerial On Each Display
    • Start after: 10 Minutes

    • Hot Corners…

      • ↗ = Start Screen Saver
      • ↘ = Put Display to Sleep

  • Dock

    • Size: around 25%
    • ✘ Magnification
    • Position on screen: Right
    • ✘ Animate opening applications
    • ✓ Automatically hide and show the Dock

  • Mission Control

    • ✘ Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use
    • Dashboard: Off

  • Language & Region

    • Add ภาษาไทย

  • 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

  • Keyboard → Shortcuts → Spotlight

    • Show Spotlight search: ⌥Space

  • Mouse/Trackpad → Point & Click → ✘ Scroll direction: Natural

    • Down means down
  • Trackpad → Point & Click → ✓ Tap to click
  • Set up Time Machine backup

  • Accessibility

    • Display → ✘ Shake mouse pointer to locate

    • Mouse & Trackpad

      • Trackpad Options… → ✓ dragging without drag lock

• Install Alfred

  • General → Alfred Hotkey: ⌘Space

  • Features → System

    • ✓ Eject
    • ✓ Eject All

  • Workflows

    • Install Alfred Spotify Mini Player
    • Install Units
    • Install Dash
    • Install alfred-weather
    • Install alfred-toggl

  • Appearance

    • Install Dark Mode

• Install iStat Menus

  • Set to only show date, time, battery status, and CPU usage

• Install Bartender

  • Hide everything so it looks like this:

  

• Install iTerm 2

  • Install Solarized Color Presets
  • Preferences → Profiles → Colors → Color Presets → Solarized Dark
  • Install Homebrew

  • Install fish shell

    • brew install fish
    • chsh -s (which fish)
  • Install oh-my-fish

  • Install Powerline fonts

    • Change font to 12pt Meslo LG S DZ Regular for Powerline

  • Change theme to agnoster

    • omf theme agnoster

• Install Chrome

  • Just for Flash

• Install Firefox

• Install Sublime Text

  • Install Material theme

    • Color Scheme: Material-Theme-Darker

• Install Karabiner

  • Remap caps lock to escape only for built-in keyboard because escape key on the Touch Bar is unusable

• Install 1Password

• Install RescueTime

• Install Evernote

• Install Pastebot

• Install Tweetbot

• Install Moom

• Install Day One

• Install TextExpander

• Install Telegram

• Install Airmail

• Install Xcode

• Install Eclipse

• Install GitKraken

• Install Dash

• Install VLC

• Install Plex Media Server

• Install Backblaze

• Install f.lux

• Install Dropbox

• Install Google Backup and Sync

• Install Microsoft OneNote

• Install Slack

• Install Byword

• Install Hazel

• Install Adobe Photoshop Lightroom

• Install Steam

• Install Cyberduck

• Install Sketch

• Install Skype

• Install Todoist

• Install Toggl Desktop

• Install Ghostery

• Install FruitJuice