![]() I tested my bootable backup, only to find that I had eliminated all applications! Not only that, somehow I managed to make a bootable backup that didn’t even have System Preferences. You’ll notice it’s smaller than my internal drive, so I have to eliminate some things in the copy script. I have been making a bootable backup to my machine using SuperDuper! for ages. That’s a shame, I would have liked to compare those numbers too. I simply said that after the nuke and pave I was using 200GB less space. I didn’t record how much I was using in 2016. My disk is twice as big on the 2016 MacBook Pro at 2TB, and I’m using 1.11TB of that. I’m starting to feel like I’m running a clean machine! Since then, I’ve been running an app called Clean Drive from within the $20/year Parallels Toolbox and it regularly tells me when things like cache files are stacking up, so my Library folder was only 12GB before the clean install. The last time I did this, my Library folder went from 136GB to 12GB after the clean install. Interesting that I’m starting with 18 fewer apps. In 2016 I said that I started with 242 apps before the clean install and only had 80 right afterward. I thought it might be fun to document the metrics I covered in 2016 too. It took a bit of time to cross reference my current list of mission-critical apps against those I’d recorded in 2016, but it was a darn site easier than starting from scratch! The other great thing I discovered in rereading my blog post and which had completely slipped my mind, was that I had put ALL of the steps into a Wunderlist! Not only that, I had one entry that said “install apps” and within that were subtasks with each and every application I needed to install. Or where I got the Century Gothic font of which I’m so fond (spoiler, it comes with Microsoft Office.) There are so many odd little things to remember, like installing homebrew from the command line so I can install the command-line apps that make my home-made ID3 editor function. The good news is that in October of 2016 I documented the critical and tricky pieces of my clean install process. On Tuesday night I decided to rip the band-aid off and do that clean install on my production Mac I’ve been promising myself I would do, “when I had time.” On Tuesday Steve and I tested the live show, which strains my Mac the most, and Mojave caused me no problems at all on the older Mac. Deleting an image can be a minute or longer some days. I wasn’t sure what the root cause was, but I looked at that darn beachball constantly when I’m doing the most trivial operations. As I did this testing on my 5-year-old MacBook Pro, I discovered that Apple Photos was way way way faster than it is on my 2016 MacBook Pro. For the less critical apps, I trusted my own testing.īut here’s why I thought it was really time to do the nuke and pave. I started by creating a Numbers spreadsheet with priority 1, 2 and 3 apps listed and found definitive answers on Mojave compatibility from each vendor where I could. I knew I could run the new OS on the other Mac, and test out my mission-critical software before jumping to Mojave on my production machine. ![]() When I bought the new MacBook Pro in 2016, I kept my 2013 MacBook Pro around for just this kind of situation. You may think I’m bonkers jumping to a new operating system within days of its release for my production machine, but I’m not as nutty as I may sound. ![]() Let me explain what pushed me over the edge. I preach a nuke and pave every year, but like everyone else, the task is daunting so I do put it off, even though I know the payoff is huge. My 2016 MacBook Pro which received that clean install 2 years ago is starting to struggle and I know it’s because of all the cruft that builds up over time. That nuke and pave was forced because after a hardware repair my 2013 MacBook Pro had an empty hard disk. In October of 2016 I did a nuke and pave (also known as a clean install) and I documented the major steps in a blog post. Half the time I forget that I’ve done it before and when I do a search I find my own posts which is awesome and embarrassing at the same time! If I can’t remember how to do some complex technical task and I’ve ever accomplished it before, I’ve got a blog post about it. One of the great things about being a tech blogger and podcaster is that just about anything I think is interesting has been fully documented. Partial list of tasks and apps organized in Wunderlist
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