2017 MacBook Pro 15"

I resisted for some time. Some Touch Bar reluctance was a big part of that and to be honest, I just wasn’t due for an upgrade. I love new toys as much as the next Geek but the 2013 11” Air was still doing a great job. And then, 2017” MacBook Pro came out. Something about it was a bit irresistable for me. Perhaps behing the 2nd gen of the TouchBar laptops made me positive that the hardware issues would have been ironed out and of course finally Apple have upgraded to the Kaby Lake CPU’s.. and, once I got the idea in my head, well! Oh yeh, and that person on Gumtree never got back to me about the broken 2015 MBP I was keen to buy and bring back to life. So here we are. It’s unboxed and it has not disappointed!!

So, what comes first? Here is the setup so far..

• Update this baby to High Sierra Public Beta and APFS! - Call me crazy but I love being on the “Beta Train” as my buddy calls it. I have had some dodgey experiences in the past with iPhone and Mac Betas but usually I am happy to take this pain in my stride and get on with it. Hopefully this time around won’t be the dodgey experience!! UPDATE: Public Beta 2 is out!

• Encrypted FS or Not?! - I’m torn here. I’ve never really been that bothered about securing my files to the n’th degree and have never ventured down the encrypted File System path. However these days, travelling with any sort of electronics comes with new issues and it might just about be time to take the plunge? One of my fears is that the traditional ways of rescuing a busted file system of files from my machine when something goes wrong will no longer be applicable. I guess there are alternatives and you just have to be prepared to learn the new ways. At this point, I’ve decided not to.

• Homebrew Bro - Embaressingly I was very late to the party with Homebrew but man it is one of the absolute must-haves on your Mac if you’re doing any sort of Dev / Scripting work. So easy to use and fills an annoying gap in what OSX provides out of the box.
  • brew install python3 ruby awscli git
  • gem install jekyll builder …

• ssh Keys, Bash Profile, vimrc, awsconfig, gitconfig etc

• OwnCloud - Need to Sync up my working folders from the OwnCloud server. Waaay quicker to do from home where the server is in the same room :)

• Some apps -
  • Sublime Text 3 + alias
  • Kryptonite
  • TeamViewer
  • …