I finally caved and upgraded my 2015 MacBook Pro to a 2021 M1 Pro MacBook Pro. I had toyed with upgrading the battery on the 2015 MBP because that was the major pain point (couldn’t really go anywhere unplugged), but I also missed having more screen real estate and the fan would kick on for the simplest tasks. Now that my data transfer is complete, I’m taking inventory of the applications I use and figuring out which ones are worth keeping around. So far, here is my list:
- 1Password https://1password.com/
- Alfred https://www.alfredapp.com/
- Coconut Battery https://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/
- This was my jam on my old computer when I was worried about my battery life
- Dash https://kapeli.com/dash
- Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/
- Used to have more utility but now it’s mostly used to sync dev settings between computers that don’t have a cloud mechanism
- Fantastical https://flexibits.com/fantastical
- iTerm2 https://iterm2.com/
- JetBrains https://www.jetbrains.com/
- After re-installing the Toolbox, if I click on an application from the dropdown I launch the app, but if I click the app in the Applications directory I get prompted to install Rosetta. Will debug later but at least I have a path forward
- Keka https://www.keka.io/en/
- Ended up repurchasing it but it’s inexpensive
- LICEcap https://www.cockos.com/licecap/
- Magnet https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/
- This was to replace SizeUp, which I’ve used for years!
- Microsoft Edge https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge
- Seriously tho, Microsoft Edge is actually good
- Muzzle https://muzzleapp.com/
- Pocket Casts https://pocketcasts.com/
- Postman https://www.postman.com/
- Secretive https://github.com/maxgoedjen/secretive
- Scroll Reverser https://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/
- Spotify https://www.spotify.com/
- Todoist https://todoist.com/
Most of these apps “just worked.” The few that didn’t I just had to redownload the M1 image and I was fine — all of the data was preserved, and at most I just needed to re-login.
Annoyances
- I had to rebind Caps Lock to Esc
- Edge didn’t sync some settings, such as default search engine or remembering passwords 🙄
Next Up
- JetBrains silliness listed above
- Fork is crashing on launch, so will need to figure that out
- Homebrew updates, key updates, etc
- Because I transferred my old MacBook directly to my new one, there’s seven year’s worth of cruft I need to work through