The Ultimate Script for Setting up a New Mac

Published by Moncef Belyamani on
Updated on

On March 21, 2019, my laptop’s hard drive suddenly died. It was 7 years old, so I didn’t feel too bad about having to get a new computer. However, what was painful was setting up the new laptop.

I wanted to start fresh, so I spent a whole day setting up my new Rose Gold MacBook Air and putting together a checklist of everything I did. I was determined to automate as much as possible so that I would never have to waste time like this again.

In addition to a complete Ruby web dev setup, I also automated the installation of all my Mac apps, cloning all the GitHub repos I work on, and setting my macOS preferences. This was well worth the effort because I ended up setting up three other Macs since then (for work before I quit my job, and personal use), and I’ll continue to save 8 hours for each new Mac I get in the future.

And now, you too can set up your new Mac in minutes without having to spend 100+ hours trying to automate it yourself! And you don’t have to worry about keeping your scripts up to date.

In the Ultimate version of Ruby on Mac, I’m introducing improved and much easier to use versions of my Git, repos, and macOS preferences scripts, among other exclusive features.

Below are more features that will only be available in the Ultimate version.

These are available now:

  • Choose your preferred Ruby version manager (asdf, chruby, frum, rbenv, or rvm)
  • Set the default gems you want installed for each Ruby version
  • A Brewfile with hundreds of dev tools, Mac apps, and fonts to make setting up your new Mac even faster
  • Support for multiple Brewfiles
  • Script for setting up the fish shell
  • Unlimited lifetime updates included for a one-time cost
  • Install Ruby 2.6.10 on Apple Silicon without Rosetta!
  • Install Ruby versions as old as 1.9.3, including on Apple Silicon with Rosetta.
  • Set up two separate Ruby installations, and easily switch between them. This is for those who need to run both legacy apps using the Intel architecture, and newer apps using Apple Silicon.
  • Install Ruby up to 2x faster than any other tool, and almost 3x faster than Prime
  • Speed up Bignum operations on Apple Silicon by 28x
  • rom CLI to maintain your dev setup and perform common actions. Features are being added regularly.
  • The correct version of OpenSSL is automatically chosen for you depending on the Ruby version
  • Priority Support via email or Zoom

These I’m still working on:

  • Script for generating a new Jekyll or Bridgetown site ready to be deployed to GitHub Pages with GitHub Actions, or to Netlify
  • Script for generating a new Rails 7 app ready to be deployed to Heroku or Render
  • Jekyll and Bridgetown templates ready to go with SEO plugins, Tailwind, analytics, and syntax highlighting