**Un-finished post**
Today is 06/03/2012 it has been over 3 years since I started using OS X. I’ve loved every second of it. I can remember the first time I booted OS X and felt excitement when it plays the welcome video. My Mac at the time (and present) was a mid-2009 MacBook Pro – it shipped with Leopard. In the box was a Snow Leopard disc. I remember the disappointment of having to go to work shortly after it had arrived, and my mind at work being on little else other than going home and getting to know OSX. After getting home the first task I carried out was to install OSX Snow Leopard, and for that reason in my lifetime I only ever used Leopard for a matter of minutes.
With snow leopard installed, I set about using my Mac for the next three years, I completed my Computing Science degree using it. Gradually using more and more applications, and configuring everything to how I liked it.
All was going well, with the release of Lion, I upgraded, again, no problems. However one thing started to happen after this. I’d boot OSX and I’d have no network(wireless or wired), no clock, etc etc, I’d restart and it would fix itself. I spent hours researching the issue, com.SystemUIServer seemed to be the most common occurring thing on the forums. I tried deleting this, rebuilding this. Nothing seemed to help. The problem got worse, it wasn’t 50/50 any more it was about 9 out of 10 boots I’d have no network, and the UI would be very unresponsive. I tried deleting locations, thinking maybe they were corrupt as it seemed to affect networking more than anything. No luck. The only thing that started to fix the problem was booting into safe mode by holding down “shift” at boot. This process was taking forever, but did fix it for the next boot.
Yesterday, I decided enough was enough, I could no longer live with this process. I made a backup of the entire machine (using Carbon Copy), and this morning I did a fresh install by holding cmd r at boot, formatted the OSX drive and did a Lion install.
A fresh start is giving me the opportunity to document my setup, making the next one easier. It’s also giving me the opportunity to re-organise my file storage and keep less data on my Mac.
Below is my Mac configuration in detail.
I’ve signed into iCloud and all my Contacts have been restogrey.
With the Mac App Store available purchases are easily accessible after signing in. The first thing I installed is Caffeine. It’s a simple application that puts a small coffee cup in the menu bar, clicking once stops your mac sleeping, (and screen dimming). Click again to deactivate.
In the Finder preferences I tick to box to show my own mac as a device.
Next I’m installing Microsoft Office 2011 mainly for outlook for my work email.
I purchased, from the App Store, MarsEdit after trying it recently for one of my other blogs and loving it, as I find the interface most productive and it means I can easily type this.
Dropbox is one of the best solutions on the planet for offsite file backup and versions. I tend to put in my most valuable data in here.
From the app store:
Tumblita for Tumblr
Real Racing 2
CoverSutra
Growl – very handy. With Mt. Lion, we’ll see what happens.
Wunderlist
OS X Lion Server – installed on a different Mac.
swackett X
Alfred
Telephone
Cloud – best screenshot app ever.
The Unarchiver – no idea what this is.
OS X Lion – obviously.
Take Five
Wikibot
Carousel – super nice instagram app for mac.
CalendarBar
UpdateBar
Seamless
FlashFrozen – to instantly quit flash.
MiStat – I like apps by this company.
Air Display
MPlayerX
UnPlugged – sends a nice growl and plays a sound when power is unplugged.
Clocks
Radium – beautiful radio app.
FaceTime
Mobile Mouse Server
Sparrow – best Gmail app.
Tictoc
Pangea Arcade
Echofon Lite for Twitter – I’ve used this for twitter for years, but I shall install Osfoora.
CutieMelody
Ruler
MindNode (free)
CodeBox
Chopper 2
Weather
Stuffit Expander
GarageBuy
Angry Birds
Twitter
So that’s quite a lot, and I won’t be re-installing all of those. But part of me likes the fact that if I want to. The process is relatively easy.
You never know when you’ll need additional web browsers, I use Safari as my primary. I also install Firefox, Opera, and Chrome.
For photo editing I have Photoshop CS4 and Analog
Re-installing iLife 11 I have the DVD…(seems crazy), I mainly use iPhoto.
My Terminal is one of the most used applications on my Mac. I won’t go into complicated profile setups and applications I installed this way in this post. But one thing everyone should do is to set up their Mac terminal to use colours.
Disable infrared sensor, to stop it picking up the iMacs remote and for security reasons.
**Un-finished** still to come was:
mac app tracker
favs
cinch
Finder show break crumbs
backblaze
courier
transmit
1password
flare
apple configuration
vlc
Adam
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