TUAW Series: How I set up my Mac #1

By Nik Fletcher

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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