My Setup for a new Mac
One of my favorite experiences as a software techie geek, is setting up a new Mac when I get one. While I have a few standard tools I install, I enjoy using the time to explore and try different tools and apps. I decided to write about the experience this time.
My Standard Mac Apps
These are the tools I install on any new Mac, without even thinking about it.
- 1Password
- I have used 1Password for years. On this mac I am also going to try out LastPass
- iTerm
- The defacto standard terminal IMO
- Raycast
- I love this as a launcher and use it heavily for things like GitHub and Jira
- Spark
- About the only email client I’ve found that I can tolerate
- Docker
- IntelliJ IDEA
- IDEA is my normal IDE, however I am learning to like VSCode as well
- VSCode
- This is an exploratory IDE for me, switching IDE’s is a long process for me
- Chrome
- Slack
My CLI Tools
Once I have iTerm installed, its time to ensure all my CLI tools are installed. This starts, for me, with installing Homebrew and Oh-my-zsh. Once I have these, I will start my first exploration exercise. For sure I’ll install all of these:
brew install gh, plantuml, kubectx, kubectl, helm, httpie, jq, fzf
And ensure I have these plugins for zsh:
plugins=(git 1password brew docker fzf gcloud gh gradle helm httpie iterm2 kubectl kubectx macos vi-mode vscode)
Compilers/Interpreters/Runtimes
The main technologies I work with for software are Java/Kotlin, Javascript/Node, Go, and Python so first want to ensure I have these installed with their respective SDK managers.