Skip to main content

OSX improved (Update)

Struggling with delivery, architecture alignment, or platform stability?

I help teams fix systemic engineering issues: processes, architecture, and clarity.
→ See how I work with teams.


Updated May 17, 2024 to fit M* architecture

My favorite development environment on my MacBook includes an improved Zsh shell and an extended .vimrc configuration file with syntax highlighting, error checking, TextMate snippets, and the Solarized color scheme. 

Here's a guide for setting up similar features:  The features include directional key navigation for directories and files, developer-friendly colors, command highlighting, improved history search, auto-complete for options and SSH connections (if keys are known), and many more useful enhancements.  

Get Xcode:
 AppStore => Xcode => Install Xcode

From now we use a terminal window.

Install Brew
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Install git and wget:
 brew install git
 brew install wget


Install oh-my-zsh:
 wget --no-check-certificate https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/raw/master/tools/install.sh -O - | sh

The script want to change your shell from /bin/bash into /bin/zsh, here you have to provide your password.

To change the theme edit ~/.zshrc and edit line 8:
 ZSH_THEME="YOUR_FAV_THEME"

Install and enable zsh-highlighting:
 git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting.git ~/.oh-my-zsh/plugins/
 edit .zshrc and add in line 27 (space separated):
  zsh-syntax-highlighting

Solarized and Pathogen
(https://ethanschoonover.com/solarized)
(https://github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen)

mkdir -p ~/.vim/autoload ~/.vim/bundle; \  
curl -so ~/.vim/autoload/pathogen.vim \
    https://raw.github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen/HEAD/autoload/pathogen.vim

 
cd ~/.vim/bundle
 git clone https://github.com/altercation/vim-colors-solarized.git


Extended .vimrc:
cd ~/ && git clone https://github.com/ikaros/vim-configuration.git && rm -rf .vim && mv vim-configuration .vim && rake -T && rake place_vim_config

I remove some bundles for now:
 git rm --cache bundle/cucumber
 git rm --cache bundle/rubytest
 git rm --cache bundle/snipmate

and add snipmate, because the bundle above does not work:
 git submodule add https://github.com/msanders/snipmate.vim.git bundle/snipmate

update all bundles:
 git submodule update --init

To change the Solarized theme edit in your .vimrc the background-variable (set background=light | dark)

Finished. Enjoy your new shell!

Coding languages

Rust:
curl –proto ‘=https’ –tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Golang: 
Download the binaries from https://go.dev/dl/
Sometimes I got into some trouble installing / updating Go, here's snippets to do so:
https://gist.github.com/gsrai/09bfc7db6548aecfbeacdcd89dcd0720

Additional tools I recommend

iTerm (terminal replacement)
VSCode (M* Apple Silicon)
Chrome
CrossOver (for gaming / windows applications)
Docker Desktop
Onyx (edit hidden OSX settings)

Tweaks

Apple Mail

Smart inboxes => filter for over x years old to clean up old mails, or filter for "unsubscribe" to get rid of spam and unwanted mails.

More infos about tuning mail.app to fit your need in that apple knowledgebase article 

Finder

Open finder, press "Apple + ,", here are my tweaks:
=> General: Open folders in tabs .. [X]
=> Tags: Add new tags to find docs, like "work", "private" etc
=> Sidebar: Select what you want to see in the finders' sidebar
=> Advanced: See screenshot 


Thats all, leave a comment when you have more tweaks everyone should know about ;)

If you need help with distributed systems, backend engineering, or data platforms, check my Services.

Most read articles

Building a Model-Agnostic Multi-Agent System with OpenClaw

Over one week we rebuilt our AI stack around OpenClaw’s multi-agent architecture to avoid provider lock-in and stop wasting premium tokens. By aligning models to tasks, diversifying fallbacks across providers, enforcing minimal tool access, and switching to memory-first workflows with ephemeral sessions, we reduced token usage per task by about 70% and cut our monthly bill by 77% while improving operational resilience. How We Achieved 77% Cost Reduction and Provider Independence Over the past week, we rebuilt our AI infrastructure around OpenClaw’s multi-agent architecture. The result was a 77% cost reduction , provider independence , and a delegation system that routes work to the most cost-effective model for each job. Below is the technical journey of optimizing a 7-agent squad with OpenClaw. The Challenge: Model Provider Lock-In We started with a simple problem: our entire squad defaulted to a single model provider. This created three issues: Cost inefficiency beca...

BacNet => MQTT in Production: The Real Cost of Bridging BACnet to MQTT at Scale

bacnet2mqtt looks simple in a README and expensive in production. Once BACnet polling, reconnection behavior, stale state, and MQTT publishing collide, teams discover they are not deploying a lightweight adapter but operating infrastructure. This article breaks down where bacnet2mqtt works, where it becomes a bottleneck, and which production patterns reduce the operational damage before incidents, backlogs, and silent data loss turn a building integration into a long-running engineering problem. I inherited a building controls integration problem 18 months ago. Three office floors. 217 BACnet sensors covering temperature, occupancy, and HVAC actuators. The data was trapped inside the building automation network while the business wanted analytics, reporting, and compliance visibility in the data platform. The obvious answer looked easy enough: deploy bacnet2mqtt, bridge BACnet into MQTT, and push the stream into the lakehouse stack. The repository made it sound like a w...

Connect BACnet to the Cloud with bacnet-mqtt-gateway

The bacnet-mqtt-gateway project is an open source protocol bridge that translates BACnet building automation traffic into MQTT messages for cloud and IoT systems. It provides discovery, polling, bidirectional writes, APIs, security, and easy deployment via Docker. Many enterprises struggle to unify BACnet with modern data pipelines and cloud platforms because BACnet is local-network only and not cloud ready. This gateway provides a scalable, secure, production-ready adapter for MQTT ecosystems and smart building integrations. The Problem with BACnet Building automation runs on BACnet . HVAC controllers, lighting systems, metering equipment: they all speak ASHRAE 135 . The protocol handles local control loops well. It fails at cloud ingress. BACnet relies on UDP broadcasts. These do not route over the internet or into VPCs. Your chiller controller cannot talk to AWS IoT Core . Your VAV box cannot publish to an MQTT broker. The air gap between operational technology and modern cl...