First Impressions

  • Hmmm, this is not the 14” that i wanted :D 13 inch M1 for now
  • Woah this magical touch bar is pretty cool and very context aware (zoom = mute/video cmds)
  • No Touchscreen… are you kidding me? Come on … this is like feature 101. Lay in bed and scroll through blogs with your fingers is so nice.
  • Why doesnt my ⊞ Win key work anymore … wierd Ctrl does what i want MOST of the time

Long Term Impressions

  • Multi monitor is NOT a first class citizen - hotkeys to move windows to monitors are non existant … 3rd party apps required!?!?
  • No touch id with laptop closed … further you cant even buy the apple keyboard which has TouchID and use it on the external keyboard when lid is closed… WTF!?
  • The only things worse then MS Teams … is MS Teams on Mac
  • Why does every single app have a differnt shortcut for hyperlinks (windows ctrl+l was unanimous)

On to the configuration changes i made:

Basics

Multi Monitor

I live that tripple monitor life with Ergotron arms. Price drops on 49 ultrawide might make me consider otherwise.

I use a dock that requires Display Link to mirror USB display content to monitor output… this not a performant design and is only indended for non video/gaming output. Apparently a limitation of the M1 chip … the M1 Pro/Max appears to support 3! As mentioned this replication requires Screen Recording Privacy permissions.

Tweaks

Swapping Ctrl/Command keys

The copy comannds: Ctrl + C/V/X is now defaulting on my windows keyboard to Win + C/V/X … this was super annoying so i quickly swapped the Ctrl and Command keys in the Keyboard Modifier Keys... menu.

End key goes to end of page, not line ( win + shift + L/R)

« TODO » … this is annoying me every single day as I am a power editor :D

Apps

VS Code

Code installer does not automatically add to PATH. It is very handy to hope into the editor via the cli with code .. To add VS Code to the PATH var see: - https://www.codegrepper.com/code-examples/r/how+to+add+vscode+to+path+mac

export PATH="/Applications/Visual Studio Code.app/Contents/Resources/app/bin:$PATH"

VS

Run local https sites by importing dev cert into keychain: dotnet dev-certs https

Brew

After installing Brew, read the output: Brew path - Run these two commands in your terminal to add Homebrew to your PATH:

echo 'eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"' >> /Users/<<_your_user_goes_here_>/.zprofile     
eval "$(/opt/homebrew/bin/brew shellenv)"

my brew utils:

  • Azure CLI - brew update && brew install azure-cli
  • CodeQL - brew install --cask codeql
  • GH CLI - brew install gh
  • git LFS - brew install git-lfs
  • GH Desktop - brew install --cask github
  • docker - brew install --cask docker (https://stackoverflow.com/a/43365425/343347)
  • BeyondCompare - brew install --cask beyond-compare
  • pwsh - brew install --cask powershell
  • Insomnia - brew install --cask insomnia
  • syft - brew tap anchore/syft && brew tap anchore/syft
  • RDP - brew install --cask microsoft-remote-desktop
  • NPM - brew install node
  • GO - brew install go@1.17
  • CMake - brew install cmake
  • AutoConf - brew install autoconf
  • Java - brew install java
  • Gradle - brew install gradle

OneNote

Yeah I know, even on Mac - I cant get away from MSFT … have been a OneNote power user for 7+ years so it is ingrained in my learning and thought process

First things first … DO NOT USE THE APP STORE VERSION. Download Office 365 and use the bundled version. Unclear why it is so much different, but notably i had a bunch of issues that were fixed going this route

  • MSFT login would not stay authenticated
  • Pasting in blobs of text that contain hyperlinks would never paste the links (maybe i changed a setting on source/dest formatting that broke this)

Still missing my poweruser shortcuts

Terminal Zsh - Oh My ZSH!

Install the ZSH command line enhancer via shell script here: https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh

Attempted oh my posh, but the default powerline fonts are not working in Terminal .. instead of messing around there just switch to OMYZSH! Install not totally clear, had to run this as well: eval "$(oh-my-posh --init --shell zsh --config $(brew --prefix oh-my-posh)/themes/jandedobbeleer.omp.json)"