
New Mac Setup - ashishgandhi
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2014/03/08/New-Mac-Setup
======
cliveowen
I recently upgraded to Mavericks and I found it to be a buggy mess. SMB
support for my Android phone? It's gone, God knows why. Installing the Dev
tools (which for some reason were deleted during the update process from
Mountain Lion) was incredibly slow and froze my machine, so I had to force a
shutdown three times before managing to install everything.

The quality of software couldn't be worse, there's really not a single
application client or cloud based that isn't a piece of crap. Even Google
products (Youtube most of all) are full of (known) bugs that have been there
for years (literally) and remain unfixed.

After more than 50 years of software development one would think we should've
nailed the basics. At this point I'm hopeless, I don't think there will ever
be reliable, high-quality software, it's just unattainable.

~~~
astrange
> Installing the Dev tools (which for some reason were deleted during the
> update process from Mountain Lion) was incredibly slow and froze my machine,
> so I had to force a shutdown three times before managing to install
> everything.

Your hard drive might be failing.

Mavericks has much improved performance, and performance introspection tools,
than Mountain Lion. If you feel your computer is generally slow or has poor
battery life, running "sudo systemstats today" or powermetrics might help.

If there's a specific task where it has terrible system performance, hit the
sysdiagnose key and reporting it later will be a lot more productive, if you
want to do such a thing.

~~~
jokoon
I've recently changed my hard drive, and no, my macbook pro 2009 does not run
mavericks smoothly with 2GB of ram.

kernel_task takes 200 to 500MB of ram. Programs take age to start.

~~~
LoganCale
2 GB of RAM is nowhere near enough for OS X anymore. You need 8 GB minimum and
16 GB if you are doing anything substantial.

~~~
jokoon
that's why I don't like OSX. I prefer minimal OSes.

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lelf
> _Accessibility /Trackpad Options, and “Enable dragging”_

Holy crap, it's in accessibility! How I cursed apple when I could not find it
after upgrading. But now I already accustomed to "3-finger drag".

~~~
adamnemecek
I'm confused what the option actually does. Isn't it the default behavior that
if you click on anything and drag it, you drag it?

~~~
ghshephard
This isn't a "click", it's a double "touch-pad tap (no depress of the button)"

I've gotten so used to tap interaction, as opposed to "clicking", that I could
easily work with a Mac now that had no "click".

I don't use the double-tap interaction (interferes with some games, and
sometimes you get a deselect if you've multi-selected things on the screen) -
but the three finger drag is wonderful.

[Edit: One exception - on bootup, before the OS is running, it won't recognize
tap commands, and you have to click]

------
mcella
I've been recently (December) upgraded to a similar rMBP (2GHz i7, 16 GB RAM,
256 GB SSD), coming from an early 2008 MBP 15" it really feels great,
everything is incredible fast, almost instantaneous, but... I'm experiencing
two VERY annoying problems with OSX Mavericks:

1) 2/3 times a week the whole system freezes up and I need to reboot

2) once a week the sound output stops working and I need to reboot

Googling around it seems I'm not the only one experiencing these issues, too
bad I can't go back to OSX Leopard.

~~~
DanHulton
The sound output thing I found to be an issue with headphones - it'd happen
when I was on headphones, closed the mac, took out the headphones, then open
the mac up and woke it up again.

Interestingly enough, I picked up a pair of bluetooth headphones and the issue
has entirely ceased to reoccur.

Still frustrating as hell, though.

~~~
mcella
Thanks! that's exactly what I'm doing every day, I use headphones too and
plug/unplug them very frequently. I also never shutdown the mac, I just put it
to sleep by closing the lid.

I've been doing the same for years with the old MBP (regularly coming to 30
days uptime without any itch) and always considered this the best feature
(bulletproof sleep) that keeps me from going back to linux.

PS Ironically enough, just after posting my first comment the mac freezed up
again...

------
yeukhon
Mac OSX is the least customized OS I have ever done myself. I have very few
customizations because the default settings and UI are fine. Coming from
Ubuntu and Windows, I think Mac's UX is quite nice. The two exceptions are
rename (I want to old Windows double-tap style) and the Preview program. I
want to be able to view images forth and back with my arrow keys by default.
The finder is also a little annoying sometimes but I didn't get a separate
program but maybe I will.

One absolute must-correct issue in the future is Mac, Windows and all Linux
distro should share same set of commands. Most Unix commands are available
cross-platform but a few aren't. Unfortunately, that's not possible :( And
forget about the difference between Windows commands and Linux commands. I
could live with the difference, but, oh, it's 2014 and I hope one day we don't
have to have live with difference.

Lastly,

 _I got a maxed-out MacBook Pro 15 " (16G RAM, 1T SSD) thus dumping an
estimated $1,000 profit into Apple’s cash hoard. _

You sure? A 15" retina max 1TB and 16GB is $3000, not $1000. I think you meant
an extra $1000 profit.

~~~
ghshephard
Re:

 _" I got a maxed-out MacBook Pro 15" (16G RAM, 1T SSD) thus dumping an
estimated $1,000 profit into Apple’s cash hoard.

You sure? A 15" retina max 1TB and 16GB is $3000, not $1000. I think you meant
an extra $1000 profit. "_

I think he was using the 35% gross profit margin on $3,000 selling price to
come up with a $1,000 gross profit. Actual Net Profit depends on many other
factors, SG&A, R&D, etc...

~~~
yeukhon
That's a neat observation. Thanks.

------
shocks
For programming, I like the font Anonymous Pro[1].

1: [http://www.marksimonson.com/fonts/view/anonymous-
pro](http://www.marksimonson.com/fonts/view/anonymous-pro)

~~~
OWaz
And I like Source Code Pro.

[http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2012/09/source-code-
pro....](http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2012/09/source-code-pro.html)

I work between Windows and OSX machines (and between Visual Studio and Sublime
Text) and I just find it comforting to see the same typeface everywhere.

~~~
shocks
I'm using Anonymous Pro on Windows and OSX too. :)

Source Code Pro looks really nice!

------
ghaff
I have mixed feelings on the glossy-everything trend that seems to be the norm
these days. I suspect glossy is indeed better when the environment is right--
but it often isn't. I went through the same thing buying a new TV for my
sunroom which, as you might imagine from the name, has a lot of light during
the day. I don't use the TV in that room much during the day and the glossy
plasma is indeed wonderful at night, but matte screen have their advantages in
sunlight and, I suspect, are the overall optimal choice for a lot of uses even
though they've fallen out of favor.

~~~
noise
I have no mix - can't stand the glossy, especially for code work (or anything
dealing with text). Glossy is great for photos and watching video, which I do
very little of on my laptop screen. You can pry my last-matte-edition Macbook
Pro from my cold dead hands!

------
euoia
Here is a similar kind of guide I wrote for a friend when he bought his first
mac last year:

[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GIWl5333sxEZv5-cw5DGYSZC...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GIWl5333sxEZv5-cw5DGYSZClZ7gMsA_7ui6lSug2ok/edit)

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cpleppert
The margin on the top of the line Macbook pro that he got(1TB and 2.6ghz quad)
is just insane. For an extra $700 you are increasing the SSD to a capacity you
will never use and moderately increasing CPU clock. If you really need a 1TB
drive you are going to go external anyway. You might as well go with the stock
$2600 configuration as RAM limits are far more significant.

On the lower end there is little value anyway too as you are losing the
integrated graphics, 8GB of memory and reducing the drive capacity to 256gb
which might matter more if you have a lot of media. You might as well get the
13inch pro at that price and get a more portable laptop to boot.

~~~
ceejayoz
I suspect he's not worried about an extra $700, and just because you don't use
a TB doesn't mean he won't.

------
jph
Here's my new Mac setup notes:
[https://github.com/SixArm/sixarm_mac_osx_installation_help](https://github.com/SixArm/sixarm_mac_osx_installation_help)

Feedback and pull requests welcome.

~~~
vinceguidry
Curious, why do you have rbenv and ruby-build deprecated?

Edit: Nevermind, it looks like chruby and ruby-install are the new black.

------
xcntktn
> I used [Homebrew] to install ImageMagick (the only OS X tool I know of where
> you can resize pictures on the command line)…

There's the built-in command "sips" that comes on every Mac and has been
around since at least OS X Lion (10.7). The name stands for "scriptable image
processing tool", and the tool appears to use CoreGraphics to do its work.

More info here:

[https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/sips.1.html)

------
ah-
I agree with a lot of that, especially the key repeat speed. You can get it
even faster than what the UI offers by manually setting it with defaults.

I would add to this list:

\- BetterTouchTool ([http://www.boastr.de/](http://www.boastr.de/)) with
gestures set up for better browsing. Change tabs by swiping with three fingers
to the right/left, close tab by swiping down, new tab by swiping up. Same
thing for terminal.app tabs.

\- iStat Menus for network/cpu monitoring.

~~~
__david__
> \- BetterTouchTool ([http://www.boastr.de/](http://www.boastr.de/))

Also, three finger click -> middle click.

Middle clicking links will open the link in a new tab on almost every browser.
Middle clicking on a tab will close it. These features are essential for me
when I'm reading Hacker News or Reddit.

~~~
e28eta
For open in new tab on a Mac, I use CMD-click. Takes two hands, but works
without special setup and I usually have a hand near the keyboard anyway.

~~~
__david__
I did it that way for years—It's perfectly acceptable. But the triple click is
just so much better for me. It's one of those little things that makes way
more of a difference than you'd initially think. I'd encourage you to try it,
even if it seems dumb.

------
Thiz
"I’m too old now to not use Unix"

Add that to his list of memorable quotes.

------
jarin
I like the idea of his keymap for better quotes, but you don't need to do
that.

“ is Option-[

” is Option-Shift-[

’ is Option-Shift-]

