Posted on

Going Mac – Part 1

Part of documenting my transition to web dev on Mac is to record what needs to be set up  & configured. Should things ever go awry, this post could be a shortcut to getting back to a work-ready state.

 

Apps etc installed

The following needed to be installed manually.

The following were installed via the commands in the next section.

 

Other tasks

Show hidden files. Apparently this needs the command line!

 

Commands run

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

brew update
brew upgrade

brew tap homebrew/dupes 
brew tap homebrew/versions 
brew tap homebrew/homebrew-php 
brew tap caskroom/fonts 
brew tap caskroom/cask 
brew install node
npm install --global gulp-cli 

brew unlink php70
brew install php71

brew install git-flow-avh
brew cask install font-fira-code
brew cask install iterm2
brew cask install gimp

sudo xcodebuild -license

 

Other changes

 

References

https://developerjack.com/blog/2016/08/26/Installing-PHP71-with-homebrew/

 

Posted on

Going Mac – Part 0

I’ll soon be starting a new job,  still in web development (as I have been for disturbingly more than a decade), though this time it’ll be in-house and for a huge company.

I’ve been persuaded to go over to what I’ve long considered the dark side; Apple.

I still don’t believe I’ll ever pay for Apple products with my own money, but it’s becoming clear that Windows really isn’t keeping up with the ease of development on MacOS, and my future employer will be the one stumping up the cash so what’s to lose?

This is to be the 0th in a series of posts on my conversion, or will that be “enlightenment”? 0th not 1st because I’ve not started yet – I’m just beginning to look at what tools I’ll likely be using.

Where I spend most of my work days at the moment is in the excellent JetBrains PHPStorm and I’m very pleased to see that I will be able to stick with it. The other software I use is the also excellent FileZilla and the frankly pretty ropey SourceTree. I will likely ditch both and finally get round to instead using the built-in functionality of PHPStorm, and, of course, modern deployment methods.

I’m a fan of the command line, but it’s always been in *nix (mostly Debian on web servers and Raspberry Pis), so I’m hoping that the move to Apple will mean I can actually do all the modern web dev things instead of spending so much time persuading Windows to let me.

So far, I’ve used all the contemporary techniques (proper MVC development, proper git usage like branching and pull-requests, npm, gulp, Sass), but never all in one project, and I’m really looking forward to it.

Posted on

10/GUI


10gui.com

This is as much an HCI concept as it is about the GUI.

I think a multitouch pad would be great.
5 fingers, i.e. one hand, would be plenty though, and having one hand remaining on the keyboard allows for faster resumption of typing long text.

My HTPC keyboard already has a simple multi-touch action, two finger to scroll, and I’m sure moving up to five fingers would be perfectly achievable by most users. In fact, in the video above there were only s few times when you’d have to use more than two or three fingers.

I think this is all fantastically interesting, and discussing the subject with people who won’t just shoot down the unknown/unfamiliar will lead to some great things.

I wish I could be more involved with this area of research and development.