I got the new Air after back from Beijing. I didn’t make the move for 11” and got an 13” eventually. It is the same resolution (1440×900) as my old MBP 15”, so my wallpaper collection can still be used, lol.
Somehow I decided to do migration in the clean way, which means I didn’t use the OS X migration tool but manually reinstalled/copied almost everything. The steps are fewer than I thought:
- Install a few apps from Mac App Store.
- Install Dropbox and all documents/scripts/vim configurations can be considered done.
- Copy over some large folders via an external hard drive, including code repos, iTunes music, photos, etc.
- Install dozens of software not available from App Store. This is the time-consuming part. I noticed I still need bit torrent for a few softwares. And the developer tools took the most time (Xcode, Eclipse, etc).
- Install homebrew and a bunch of command line tools from there.
- Miscellaneous system configurations. As the new laptop comes with Mountain Lion, I did these configurations while exploring the new system.
Overall it was pretty fast. The SSD harddisk dramatically accelerated the process of installing softwares. And the network speed in US office is sweet.
I also picked up a few new tools in this transition. I used iTerm2 to replace TotalTerminal, tried PathFinder and decided not to use it, replaced Cocoa VIM with MacVim, started to use some apps in full screen mode. All in all the new environment is satisfying so far.