Setting up new MacBook for software development

Here I go through setting up a new MacBook for software development, the way I usually set things up for my own tasks.
▶️ Setting up a new M2 Mac Mini - • Setting up new M2 Mac ...
▶️ Apple M1 and Developers Playlist - my tests so far - • Apple Silicon and Deve...
▶️ Apple M1 iOS Development Setup and Simulator performance Test | Intel Core i9 Comparison - • Apple M1 iOS Developme...
▶️ Apple M1 JavaScript Development Environment Setup - • M1 MacBook JavaScript ...
▶️ Apple M1 and VSCode Performance - • Apple M1 and VSCode Pe...
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Chapters
00:00 Initial setup with Chrome and Xcode
02:23 Package management - Homebrew
04:23 Profile files
06:22 VSCode and configuration
08:44 Android and JDK
10:27 Android Studio
13:21 Node, nvm, and JavaScript ecosystem
18:24 dotnet and .NET SDK
21:58 Docker
22:48 Python, Conda, and Machine Learning
26:48 Tensorflow (missing packages)
29:16 Pytorch (missing packages)

[@gggabriel1998]

Can't explain how much I appreciate how specific you are with your instructions. It's probably the easiest thing for you, but for new devs explanations go a long way.

[@guptamohit3375]

Actually I'm planning to buy m2 air 16gb ram 256gb. Is it ok? I'm buy as I need not much storage, only run Android projects that's why. Is it's okay? Or I go with M1 air 16/512gb

[@gggabriel1998]

@@guptamohit3375 apparently the M2 MBA is not working as well as the M1 when it comes to using it's memory when your RAM gets full. I believe it has to do with a chip of which the M1 has 2 and the M1 only has one. Apple trying to screw people over. I was very excited for this MBA but I think I'll wait for the 15 inch with M2 pro chip that is rumored to be released next year. Maybe they'll decide to include 2 of those chips that help with the RAM and SSD sharing tasks. Though with 16gb or RAM buying the M2 MBA might not be such a bad idea if you need it right now and can't wait.

[@guptamohit3375]

@@gggabriel1998 actually the main concern is Storage, my budget not allow me to buy m2 MBA with 512gb with 16gb Ram But I can buy M1 MBA with 16gb/512gb ssd. So I go for M1 Air with 16/512 or M2 Air with 16/256gb? As I see the disk speed is less than in M2 MBA. Also I not need that much storage. But I looking the machine for 5+ year

[@gggabriel1998]

@@guptamohit3375 if you're on a tight budget the M1 is a reallyyyyy good deal. I personally would just get the M2 with 16gb of ram and use cloud storage or an external SSD, but if you don like carrying around an external SSD get the M1 with 16gb and 512 storage that will definitely get you 5+ years.

[@guptamohit3375]

@@gggabriel1998 Actually I added M2 MBA 16/256gb in cart is 256gb also okay as the disk speed I see that's why I change my plan.

[@c-tech_]

This video is super helpful. I just bought the new Mac Studio and I'm currently studying CS + web programming. Your videos are resources I think of first. Thank you.

[@jacklwipa1187]

You made me fall deeper in love with Mac. Thanks Alex! you've gained a loyal subscriber in me !!!

I like very much how transparent you are! I am waiting for the next generation of Macbook Pro, but I am already watching all your videos haha

[@albuslee4831]

Thanks a lot for this video. I really appreciate the detailed explanations for why you are doing things, because most of the guides I finds skims that part over, and being a newcomer starting out, I often get stuck in some insignificant things for days not knowing the reason I got stuck. The detailed explanations and guidance is what I was looking for and this helped a lot. Thank you for not skimming through.

[@1vEverybody]

I’ve been watching your videos kinda sporadically but I love how you go about explaining not just what you’re doing but why it’s all happening in the first place. I remember setting up my first laptop for dev in 2018 and I had to reset it completely after I botched my Python build. Any piece of advice I can give to people watching rn, make sure you’re system is built correctly to play around with code before you.. code. Otherwise it’ll be a labyrinth of error codes, long nights of rambling to yourself about the Inception of Python interpreters you have simultaneously running dry on the root user. I distinctly remember a week long TF repair wrecking me for not having the right Python and all I could think at the time was “I have like 8 versions of Python and you can’t use ONE??” Felt good to see the system completely passed over your .z profile and the TF install error. Thanks for allowing safe passage through the treacherous installing of softwares. I’ll rest easy next time I have to upgrade

[@jadonhansen9114]

Just got the M2 for developing as well, stoked to see I'm pretty much doing the setup right XD although in my experience developing with React Native and Xcode doesn't always work well with nvm so I just go with the official Node installation

[@KpFriendly]

3 more useful tools: Fig - autocomplete and plug-in store for terminal Raycast - spotlight like launder, has most of Alfred feature for free Stats - performance of mac in the menubar

[@Skatox]

thanks for this info, I didn't know fig. It's very useful.

[@SheldonHull]

Istats for the menu is what I think meant

[@KpFriendly]

@@SheldonHull no, stats is free and open source while istats isn’t

[@SheldonHull]

@@KpFriendly nice! good one for me to pin. Didn't know that existed

[@Riko0013]

Is fig like zsh auto complete?

[@Bathi256]

HI, Alex. love to watch your guides, tutorials, and other tech stuff videos. they are so worthy. great explain. good luck!

[@Sir_Racha]

Great job! Smart choices. Direct in explanations and no fluff. Very professional. Thank you!

[@peachiia]

You must have read my mind because tomorrow I'm getting my first Macbook and I was just thinking about how to set it up and here your video is.

[@nick_merchant]

This was long but worth it. Thanks for all your effort. I learned a lot.

[@elfensky]

I highly recommend volta to manage node. It is, in my opinion, a much nicer experience than NVM, as it automatically loads the correct node/npm version of whichever project you use it in, and it has other benefits too.

[@JokerThe91st]

Awesome video! I like your calm, precise and thorough approach to it! Thanks for the help!

[@bentouss3445]

Hey Alex I really love your videos! You in your mancave doing techno playful stuff is what I ❤️. Can you do a similar video but isolating dev environments in containers? I mean installing almost nothing "locally" except docker and vscode.. But everything in containers?

[@dansanger5340]

This is super useful. I saved it for future reference. The only thing missing is Git, but I think that's installed with Xcode.

[@samdeur]

impressive vid..liked watching you do the setup..liking that your someone that knows his stuff even going so far as to mention your nand is one chip so it's the 256gb model.. btw i'm an older guy getting in to dev..going back to school next year..

[@mrjgp1]

Awesome video Alex. Appreciate all the great videos you are creating

[@Visdemhvemduer]

Thank you for your video. It really helps me setting off my coding journey with a little more confident. Installing everything on a MacBook Pro 2012 Catalina wasn't easy though. I had to find older supported versions for a lot of things but I got there eventually. I installed everything up to Docker as I'm choosing to go the Javascript route and I didn't want to go too much ahead of myself with Python and Machine Learning etc. After having done all that, I decided learning command line is first on priority list lol

[@KopiRoaster]

For the nvm package, we can also use brew to install it. Its much much easier to manage! :) Great video like always!

[@danielvillamarin2864]

Your video was so helpful, thank you so much, just starting to use my first mac.

[@sherb_]

not sure if you ever created a follow up video for this but all of the links you have listed in the video worked for me just now, thanks!

[@tolgaatesel]

Another video full of tons of information :) Thanks Alex. I'm addicted to these types of videos :)

[@TheVegasISrael]

Thank you very much! I just switched to macbook and this video helped me to set up it!

[@jalexromero]

I use XCode all the time. I really like its simulator and profiler and also the ability to quickly archive & publish to Apple Store. Wish they had their chatGPT "pilot" within (I did see your video about it, but couldn't really get it to work for me on my main development computer... tried a couple of times and can't invest more time, I'm sure Apple will build something there..) For languages other than IOS / Swift, I like other environments. Most other tools you mentioned are part of my setup... Cool video! thanks for publishing! BY THE WAY Google Chrome I also use when creating scrapers and other NLP/machine learning tools that get data from internet... somehow better tools use it.

[@mrjgp1]

This is an awesome video! More like this…love the great details.

[@Johnbscv]

A healthy mix of Xcode and VS Code (remote containers) makes the inner developer happy

[@simpleman5098]

is it healthy if you run remote containers? Imagine getting overpriced typing machine just to run remote docker

[@Johnbscv]

@@simpleman5098 I'd say if the main piece of software you intend to use on your MacBook was VS Code, then... yeah, in my experience, still a great buy when it comes to laptops. If you also need to use Xcode, it's fantastic. My overpriced typing machines have served me better than my non-Apple laptops have over the years, especially in recent times.

[@sahilapte7735]

Just wondering if 8/256 would be sufficient for all this any Mac M1 or m2 users having same varient?

[@retrorewind6042]

@@sahilapte7735 get more storage. My old i5 macbook pro had that much storage and it wasnt enough. I have a 1tb model now and its much more usable

[@69qwerty]

is xcode a good ide for anything other than swift?

[@DaveMakesVideo]

Just moved to Mac OS to setup my personal machine for development. Great instructions

[@AungWinHtutGH]

Thank you so much for your detailed explanation!

[@charles8355]

Just getting started with coding on a Mac and I really appreciate how well you explained everything. Great work! Liked and subscribed.

[@AZisk]

Welcome aboard!

[@canniceenglish]

beginning up on coding and ı found your video really awesome andn easy to follow. Thanks alot.

[@milesrykerodazie171]

wow i wish i have this MacBook.Thnks for sharing.I use a pc but this video is really detailed and great.

[@farzadkarimi5295]

I learn so much thing on this video , thanks lot Master Alex

[@ismailhasr6118]

I am a 2 months Jr. Front-End developer.I know there are a lot of brilliant minds in the world.But this is the first time i have seen someone uses/works that much topics(Web,Mobile,ML).I am absolutely terrorized by the intelligence of Alex.Just wow... And i am still struggling when using Context API..

[@SportsIncorporated]

I haven't owned a Mac since a PowerCenter Pro around 2000ish. The reason I'm interested is long battery life (my gaming computer new got an hour and 15 minutes*), no fan (walking into a coworking space is a reason for them to turn on the music), 500 nits (I work in a dark room, I don't see the light of day), and cost (the new Helios 500 version got a cost upgrade, even with an 11th not 12th generation chip). I remember all the downsides of a Mac and I don't expect to be pleasantly surprised. * I was watching it compete with a parking meter close to the World Bank in DC

[@saeedradmehr1976]

I have gone through a similar routine for my new macbook. I like brew to manage my node and dotnet installation though.

[@ChrisGVE]

Hey Alex thanks for sharing as always. Very inspiring videos. One thing I was thinking could be interesting: you’ve tested ML training between various machines and chips, and it could be interesting to see how these chips compare to cloud services performance like AWS. After all a developer could use a M1 Air to connect to a remote Linux box and have the flexibility of the laptop and the performance of a big tower, but would it be worth it? How much more power would you draw from a multiple nVidia GPUs against a M1 Ultra? Just a suggestion. But thanks anyway for your good work and your light and entertaining tone! Really appreciated

[@AZisk]

I did want to compare a cloud build to a local one, but haven’t gotten there yet.

[@fishboo8670]

thank u very much.The vedio is so helpful,and save me a lot of time to know how to install python and so on!

[@drtoxiccookie]

Thanks for video, it's helped me a lot when sorting my nodejs

[@AZisk]

Great to hear!

[@arushgupta7394]

Really well explained! Thank you :)

[@ercntreras]

Great installation process. I’ll take that

[@gordonpearce]

Great vid, thanks Alex. I’m a Python Dev, so I only use xcode tools. Note if you use a ~/Developer directory rather than ~/Code, you get a pretty icon in Finder. Shame as I always used Code on Windows and Linux. Yes, the nice screen, keyboard and LLM performance have me on Mac these days.

[@asdf072xxp]

I just install the xcode CLI tools. The frequent 200MB updates for XCode are a killer.

[@bierfassner2253]

Thanks really helps but yea I would be pretty interested in getting tensorflow running in vs code on my Mac I just can’t get it to work I would most definitely binge watch that video if it were to exist someday nevertheless thanks for the guide putting so many different programs into context really helps

[@HK-yo4se]

Thanks a lot. This was a great tutorial

[@gosha_kadze]

Thanks for easier nvm instructions!

[@yourfeedYT]

Dude thank you so much getting the m2 max soon !

[@AZisk]

Enjoy it

[@AIWithShrey]

I use VSCode on my Mac for dev. I have tinkered with XCode to deploy an Object Detection app on my iPhone. I definitely prefer VSCode for all my dev work, however, developing apps for Apple devices is seamless and best integrated with Xcode.

[@AIWithShrey]

I would like to see how TensorFlow runs on Apple Silicon. Do keep me posted when there are new changes in the instructions or any new info.

[@retrorewind6042]

Same. I actually dont even have xcode installed anymore to free up space

[@sunitjoshi3573]

@@retrorewind6042Is 16/512 ok for Dev work with M2 Air?

[@retrorewind6042]

@@sunitjoshi3573 ram wise yes. Storage wise... unless you have an external drive id say go for the 1tb but depending on what you do 512gb could be ok. Personally i dont get anything less than 1tb but i also do content creation which takes up a lot of storage

[@user-bm5ge5gc9v]

Thank you for all the clarifications that it is a great device ,I dream of it a lot , but its price is expensive for me, I hope to get it even if it is used.🙂 💻

[@SirHackaL0t.]

ITerm is a good addition to the terminal window.

[@abdullahahmad3327]

you should make an updated version of this video for the new M3 MacBook Air, that would be really helpful!

[@anarchyein9924]

Thanks. I just bought a MacBook Pro 14 inches for coding and deep learning and had no idea how to begin. This instruction helps me a lot.

[@3rdtwirl494]

im debating .. what spec did you go with ….

[@anarchyein9924]

@@3rdtwirl494 16GB memory with 1TB Storage, if not enough in the future, I may buy a portable SSD.

[@Asdeer101]

I appreciate this video. Thank you

[@alexeiz]

Too much useful information!

[@kerwinbonn3875]

You can remove app from dock by clicking "Remove from Dock" under app icon options.

[@user-cf5uf7vf2g]

seen like your harddisk going to blowup with these dev tools on small storage.

[@yusufkemaldemir9393]

good job! thanks

[@jaminwan8735]

Hey Alex love ur video. Can u do one for data science?

[@samdeur]

there is also a dev version on firefox.. i only use Firefox for all my browsing. currently on my old macbook air. i like that i can configure all the settings inside my browser..and have firefox containers..really really powerful. use Firefox on my linux machines and on my windows machine..

[@harshh0007]

Great work!!!

[@DavidAlsh]

You need XCode command line tools for most general web development but you don't need XCode itself.

[@AlexGLuque]

Hi Alex. Have you tried to run a KMM project? Work with Android Studio and Xcode side by side, running the whole test suite and everything? Or can you share your experience compiling large projects? Thankyou!

[@iamzxenxi2260]

Love the channel

[@bugnatodifirenze1043]

Do you think that the new MacBook air is good enough to do the same works? I don't know which buy... Thanks for the answer and the video!

[@wpherigo1]

Awesome! Much appreciated.

[@AZisk]

Glad it helped!

[@khanbahadurshah6989]

Hi Alex Ziskind, please make a video Machine learning video benchmark test on M2 chips on mac book pro 13. thanks

[@f1nh32]

28:46 in step two for tensorflow there was a note about conda so the error for conda not for all users

[@tahovig]

Think you performed "conda install -c apple tensorflow-deps" in one environment, then created a new environment (tf1?), activated it, installed python and then tried to install the base Tensorflow, which raised an error. Perhaps this was because the new environment never had the dependencies installed? I made sure to do that and did not have the issue.

[@louissenderler6866]

nice video, thanks for sharing .).

[@Kaviranghari]

i would like to see the follow up for tensor flow base

[@atlgansahinulasan4031]

Very instructive video. I appreciate for that. Is there any update about Tensorflow? I'd like to try to upload it again :)

[@mazpassi1423]

Aweaome! Thanks!

[@_dinesh]

Great video. I personally think the macos dock and unified menu doesn't work very well on multiple screens. Window management is a nightmare. All in all makes the development experience very bad :(

[@gihanpunarji6192]

Please let us know the experience of using the machine for programming and the battery life

[@alexrusanovschi218]

dot definitely not!!! awesome tutorial Alex!!!

[@FIREBUG7479]

great video!

[@Tech_Publica]

great video! For Java a tool like sdjman, a sort of nvm for Java, might be more flexible than using brew

[@easonwu168]

the tensor flow and the PyTorch are working now

[@technologikl]

Video showed up in my recommendations. Looking at getting a Macbook for iOS dev work. Do you think the base M3 Pro 14" MBP is sufficient for that? Believe it's 18GB of RAM and half a TB of storage. Felt I could get an external thunderbolt storage alongside my iCloud backup to address any space issues, but is the RAM amount good enough?

[@ajinkya820]

Is macbook best for Learning Devops ? Please suggest best macbook or budget macbook with minimum configs?

[@pimas11]

My favorite necessity is drag windows to snap to edges, like windows has. Also I switch control and common so I can control c/v instead of command bc the buttons are way too close and uncomfortable

[@nan6849]

Would you recommend MacBook over Windows devices for NodeJS application development? I find Unix based system very interesting, but also comparing is that worth to pay so much.

[@mrjgp1]

Thanks!

[@kappyh1]

For install Java JDK I use SDKman. Nice to manage multi versions of java jdk

[@AZisk]

hmm, good one. thanks!

[@JN-ml1qw]

Nothing to do with M2 MacBook Air but I really think you have a nice voice. It's like a actor's voice from Disney movies 😃

[@edonovanto]

thanks a bunch

[@carlosmcanuto]

Hi Alex. Do you use any database for your applications? If so, can you tell about that?

[@321brianh]

I'd love for him to make a video using node to connect to a remote Oracle DB. I prefer mongo but am currently working with an Oracle DB. I gave up trying to use node. I really couldn't find anything helpful. A lot of "this should work" but nothing that actually worked. I got something working in python.

[@Pointyhat_]

Did you choose M2 air instead M1 pro just for the size? Or is it something performance wise?

[@eoghanrussell]

Are there ways to quick maximise a window? Like in windows? I mean full screen but including the bar at the bottom :)

[@holdenwang3246]

Hi, thanks so much for your tutorial. I still have a question. Does the python installed through miniconda run natively on Apple Silicon? Some tutorials tell me to use mini-forge instead. I don’t know the difference. Thanks so much!!

[@lpds52]

there's one simple reason for me to not switch to mac at this time aside not have nothing in apple eosystem... the lack of numpad in the keyboards. but if there's a numpad at least in MB16 (in the others they dont have room to that stuff) with current specs I had already bought one. I assume that i use daily some apps for my work that currently only exists for windows, iotherwise i've already switched

[@johncysamuel]

Thank You❤️👍

[@AZisk]

You’re welcome 😊

[@eaglesm1993]

Did you seen some issues with M2 architecture incompatibility for some packages? Thanks

[@PedMar]

Alex, did you record your face and audio separately and then edit the video to include it in diifferent formats?

[@davidligon6088]

Excellent video. I might suggest you do this annually or biannually to update changes.

[@statixbolt]

Great alternative to chrome is edge btw!

[@JoshuaMusau]

love it!

[@jazzsingh3121]

Im interested in getting the 14 inch M2 MacBook pro but not sure which specs I need for a career as a developer! Any insights?

[@gujaratsantana]

Awesome tutorial, is it compatible for m1/m2 to use vim and dofiles from ubuntu?

[@sweealamak628]

Thank You Alex. I pip3 installed python on my Mac and use pyenv but looks like Anaconda's easier to handle this aspect. I'm more than knee deep into my code dev and things are working fine with ver 3.10. but would it still be advisable to install Anaconda at this stage, midway?