Brian Berliner’s Brain

I recently celebrated a birthday.

Some people don’t like birthdays. They fear growing older.

I don’t have that reaction at all. About a birthday, I always say: "It beats the alternative!" And, I truly believe that.

My fiancée bought me the best gift ever. Something that I will use many hours a day, every day of the week.

A shiny, new Apple MacBook Pro.

OK, so now I have to move everything off my old Apple PowerBook G4 and turn it into a dedicated software test machine.

The easy way is to use the excellent Apple Migration Assistant tool. I didn’t want to do that, however, because I wanted a fresh start. You see, as part of what I do, I install a lot of crap on my system. A fresh computer every couple years is always an opportunity to get a fresh start. So, that’s what I did.

I downloaded the latest versions of all the software that I use the most. And, I kept track, just for you. Here’s the list:

1. Quicksilver β51
2. Safari 3 Beta for Mac
3. VMware Fusion Beta
4. VoodooPad Lite
5. Inquisitor 3 for Safari
6. Set up Mail.app (accounts, rules)
7. Transfer files from old Mac (using FireWire Target mode)
8. Backup/Recover Address Book and iCal databases
9. SpamSieve (export/import the old corpus)
10. Windows XP (under VMware Fusion)
11. Windows Live Writer Beta (under Windows XP; took forever for Service Pack 2 and .NET junk). Thank goodness Windows boots incredibly fast under VMware Fusion!
12. Remote Desktop Connection for Mac (get the new Beta)
13. Firefox
14. F-Script Anywhere
15. Aperture (actually was pre-installed)
    • Move over Aperture and iPhoto Library
16. Xcode
17. AppleCare Online Registration
18. Google Desktop for Mac
19. Google Earth & Picasa Uploader (easily from Google Updater)
20. Adium
21. Copy over login.keychain (since "Export" option doesn’t work)
22. Adobe Reader
23. Application Enhancer with SDK
24. Safari Bookmarks (export/import)
25. FlickrExport Lite for Aperture
26. KeywordAssistant for iPhoto
27. Full Tilt Poker
28. Quinn
29. Bluetooth Connection and iSync my Nokia E61
    • Customize modem script to access Internet through phone’s EDGE connection
30. DarwinPorts and Subversion
31. Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac
32. RsyncX
33. Chicken of the VNC
34. Flip4Mac

That’s enough to get me going.

Now, off to order that new 24" iMac for the office computer… So glad that I own Apple stock.

Tags: Apple, MacBook Pro, Install, Software, Brian Berliner, brianberliner