MacBook Setup

Secondary dev environment. Travel + portfolio commits + cinematic content production. Not the primary ROOT machine.

The MacBook is the travel and content machine. ROOT phase work happens on the ThinkPad (Linux-native, closer to bastion + cluster envs); the MacBook exists for the moments where macOS is materially better — battery on the road, Final Cut for cinematic demos, the polished surface for portfolio commits to abukix.dev.

It does not need to land pre-Phase-1. The setup below can wait until Year 2 Phase 9, when terralabs ships its first demo video, or even later if travel doesn’t intervene. Before that, the ThinkPad covers everything — see thinkpad-setup.md for the daily driver.

The configuration here is deliberately thin. It’s a user device assumed to already exist; this doc just adds the homelab-relevant tooling on top.

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Why a Mac at all

The ThinkPad is the daily driver for ROOT (Linux-native; closer to bastion + cluster envs). The MacBook is for:

1. Travel — battery, build quality, instant sleep/wake
2. Cinematic content — Final Cut Pro / Screen Studio / Loom for the demo videos that ship with terralabs (Y2), basecamp (Y3), mlship v2 (Y5)
3. Portfolio website — abukix.dev static portfolio + blog tinkering
4. Mobile/desktop testing — anything Apple-platform-specific

Not for ROOT phase work. Phase work happens on the ThinkPad or directly on bastion.

Don’t dual-track phase work

It’s tempting to “also run the homelab tooling on the MacBook” so you can hack from anywhere. Resist it. Two dev environments means two sets of dotfiles to drift, two kubectl versions to mismatch, and two places where a Phase 7 incident could be half-fixed. Use Tailscale to SSH into bastion from the MacBook when you’re travelling — the work still happens server-side, the MacBook is just the keyboard.

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OS

macOS (latest stable). Stays on the OS the laptop ships with; not a deep customization machine.

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Essential setup

# Homebrew
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

# Dev essentials
brew install \
  git curl wget jq tree htop tmux \
  awscli google-cloud-sdk \
  kubectl helm argocd \
  go uv ruff \
  tailscale

# Containers
brew install --cask docker        # Docker Desktop OR
brew install --cask orbstack      # OrbStack — lighter, faster on Mac

On Apple Silicon, OrbStack is materially faster than Docker Desktop for the kind of one-off image builds the MacBook will do (portfolio site, demo recordings). Pick one — running both wastes RAM.

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SSH config

Same as ThinkPad’s ~/.ssh/config. Same key (or a separate key for the MacBook + add to bastion’s authorized_keys).

Host bastion
  HostName 192.168.0.10
  User ubuntu
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_macbook

A separate key per device is the safer default — losing the MacBook means revoking one key from bastion’s authorized_keys, not rotating the ThinkPad’s identity too.

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Tailscale

brew install tailscale
sudo tailscale up

Connects to the same tailnet as ThinkPad + bastion + Proxmox. Once up, ssh bastion from a hotel WiFi works exactly the same as from home — that’s the point.

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Content production tools

For the cinematic content / demo videos:

# Screen recording
brew install --cask screen-studio        # paid; the cinematic option
# OR
brew install --cask loom                 # free tier; good enough for first demos

# Editing
brew install --cask final-cut-pro        # paid, native
# OR
brew install --cask davinci-resolve      # free tier; cross-platform

# Diagrams
brew install --cask excalidraw           # whiteboard-style; for blog posts
brew install --cask omnigraffle          # paid; architecture diagrams

# Markdown / writing
brew install --cask obsidian             # for note-taking
brew install --cask typora               # markdown editor with live preview

These land when you start producing content — typically Year 2 (after terralabs ships) or Year 3 (after basecamp goes public). Don’t pre-buy paid tools.

Don’t pre-buy paid content tools

Screen Studio, Final Cut, OmniGraffle — each is $50-300. Bought before you have a demo to record, they become guilt-licenses sitting unused. Wait until the first quiet ship has actually happened (Year 2 P9 for terralabs) and the free-tier tool (Loom, DaVinci Resolve) hit a concrete limitation. Buy then.

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When the MacBook actually gets used

Pre-Y2:    rare. ROOT runs on the ThinkPad.
Y2 P9:     `terralabs` launch — first demo video (Loom, free tier)
Y3 P19:    `basecamp` launch — bigger demo (Screen Studio worth the paid tier)
Y4-Y5:     content production for `notes-rag`, `aiops`, mlship demos
Y5 P29:    Abukix Studio launch — full demo video
Y5 P30:    mlship v2 capstone — the Show HN demo video

If you’re pre-Year-2 and the MacBook is sitting idle, that’s the expected state — it’s a content machine, not a curriculum machine. See the Year 1 index for what is active during the foundations year.

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Cross-references

• thinkpad-setup.md — the daily driver
• proxmox.md — bastion this machine SSHes into
• brand/content-playbook.md — what to record, when, why