Some people have asked me what I’d consider to be the essential things to set up on a brand-new Mac.
Obviously, setting up a computer is an intensely personal exercise, and what works for one person may be like shag carpeting and disco lights to another.
Long years of painful experience has taught me that the number one rule for trouble-free computing is to do as little mucking around as possible—the more stock your system is, the fewer issues you’ll run into. First, do no harm.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun productivity.
Pasteboard history
Why oh why this is not part of the standard Mac OS befuddles me. Having exactly one item on the pasteboard feels so 1985 it’s not even funny. JumpCut fixes this glaring omission. It’s an application I would have a hard time getting through my workday without.
Making the Dock work with you
You can make the Finder show you which applications are hidden by making the icon transparent. Why this isn’t the default boggles my mind.
To accomplish this, fire up a Terminal and enter:
defaults write com.apple.dock showhidden -bool true
killall Dock
I’m a huge proponent of putting the Dock to the right of the screen. Why? Because your screen is wider than it’s long, so you’re more likely to have room there. And if you put the Dock on the left side, ill-behaved applications will cover it. So to the right it is.
I also like having the Dock pinned to the bottom. Having it just hover in the middle of the screen disturbs me for some reason. Perhaps I should talk a to a mental health professional about why this bothers me so much, but before I get around to that, here’s how to make it pin to the bottom. Again, fire up a Terminal and enter:
defaults write com.apple.Dock pinning end
killall Dock
Hint to Apple: You could maybe make both transparent hidden and pinning visible preferences for the Dock, hmmm?
As part of my whole neat-freak thing, and also since the icons in Mac OS X are absolutely gorgeous, I like to have as few things in my Dock as possible. Oh, it’s a big day for any application on my system when it is deemed Dock worthy! The laughing, the horn blowing! The basic idea is that if I don’t use an application every day, it doesn’t go on the Dock.
But doesn’t that get annoying? Having to open up the Applications folder every time I want to launch an application that’s not in the Dock sounds awfully close to tedium. Fear not.
Application Launcers
An application launcher is a huge time saver. The one I use is Google Quick Search Box, since it’s Google’s world and we all just live in it anyway. A quick control-space, type a bit of the name of the application, and boom, there you go.
There are several other application launchers out there—if you don’t like Google’s, just google for them.
And of course, if you’re on a machine not your own, command-space and there’s Spotlight search. Type in the first few letters of the application name, hit return, and Bob’s your uncle. Why not just use that? Because it’s slower and it doesn’t learn your preferred abbreviations for applications.
Text Editing
If you build Web sites or program, you live in a text editor, and the venerable BBEdit is king of the hill. If it’s text, BBEdit can handle it. It’s a bit on the pricey side, but oh so worth it. If you only do light editing, BBEdit’s less-accomplished but free brother TextWrangler can probably do the job for you. Both beautiful applications.
Since Mac OS X is a Unix under the hood, every stock install has Vi, Nano, and Emacs included, but unless you know why you want to use them—or you have a penchant for deep learning—stay clear. They’re fun, if you’re into pretty hardcore nerditry, but not for civilians.