3 ms·

I've just migrated from a 4 year old Macbook to top of the line M3 Max. My previous Macbook had multiple kernel extensions, lots of customisation and homebrew a

by deanc 3y ago

I've just migrated from a 4 year old Macbook to top of the line M3 Max. My previous Macbook had multiple kernel extensions, lots of customisation and homebrew apps and such. I was convinced that I'd spend a significant amount of time setting it up again - so I'd made some bash scripts in preperation to reinstall my homebrew stuff etc. So upon receiving my macbook I used the migration assistant and ticked everything, and to my surprised I've spent less than an hour getting this new machine up to speed. It moved everything including all my settings, apps, configurations for those apps etc. The only issues I've had is docker didn't move across, and I've had to manually download universal binaries of a few intel apps. It has been completely flawless. I don't see the value add for the use-case you describe of machine migrations when Apple's tool for this works so well.

benwaffle 3y ago
I agree, I'm not getting new computers more than once a year, at most. Setup time doesn't seem like something I should optimize for.
- dlyons 3y ago
  I would argue the benefit is also it’s declarative, done forever, and your machine becomes relatively bulletproof. Dev environment issues are a thing of the past, once you’ve defined your configuration. If something is broken with a package, I don’t have to figure it out myself —- I just rollback, wait for someone to fix it upstream in nixpkgs and pull down the patch later.
- abathur 3y ago
  At least in my opinion, the leverage here isn't about directly saving time in some hypothetical universe where you set up new devices every week. It's about confidence in your ability to quickly bootstrap a productive system and the relative freedom/security that flow from knowing it. When you know you can be productive this quickly without access to a backup or a working device, you have relative freedom and security from a decent spectrum of manufacturing defects, hardware failures, disasters, accidents, thieves, and so on.

by deanc 3y ago

benwaffle 3y ago

I agree, I'm not getting new computers more than once a year, at most. Setup time doesn't seem like something I should optimize for.

dlyons 3y ago
I would argue the benefit is also it’s declarative, done forever, and your machine becomes relatively bulletproof. Dev environment issues are a thing of the past, once you’ve defined your configuration. If something is broken with a package, I don’t have to figure it out myself —- I just rollback, wait for someone to fix it upstream in nixpkgs and pull down the patch later.
abathur 3y ago
At least in my opinion, the leverage here isn't about directly saving time in some hypothetical universe where you set up new devices every week. It's about confidence in your ability to quickly bootstrap a productive system and the relative freedom/security that flow from knowing it. When you know you can be productive this quickly without access to a backup or a working device, you have relative freedom and security from a decent spectrum of manufacturing defects, hardware failures, disasters, accidents, thieves, and so on.