Christopher Phin

I used to have the rule that every time Apple launched a major new operating system, I’d do a clean install – wipe my hard disk, put a fresh system on it, laboriously reinstall my apps and copy my data back across. Even if not strictly necessary, this was a reasonable policy in the days when Apple’s release schedule was infrequent, and when each release made big under-the-hood changes, but the now-annual cycle allied to the robustness of the core OS and the upgrade-in-place process has meant that since around 10.7 I haven’t done it. I think I’m due; Yosemite is acting up in small but significant ways on my trusty old 2008 MacBook Pro, and there’s just a lot of accumulated crud on its SSD. A clean install gives you a fresh, efficient system, so I’m going to put myself through the hassle of doing one; now I’ve decided to do it, I’m actually, if tragically, a little excited about it. If you want to do the same, there are a few things you should think about before you begin, and since I’ve been putting together a guide to myself to make sure it’s as pain-free as possible, I thought I’d share and explain. If you think I’ve forgotten something, tweet me and I’ll amend this post.

Back up
Oh sweet lord, back up. Back up in multiple ways to multiple places; you know this, I’m sure. For my money, if you’re about to do a clean install, you should do a bootable backup just for it – in addition to whatever other backup system you have. This is because you can put it to one side as a snapshot of your system just before you did the clean install, and jump back to it instantly by booting from this dedicated backup in case there’s something you just didn’t anticipate. (Remember that while Intel Macs can boot from drives mounted over USB, PowerPC Macs need to boot over FireWire.) I use SuperDuper! to do these bootable clones, but the venerable CarbonCopyCloner or even the Restore tab of Disk Utility will do just as well. Once you’ve backed up, boot from that backup (hold ⌥ during startup to pick it) and confirm it’s working and that everything’s present and correct.

Anticipate problems
Get your Mac running as you would typically and then scrutinise it to look for things that you will need to recreate on your clean system – look along the Dock, in the menu bar, in the Services menu, and at what options you see when you right-click typical files in the Finder; if you’re being really thorough, look in the list of running services in Activity Monitor, since some things will be running ‘headless’ – in the background. You’re looking for things that need to be added to a clean system in order to make it work for you – but do also take this as an opportunity to ditch things you’re not really using, since this will mean a less bloated, more robust system.

Capture your current setup
One of the most annoying things in cleaning down a system is that your old one had grown familiar and comfortable over the years, and if you’re anything like me, using a fresh system is a bit like breaking in new shoes – it’s all very smart, but a bit uncomfortable. Your Dock’s in the wrong order but you can’t remember what the right order is. One way you could combat this is to identify and copy across loads of preference files, but I prefer to do it old-skool: taking a screenshot of my current system showing everything in place. Here’s mine, which shows the Finder sidebar as well as Dock and menus; you might need to capture different stuff, and remember that some apps let you export out the settings for your workspaces.

Oh, and, uh, it should go without saying, but make sure you copy this information off the Mac before you wipe it. Not that I’ve done similar in the past, you understand.

Save out important settings
iCloud and syncing in general can help with some of this these days, but it’s still worth thinking if you use apps which need particular data exporting out ahead of time. For me, the two biggies are the settings for iStat Menus (the first app I install on a new Mac) and some custom Actions I have built in Photoshop. Save ’em out, stash ’em somewhere safe.

Source all your software
Before you wipe a Mac, make sure you can reinstall all the apps you need. If your apps are all from the Mac App Store, great, since reinstalling them is a case of clicking a few buttons on your new system, but for everything else, make sure you have install discs or access to downloads, as well as serial numbers, all to hand. Although I’ll double-check, I should be fine, as I put disc images for big apps in a folder on my Drobo, and store serials in Wallet. It can be easy to forget what apps you had installed, so an easy way to remember is to go to Applications, ⌘A, ⌘C then ⌘V into a Plain Text document to quickly generate a list. (You might want to do the same for Utilities as well.) Again, though, don’t just unthinkingly reinstall everything – use this as an opportunity to ditch cruft.

Deauthorise
Some things on your Mac get authorised to a server, and usually you get a limited number of activations. So that your old system isn’t using up one of your precious activations, before you wipe it deauthorise it for each. For example, for me, I deauthorise my Mac to play my iTunes Store purchases and Audible audiobooks, and I deauthorise Creative Suite.

Set up your new system
You’re probably ready to go. Start up from an installer drive (see Dan Frakes’ handy guide on how to create a bootable Yosemite installer) then before you install, go to Disk Utility, erase your internal hard disk or SSD. Install, then step through the process of creating a new account. Once you’re logged in, there’s one more thing I would do before copying back data, reinstalling apps, and linking your new system to, say, cloud backup services: rename it. Go to System Preferences → Sharing and then change the Computer Name to something new; this means it will be clear which machine originated files in any sync system, and should reduce the potential for conflicts. Now: slowly, carefully, copy over your old data from the backup, and reinstall just what you want and need – and enjoy your fresh, nimble new system! If you’ve forgotten anything, reach for your backup; that’s what it’s for!

Again, tweet me if you think I’ve missed something important!

My friend and erstwhile colleague Barry Collins thinks Apple should make a hybrid laptop/tablet which combines OS X and iOS. I think that in this regard at least my friend and erstwhile colleague Barry Collins is a bloody idiot.

I can completely see the place he’s coming from. I can see the thought processes that brought him to where he is, and I don’t doubt his ‘MacPad’ would appeal to some – maybe even many.

Apple, though, is never going to make it. And nor should it.

Its vision for OS X and iOS seems very clear to me: let each do its job well, but provide ways to share information between them. It’s never been more explicit than in Yosemite and iOS 8, where the Continuity suite of features means that now more than ever you can reach for whatever device is best for you at the time to complete a particular task, and find the task to hand and ready to be worked on. To be sure, the vision is still nascent, but the point is that despite the harmonisation of chrome and the back-and-forth borrowing of features when it’s justified, OS X and iOS are, and for the foreseeable future will remain, completely distinct.

None of this, of course, explicitly argues against Barry’s MacPad – indeed, I don’t doubt he read the preceding paragraph while spluttering something about this making his hypothetical product even more feasible.

Apple, though, prizes clarity, and rightly so. If its vision is to keep OS X and iOS distinct, then it won’t make a product that muddies that distinction. Marketing it would be tricky in part because of the lack of clarity in the message; aiming a product at everyone is aiming a product at no-one. And it just is an inelegant product; it smacks of a Microsoft-like notion of a ‘no-compromise’ device, when it seems obvious to me that a no-compromise device is impossible.

Barry’s isn’t a bold new vision for what a new category of device from Apple could be. It’s a tired, unimaginative, tech-led mash-up of a couple of things we see, use and like.

I’ve made a bet with Barry that Apple won’t make his MacPad in the next five years (so, by 16 October, 2019); if he’s right, he’s asked I stay off Twitter for a week save to tweet ‘Barry was right’ daily at 9am. If I’m right, well, that will suffice! Tim will arbitrate.

When the iPhone 6 went on sale, I tweeted that anyone thinking of buying one had to go into a shop and try the two new sizes before committing; there was no other way to, aha, grasp the physicality of these devices. Now, I think even that doesn’t go far enough.

I’ve been using the iPhone 6 as my main phone for a long time (Matt is reviewing the 6 Plus, and we’re constantly comparing notes and switching devices) and I’ve vacillated so much about whether it’s good compared to its predecessors I ought to be hooked up to a generator.

I forced myself to go back to the iPhone 5s for 24 hours to see if that helped crystallise my thinking, and it did. It did indeed feel pokey after the bigger expanse of glass on the 6 (I’m using it in Standard, not Zoomed mode), but for me at least it was much more comfortable to hold. I had to shuffle the phone around in my hand less, it felt more secure, and it was easier to use one-handed. (I’m cautiously confident I don’t just think this because I’m more familiar with the 5s.)

The rub, though, is that I think the bigger screen has wooed me. Basically, physics doesn’t let Apple have its cake and eat it; if you want a bigger screen, you sacrifice some of the ergonomic benefits (for those of us who don’t have big hands) of the 3½″ and 4″ models. If I’d just walked into an Apple store and hefted the iPhone 6, I’d have dismissed it. Weirdly thin. Slippery. More difficult to use one-handed. And I’d have been perfectly happy with the screen size of my 5s. Now, though, I think I’d choose that set of compromises that gives me that bigger screen. I’ve only begun to think that thanks to many days of intensive, in-anger use, however. I’m in a privileged position to be able to do this; how anyone else will make the right decision for themselves is beyond me.

I’m struggling to articulate something as I review the iPhone 6 (and advise on our review of the iPhone 6 Plus), so perhaps I can start a thought here and you can help me finish it.

I like the iPhone 6 and I liked the 5-series, but I miss the 3½″ form factor. I miss it not just because of how it nestles in the hand (relevant especially to the iPhone 3GS and earlier) and is eminently one-handable, but importantly because of how and how well it can present information.

When you have a small window onto the internet, the way in which you present its information has to be meticulously crafted; apps have to consider and use every pixel or point so carefully. There’s a care and craftsmanship that you have no choice but to apply if you have any ambition that your app could be called be well-designed and efficient.

But when the window gets bigger, you have to worry less about this efficiency. The bigger screen absorbs and forgives. This isn’t, note, a technical thesis; this isn’t anything to do with Auto Layout or @2x versus @3x at different ppis, and nor is it a diatribe about platform tribalism or web apps versus native apps… and yet all of these feed into it.

It sounds perhaps like I’m accusing devs of being lazy. I’m not, though the wider context of app development – increasingly hard to make it as a pure indie app dev, having to make difficult decisions about resources with a broadening line-up of targets – married to the shall-we-call-it simple design of iOS 7 and 8 also feeds into this thread.

So that’s where I’m at: a bunch of half-formed but deeply-felt thoughts about mobile phone screen size and how well information can be presented. If you can form a coherent, balanced and nuanced narrative out of all that, for god’s sake tweet me.

(There’s one more thing to ponder in this context: the Apple Watch.)