First time configuration of a new Macintosh. Updated for macOS Sierra 10.12

• System Preferences:
  • Trackpad → Tap to Click (For not having to press hard for a click.)
  • Tap-and-drag: Accessibility → Mouse & Trackpad → Trackpad Options and enable 'Dragging (with/without) Drag Lock'
• Open the Photos app, and drag a userpic to it. Then change your userpic in the System Preferences.
• Get Chrome (Login and sync.)
• Show the full path in the finder with

  defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool true; killall Finder

• System Preferences:
  • Mouse
    • Make tracking speed much faster!
    • Enable Secondary click for the right mouse button
    • 2017-01-15 (still needed): Consider Scroll Reverser to have natural scrolling for trackpad, but reversed for the mouse.
    • Disable inertia mousewheel scrolling with:

      defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.scrollwheel.scaling -1

    • Get SteerMouse (linked below) to stop wheel acceleration (Or Logitech V200 LCC)
  • Keyboard
    • Set Key Repeat to fastest, and Delay until Repeat to second shortest.
    • Some apps don't repeat anything because some keys have a character accent menu. To disable:

      defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

    • Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 doesn't have a current driver. That's OK.
    • Swap the Option and Command keys.
  • Dock
    • Position on Right
    • Automatically show and hide dock
  • Outlook
    • Turn off auto underline-to-italic, dashes, smart quotes: Preferences → AutoCorrect then click on the AutoFormat page

BSD grep

OS X comes with BSD grep pre-installed, which doesn't use the Perl -P flag.

1. Go to http://brew.sh/ and run the ruby command.
2. brew install homebrew/dupes/grep --with-default-names; brew install gnu-sed --with-default-names
3. Log out of that console window and log back in again.

Python Packages

If pip isn't installed yet (Python older than 2.7.9), then install it with easy_install, then install requests.

sudo -H easy_install pip
sudo -H pip install requests

The preferred way to set a repeating task is not to use a cronjob but launchd.

In your ~/bin directory, create a job to run, tag_ip_address.sh

tag_ip_address.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash
curl --data "`hostname -s`=`ifconfig | /usr/local/bin/grep "inet " | grep -v "127.0.0.1" | \
sed -E 's/.*inet (([0-9]+.){3}[0-9]+).*/\1/' | perl -p -e 'chomp if eof' | \
tr "\n" ","`&auth=[your secret auth]" "https://kvs.dlma.com"

Note that we had to specify the path to the homebrew grep, because LaunchAgent would use the default one instead.

cd into ~/Library/LaunchAgents and add a new plist file

com.dlma.tag_ip_address.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
  "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
        <string>com.dlma.tag_ip_address</string>
    <key>Program</key>
        <string>/Users/dblume/bin/tag_ip_address.sh</string>
    <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Hour</key>
        <integer>12</integer>
        <key>Minute</key>
        <integer>0</integer>
    </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

Finally, you need to explicitly load it.

$ launchctl load -w com.dlma.tag_ip_address.plist

• iTerm2 and install your dotfiles.
• If you want IPython, you probably have to install readline, too: sudo easy_install readline ipython
• Startup Sound (Make it quieter before Lion!) Adjusting Startup Chime after Lion.
• TotalFinder for some intuitive Finder features.
• SteerMouse to change ScrollWheel rolling to constant 3x instead of accellerated
• DTerm for quick one-off terminal commands
• Property List Editor for giving Minecraft more memory.
• Google Notifier (Two-step Authentication instructions)
• GTD: Taskpaper or Things or Omnifocus
• MagicPrefs for finer tuning of the Magic Mouse
• Delicious Library: Keep track of my physical media.
• Code Editing
  • Sublime Text 3 and then configure it.
  • XCode
  • TextMate
  • BBEdit (or TextWrangler)
  • EditRocket (Eventually read the comparison of Python IDEs)
• Quicksilver: Reach any program with a few keystrokes. (Eg., Control+space, M for Mail)
• Paint program
  • GIMP (Can I find something powerful, free and user-friendly?) X11 is frustrating.
  • PaintBrush
  • Pixen
  • SeaShore No levels adjusting.
  • PaintDS No layers.
  • ArtRage

Danelope suggests these Image Editors:

• http://gimpshop.com/
• http://pixelmator.com/

• Show hidden files with

  defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES; killall Finder

• Configure mail to use Gmail.
• Cofigure iCal to sync with Google Calendar.
• System Preferences:
  • Keyboard
    • Command Key: Control Panel → Keyboard → Modifier Keys… → swap Command and Control keys
      • Except that it doesn't persist past logging out.
    • Make Your Keyboard Keys Repeat Properly When Held Down in Mac OS X Lion.

Here are iPhone/iPod apps I really want to make.

• Sokoban
• A Scrobbler
• A new Plurk client

Sokoban: Plenty already exist. What matters here is an intuitive (to me) user control.

What matters here is the ability to scrobble what I've played to last.fm directly from my iPhone/iPod.

The existing official client could stand improvement.

https://panel.preyproject.com/ for when the device goes missing. (Or is stolen by a thief.)

On the server side get your user ID and group ID (id -u; id -g), and update /etc/exports with something like:

/path/to/share 10.?.?.?(rw,sync,insecure,all_squash_anonuid=<uid>,anongid=<gid>)

10.?.?.? would be the IP of the Macintosh. (That'll have to be updated every time it changes.) For a Macintosh to connect, “insecure” was said to be needed. And “all_squash” was needed for the uid and gid to be set. Restart and check the NFS server with “sudo systemctl restart nfs-server.service; systemctl status nfs-server.service”.

Get the “hostname” for the server for the next bit on the client side. Call it jdoe-t3610.

On the client side, you could manually mount the NFS volume with something like, “nfs://jdoe-t3610/path/to/share”

Or better, configure automounter by adding a line to /etc/auto_master:

/-			auto_sandbox	-rw

And then make the file /etc/auto_sandbox

/sandbox	nfs://jdoe-t3610/path/to/share

For the purpose of P4 client compatibility with the dev system, I use a symbolic link at root.

$ sudo ln -s /sandbox/sandbox/stb/ /link_to_p4_root

If you want your changes to take effect immediately,

$ sudo automount -vc

aps, todo