Recently my MacBook Pro mysteriously died overnight. Due to the current epidemic situation, I figured the best option at the moment is to purchase a new one. So, here comes a brand new 16-inch MacBook Pro. I never use Time Machine or iCloud for backup, so now is a great opportunity to document my setup process for a new machine. The applications and programs I would install reflect my day-to-day workflow. Some of these are for my classes and research; some are for general software development; and some are just for working efficiently with a MacBook.
- Amphetamine: get it from App Store; it keeps Mac from automatically go to sleep
- Spectrum: get it from App Store; I occasionally use it for web color design
- Slack: get it from App Store and sign in via email
- Kindle: get it from App Store and sign in through Amazon account
- WeChat: get it from App Store; I mainly use WeChat on Mac for backing up chat history
- Xcode: I don't do iOS/macOS dev, but I think sometimes other programs need it
- delete GarageBand: I don't use it and it takes up space
- delete iMovie: I don't use it
- Firefox: get it from https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/
- Chrome: get it from Google; I mainly use Firefox, but Chrome is sometimes useful for web dev
- Intellij Ultimate: get it from https://account.jetbrains.com/licenses through student license
- The Unarchiver: get it from App Store; I forget what this was for
- Skype
- Postman: hackathon essential? get it here https://www.postman.com/
- Spotify: get it here https://www.spotify.com/us/
- LastPass: get it from App Store; but most of the time I just use the Firefox extension
- LastPass Firefox extension
- Dropbox: this is my primary backup system
- Sophos Home: this is school's recommended Mac security software
- Visual Studio Code: I don't know when I would need it
- Microsoft Office Suite: sign in to Microsoft and download the Office 365 apps
- Java
- MySQL: going to need it once in a while for some large web dev
- Zoom: especially now with the epidemic situation and all classes online
- Paragon NTFS: absolutely necessary for writing to NTFS format external drives
- Adobe Creative Cloud and apps under my photography license
- ExpressVPN or NordVPN - depending on which I have an active license for
- Docker: going to probably need it for some serious dev work
- R and RStudio: they are different things; need them for my research work
First off, customize Terminal theme and settings. Then,
- Install
oh-my-zsh
withcurl
- Install
brew
mkdir bin
in home directorybrew install wget
ssh-keygen
for git (git comes built-in, maybe check version)- Add the new ssh key to GitHub
git clone
mydotfiles
repository into~/bin
brew install npm
(this also installsnode
)npm i -g tldr
(this is a simpler version ofman
pages)rm .zshrc
andln -s ~/bin/dotfiles/.zshrc ~/.zshrc
- Install plugin
git-open
viaoh-my-zsh
git config --global user.name
and my namegit config --global user.email
and my email- Fix any remaining zsh and
.zshrc
problems ln -s ~/bin/dotfiles/.vimrc ~/.vimrc
brew install lua
and download and setupfull_screen.*
scriptsbrew install rlwrap
- Check python versions (both 2 and 3 should be built in)
pip3 install --user --upgrade pip
- Optionally, upgrade python 3 to the latest version
brew install tree
brew install htop
(better visualization thantop
)
Note to self: Most of the above steps can probably be automated. Write up a script then?
Step 2 requires admin privilege.
This affects Steps 4, 8, 16, 17, 21, 22.
Step 9 is also affected because
.pkg
installation fornode
requires admin privilege as well.