New Macbook Pro

Very soon after I started having problems with my iMac, I went out and got a new Macbook Pro. While I have one for work, this is a fancier, more updated edition (with the nicer graphics card).

It’s odd in that it’s both new and familiar. And the funny thing is that, in my hurry to open this guy up and get him all set up… I forgot to take any pictures of the actual laptop.

Soon after this, I spent a few hours trying to find the best way to get some of my data back from my iMac. I found that I could boot up the old iMac in Safe Mode and tried transferring files from there.

I also tried transferring some preferences and things from my work laptop over to my new one.

I tried using the iMac and booting it in Target Disk mode. I tried sending myself files via AirDrop, via Sharing preferences. Eventually, I found that I could plug in my external backup drive and just navigate my old Time Machine backups manually… and pulled things from there.

After realizing how quickly the files transferred, copying from the drive made the most sense.

Until… I realized that I didn’t really need to grab everything over. And started to delete things from my laptop.

Prior to this, my desktop computer has been the primary storage device for all my files. And I had an external drive for backup.

With a laptop now, I’m less certain I want to store everything on it… and am considering letting the majority of my older files reside elsewhere.

So for now, the laptop is pretty clean. And all my files are stored on my (sick) iMac, and also on my portable drive. I need to figure out some kind of archive/retrieval/backup solution soon here in the next few days.

With much of my life wrapped up in 1Password, it made getting set up pretty easy. Once I got Chrome installed and signed in, the computer immediately felt more comfortably. Doubly so, once I got Quicksilver, Moom, iTerm2 (plus oh my zsh), and Sublime Text installed.

It took most of an afternoon and evening, but I was back up and running after that. I liked the idea of a fresh start, and wanted to begin anew… so I was happy to take a more manual approach. The dev in me though was thinking I really needed to invest some time into backing up some core settings/files, so that the next time this happens… I can do it all a little faster.

But hopefully that’s some ways away, in the future.

Hard to believe that my last computer purchase was five years ago, and that I didn’t become a Mac user until late 2005. Even harder to believe that I was a PC guy before that.

Related:
New iMac (2010)
Ima IMAC guy
Oh My Word, Oh My Zsh
Using Quicksilver Triggers to Create Instant Web Searches: Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, IMDB