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TUAW Series: How I set up my Mac #1

by Nik Fletcher Nov 3rd 2007 at 8:00PM

By now you've probably all set up Leopard and plenty of you have shared your experiences of what worked (or rather did not) via our tips form: however we here at TUAW thought it might be fun to share our own experiences of the last week via a new mini-series 'How I set up my Mac'. Of course, a little bit of desktop sharing might be in order too so if you've gone the whole hog and customized your desktop then don't forget to add it to our TUAW Desktops Flickr Group pool. In no particular order, we start the our team desktop tour with our U.K. outpost.


The Installation

I'll be honest: I rarely backup. Correction: I rarely do a full system backup. I fully backup my documents, website files and Aperture library (with my master files residing on an External HD by default) so the first order of the day was to create a bootable backup of TIger with SuperDuper. After that, a clean install was completed in about 15 minutes on my Core2Duo MacBookPro - although the speed was likely due to me opting to turn off almost every localization and printer driver in installation setup. I then chose to use the Migration Assistant (instead of truly starting again) as I'd done a fair bit of Application Support folder pruning prior to the backup, and once my iTunes Library had copied back, along with a Keychain and my Application preferences (for serial numbers) we were good to go.

The First Run

Oooooh. Look at the purty welcome video: OK, so it's a CG video, but it's a great way to get into the feel and mindset of Leopard. First port of call: the Dock. Even before I started reinstalling my apps, the dock just had to go. I'm most certainly not a fan of the 3D dock, and given that I was feeling lazy, I headed over to MacWorld and ran their AppleScripts instead of running the terminal commands to get myself the 'other' dock. Because I'd copied over my user account in the Migration Assistant, I had a populated with missing icons and applications they pointed to - which turned out to be quite a blessing in reminding me just what I actually needed to install. A few downloads later, I was set.

When it comes to issues, the main one has been Safari's 3 User Agent not being deemed 'compatible' with my online banking - a quick enable of the Debug menu, a change of it back to Safari 2.0.4 and I was all set. Just be sure to change it back, should you choose to meddle with the User Agent, as things like Gmail will display differently with a Safari 2 User Agent.




Essentials
And two stacks: one for Developer Tools (Grid mode), the other being the default Downloads stack (Fan).

Best new feature: QuickLook - although Time Machine would probably be a close second (I'm holding off on Time Machine until its Aperture issues are resolved).
Things you love: QuickLook, keyboard shortcuts assigned to 'Arrange by..." Finder view options, the sheer speed of the system, Spotlight now seems to be quicker than Road-Runner on Red-Bull, Stacks, enhanced Airport menu.
Things you dislike: That dock - although all is forgiven now I've got rid of the 3D effect, Mail Stationery (just why?!), the need to create folders of aliases to get custom stacks - there ought to be a System Preference pane for them.
Features you've changed your mind on: QuickLook. I questioned the point, yet now totally dig it - opening Preview seems like such an unnecessary use of processor cycles. Failing that, Spotlight: I didn't believe Apple would improve it as much as they have.
Your one feature request: QuickLook in stacks
Twitter-inspired 140-character review: "For something I thought would struggle to live to the Jobs hype, it's blown me away. Totally blown me away. Consider me an enlightened cynic"

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By now you've probably all set up Leopard and plenty of you have shared your experiences of what worked (or rather did not) via our tips...
 

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Judd Volino

Regarding Camino lock-ups: I was having the problem of the beach ball appearing and losing mouse/keyboard response. I think the thing that solved it for me was updating Adobe Flash to the latest version AND repairing permissions on my system drive, which seemed to patch up some issues with Flash files. Also, I think in the meantime, the version of Camino that allows for very thorough ad-blocking was released, so I have a lot fewer Flash animations running on a given web page.

November 07 2007 at 9:12 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Stephen Goodenough

I tried an install this weekend on my iMac. I liked Quicklook, impartial about the Dock, but ended up reverting to Tiger because I was having too many problems. "PubSubAgent quit unexpectedly". No .Mac synchronisation - although prior to update (and after reverting) the machine was syncing perfectly (as do my other Tiger machines). My network printing won't work. ... and performance was dreadful. And I've got a family licence for Leopard and wondering what to do...

November 05 2007 at 5:05 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
John Pruitt

Crazy install problems...

I actually had to install from a USB external DVD drive on my one year old Mac Book Pro, that would not read teh leopard disk no matter what.

My Mac absolutely will not read the disk, and will kick it out after about a minute of fiddling around.

I searched for help on loading from a USB drive and it did not work the first few times that I got Leopard to load, I just cursed a few times at the machine and it finally worked, along with actually holding down the alt key.

JP

November 05 2007 at 10:36 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Allan L.

A more detailed explanation of how to revert to Safari 2 would be welcome.

November 04 2007 at 6:57 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Al

@38

Colonel panic? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_panic

November 04 2007 at 6:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Greg

Oh, guess I spoke too soon, I am getting bugs. Hmm... This is pretty annoying.

November 04 2007 at 3:45 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Greg

@34

What're you talking about? My Pixelmator works fine under Leopard.

November 04 2007 at 3:31 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
john

@ Peter

Screen Sharing works great over IP. I use it to access my home computer from anywhere, which is easy for me since I have a static IP. Just forward port 5900 to your internal IP. Then, from any other Mac w/Leopard, hit cmd-K in Finder and enter vnc://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (replace the xxx's with your external IP).

IMO, this is one of the best new features of Leopard and it should be getting more play. Performance-wise, it kicks the crap out of any other VNC implementation I've tried. The only thing I wish it had was an option for the client to go full-screen.

November 04 2007 at 1:46 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Peter Payne

Victor, it is in the apps folder, look again.

No major problems here, on my Macbook and home Mac Pro. Getting used to Safari 3 and *no Saft* has sucked, but there is a slightly lame "restore last session" menu option that will get me by for while. Almost everything else has worked.

I wish Time Machine were more flexible. For example, I'm backing up to my Mac Pro's second drive, which is fine, but it'll up the drive, which is also my Boot Camp volume. So it'll be full of stuff on the Mac side, and will probably complain at me when I boot to it (I have a Tiger install on the drive too, because you can't put Boot Camp on a raided disk.)

Installed on my main mac at work today. Working good, although got one freeze that made me walk to work at midnight, and then an actual "Colonel Panic" while trying to load Parallels. I'm sure it'll work out.

Screen sharing rules. As a certified Timbuktu junkie, I just love this. Will it work over IP?

November 04 2007 at 1:29 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Don Parr

Good article, Nik, and thanks for it! I’ve decided to hold off with too much customizing until I decide just what I want to customize, or leave as is? So far, I’m liking the new dock as is, since I use Quicksilver almost exclusively, the dock is more of a cosmetic thing for me :).

On browsers, there are many good choices, I like Navigator (Netscape/AOL), Firefox (Mozilla), the new Safari (Apple) isn’t bad either. My personal favorite, ever since discovering it back in 2005, is Camino (also Mozilla), I tend to run the nightly builds. From time to time I will “test” other browsers like those already mentioned as well as Opera, OmiWeb, Shiira, and the like, but Always return to Camino. Camino did it for me under OS X “Tiger,” and it appears to be doing it for me under OS X “Leopard” :). If Camino didn’t exist, but I’m so thankful it does, I suppose my preference would be Firefox, as it is my preference on Windows based PC’s.

November 04 2007 at 1:09 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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