I got a my first Macbook for my 27th birthday, a little less than a year ago. And let’s admit it, I love the experience. Now I use a Mac at home and at work. So here’s how to setup a new Mac!

First a few tweaks

System Preferences (System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse)

• Trackpad > enable “Clicking” and “Dragging” and “Tap trackpad using two fingers for secondary click”
• Keyboard Shortcuts > Full keyboard access > All controls

Install A few programming fonts

• Inconsolata
• Deja Vu Sans Mono

Install these favorite apps

Open Source Awesomeness

• iTerm
• Git
• GitX
• Adium
• HomeBrew
• RVM

Other Free Great Apps!

• Growl
• DropBox
• SequelPro
• Google Chrome

Following are not free, but really really awesome and necessary apps

• 1Password
• TextMate
• Things

I also buy software from MacHeist usually when it’s on – it’s great software at awesome price and for a good cause (read more). Some examples of apps I have bought:

• Clips
• Tweetie for Mac
• MacJournal
• RapidWeaver

Now tweak up the apps you just got!

• Fonts
  • iTerm font setup: Consolas 13pt (anti-alias enabled)
  • Textmate font setup: Inconsolata 14pt (anti-alias enabled)
• Firefox
  • install my favorite addons
  • Learn how to use Ubiquity: Go to Firefox and hit Option+Enter
• TextMate
  • If you are going to use TextMate over NFS/Samba
    stop TextMate from writing metadata files (._*)

    defaults write com.macromates.textmate OakDocumentDisableFSMetaData 1
    

  • A useful blog by Al3x on how he uses TextMate
  • Once GetBundles is installed, get jQuery, Scala, Clojure bundles
  • More great tweaks here
  • Change the default wrap column options:

                 defaults write com.macromates.textmate OakWrapColumns '( 40, 60, 80, 100, 120 )'
               

  • And some expert config options
• 1Password + DropBox (automatic now)
  • 1Password blog
  • More from Lifehacker
• Things + Dropbox
  • Cultured Code wiki

Get set up with Emacs for all the programming needs

• How to setup Emacs to work with Common Lisp and Clojure