Apple MBP M1 ARM Adventure

Here is a really slick website that list apps and their compatibility with the new Apple Silicon. https://isapplesiliconready.com

Apps via Apple Store

What I have installed and tested.

• Chrome (native)
• Slack
• Lastpass
• Grammarly
• Viscosity
• Bartender 4
• Calendar 366 (universal binary)
• iStats Menu
• The Clock
• iTerm2 (universal binary)
• Dropbox
• Evernote

Homebrew

Homebrew is a fantastic utility with a variety of great packages for more advanced Mac users and those accustomed to the command line.

To use it, you can choose between:

1. Running your Terminal from Rosetta 2

2. Running arch -x86_64 brew instead of brew

The second link is the great source of info. I chose to use the second approach.

This will setup Homebrew in /usr/local. Now whenever you want to interact with it, you can run arch -x86_64 brew before any command. This command is the standard installer from brew.sh with the Rosetta prefix.

arch -x86_64 brew install htop

You can also have multiple Homebrew installs; one for native and one for x86. I also did this.

Multiple Homebrew locations

1. Apple Silicon Native /opt/homebrew
2. x86 /usr/local

Example Different apps in different brews. I use an alias in my .bash_profile to map ibrew to the x86 Homebrew.

# Apple Native 
❯ brew list
autoconf	libtool		[email protected]	readline
automake	libyaml		pcre		ruby
hstr		ncurses		pkg-config	zsh

# x86
❯ ibrew list
htop		ncurses		prettyping
iterm2

Some additional helpful links

• Compatibility List of core formulae formulae related to native ARM Homebrew installations on macOS 11.0 (Big Sur)
• notion.so
• apple.stackexchange.com

My Homebrew Apps Experience

Working

• zsh (native)
• hstr (native)
• prettyping (native)
• ruby (native)
• rbenv (native)
• htop (x86)

Broken

• ls-go
• pyenv (installs but subsequent python install {version} fails)

dot profiles

I want the same user experience between all my different machines so I sync my dot profiles using Dropbox. The dot files in the local directory of each device points to another file in a folder called appsync in Dropbox.

I've included all the working files I used for this process in this repo.

WARNING: Ordering of commands in the dot files are incredibly important. If they are out of order you will end up with a crazy assortment of errors and issues.

local dot files

This is what each file looks like in the home directory of each machine. I also keep a copy of these in Dropbox/appsync for reference and backup.

.bash_profile

DROPBOX_RC="Dropbox/appsync/bash_profile"
if [ -f $DROPBOX_RC ];
then
    source $DROPBOX_RC
fi

.zshrc

ZSHRC_RC="Dropbox/appsync/zshrc_profile"
if [ -f $ZSHRC_RC ];
then
   source $ZSHRC_RC
fi

There are a ton of alternatives ways. Check out https://dotfiles.github.io/ to see the world of possibilities.

zsh

Apple now defaults to zsh but I prefer to install zsh using homebrew so I can update without messing with the OSX default.

> zsh --version

zsh 5.8 (arm-apple-darwin20.1.0)

Install zsh

>brew install zsh

> which zsh
/opt/homebrew/bin/zsh << Apple Silicon Native via Homebrew

> dscl . -read /Users/$USER UserShell

UserShell: /bin/zsh

Need to update dscl to point to the native homebrew version

sudo dscl . -create /Users/$USER UserShell /opt/homebrew/bin/zsh

quit and restart terminal verify

> which zsh
/opt/homebrew/bin/zsh

> zsh --version
zsh 5.8 (arm-apple-darwin20.1.0)

> echo $SHELL
/opt/homebrew/bin/zsh << Notice the change to homebrew directory

Install and setup oh-my-zsh

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

chmod 755 /usr/local/share/zsh
chmod 755 /usr/local/share/zsh/site-functions

Install powerlevel10k

git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-$HOME/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/themes/powerlevel10k\

p10k configuration wizard

After this I restart terminal, I'm using iTerm2, and run the p10k configuration wizard to install fonts and get any dependencies installed.

When the p10k wizard finishes it creates .p10k.zsh in your home directory. I want to share my settings between multiple machines so I delete this file and replace it with a symbolic link to this file in Dropbox.

rm .p10k.zsh
ln -s /Users/dj/Dropbox/appsync/.p10k.zsh ~/.p10k.zsh

You will need to restart terminal.

Fonts and plugins

Install any fonts and plugins.

git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting\

git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions\

NOTE: To reflect every change you make use source ~/.zshrc

terminal enhancements

I wanted to have my terminal colorized and include icons. Previously I used ls-go but that wasn't working because of Go. Instead I decided to take the colorls approach.

First is to install Ruby with Homebrew. You can verify the system default of /usr/bin/ruby

> which ruby 
/usr/bin/ruby

Install and setup ruby for colorls

brew install ruby

Add path to .zshrc

# Path to your oh-my-zsh installation.
export ZSH=$HOME/.oh-my-zsh
+ export PATH=$PATH:$(ruby -e 'puts Gem.bindir')

Add path to .bash_profile

# more homebrew for apple silicon stuff 
export PATH="/opt/homebrew/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH"
+export PATH="/opt/homebrew/opt/ruby/bin:$PATH"

Restart terminal or open a new tab to verify it's using brew

❯ which ruby
/opt/homebrew/opt/ruby/bin/ruby

Install colorls

gem install colorls

Verify it's using brew and native arm

❯ gem which colorls
/opt/homebrew/lib/ruby/gems/2.7.0/gems/colorls-1.4.2/lib/colorls.rb

The end result looks like this.

iTerm 2 and Fonts

Your font selection is key to get icons and glyphs working to the fullest under Powerlevel10K. I found it best to stick with the Nerd Fonts to get the most icons/glyphs working. I'm currently using FuraMono Nerd Font.

In the screenshot above, I'm using iTerm2 with the Cobalt2 color preset