Hey Fam,

Been a Windows User forever and finally after 8 years wanted to build a new Workstation. But because I'm so tired of what's Happening and thinking about leaving this bitch Ass country (i know, no political discussions - i'll leave it by that) and looking at Hardware prices i came to the decision that If i build another Workstation and have to sell it in a few months, i'd burn so much Money, so i decided to Go with a preowned MacBook Pro.
That way i won't lose as much Money If i sell it and on the other Hand its way easier to Just Take It with me...
Long Story Short, i got a

Macbook pro M1 max with
64gb unified memory and
2tb internal space

Cool, if it was a PC i'd know exactly what to do but since its a Mac, i'm totally lost. Let me Start by saying that this MacBook is in an amazing condition and i want it to stay that way. So with that being Said, what could be the worst Thing that could Happen If i Install stuff from the sister site?
Formatting my disc and starting from Zero or could i even damage the whole MacBook? In other words: could i face a Situation where there's no way to restore the system and fuck the whole MacBook Up?

2nd: when i tested it before buying, i used my old Apple ID with real Personal Information. That's What its running on now. I didnt Format it once more. What about that? Is that a Problem?

And what do i need? Hardware Tools, Software Tools?

Which Version (no links of course) of FL Studio ist the latest one that Works on a silicon Mac? Same for cubase and so on.

Treat me as a total noob on a Mac and please make me Fall in Love with Mac Like ya'll did.

Thanks in advance.

 

Last edited: Jun 2, 2026 at 6:07 PM

Stop worrying, and enjoy your new machine. Everything is good on a "light" side.

You'll have a little learning curve (and a slightly bigger "unlearning" curve to rid yourself of those unseemly ingrained Windows habits), but once you get through that I'm sure you'll wonder why it took so long to move over.

Welcome to Mac!

 

You will be just fine.

enjoy. plenty of help here on the forums.

 

Congrats on getting a MacBook Pro! I finally made the way to the dark side ( ) at the end of last year when I got the Mac M4 Mini for $500 (can't believe how much they've got up since then!!?).

Like you, I was a longtime Windows user and I'm still trying to figure out simple things like file structure. But I'm totally in love with the workflow in Logic Pro (from the sister site), from a singer/songwriter perspective, so I'm happy that I've made the switch.

If prices don't skyrocket on the new M5 MacBook Air, I'm hoping to pick one of those up later this year.

Good luck with the transition!

 

Congrats for the jump to the mac world. You will see, once you get used to the macOS system you won't ever get back to Windows, because of the usability, stability, rather bloatware free system, better security and privacy and less spyware, no annoying constant system updates which installs themself in the background, less warning message boxes, plug and play that really works, better use of RAM, real multitasking, no need to defrag the drives because of the smarter filesystem, powerful Apple Silicon chips, very few battery consumption because of the ARM architecture, also very good for games,...

It's nearly impossible to fuck up the system that it won't boot anymore because of the smart protection system.

Some tools which I find very useful:
Sentinel (for codesigning apps)
Little Snitch (best firewall)
Keka (compressor)
Amphetamine (keep-awake utility)
Adguard (best adblocker)
VLC (best audio/video player)

 

Last edited: Jun 2, 2026 at 6:50 PM

command line tools from xcode.

 

When you run an older Mac for long past it's ability to be updated to newer MacOS, and use OCLP to install your MacOS; it's with either SIP completely disabled or running in a "Custom Disabled" mode. And do you know what happens using only trusted releases and common sense browsing the internet? Nothing. Get a USB flash drive and create a bootable installer. Make a Time Machine backup to an external usb hdd or ssd. It doesn't matter which, SSD is just faster.

I just switched from my good old workhorse Mac Pro cheesegrater from 2010 to an M4 Mac, and it's funny. I almost do not see a lot of stuff being miraculously faster. Stem Separations and rendering long files, sure. It is night and day. But otherwise, the speed increase is not immediately obvious. But when you get Logic 12 open, it's completely different. The workflow of thinking about CPU with every decision you make is gone. You want to put a 32X oversampling clipper in realtime processing. on multiple busses? The M4 doesn't even flinch at it.
Automations aren't "planned", they are performed musically and edited, if you want. Komplete Kontrol went from a lag ingredient to not even noticeable.

Now my old Intel Mac Pro has all my old Intel or U2B plugins installed on it, and it's connected via Audiogridder, SMB enabled, offline but available on the network so I can SSH into it or just open in it like a headless plugin server. I haven't had to install a single app, or plugin, that works via Rosetta2. I'm going to strip every U2B plugin I have so it only has ARM slices of the binaries left. I'm sure I will discover a few that break and need to be returned from backup copies, but it will reduce the storage footprint of plugins by close to 50%.

This is a decent list of utilities. I would add these applications to the list:

Find Any File!
Opera for browser, with Ublock Origin for adblocking,
Bluecat Audio's Patchwork, both the plugin and Standalone especially.
BatChmod, or Permissions Reset2
Wide Blue Sound Audio Plugin Uninstaller
Dr Buho Cleaner (it's like Clean My Mac)
Crossover (for old, but still working great R2R keygens, and new Mocha ones)
Daisy Disk for disk content management, usually to identify big stuff you might remove
Myriad audio file batch convertor
Transmission if you need a torrent client

Disabling Gatekeeper:

Command to disable Gatekeeper: sudo spctl --master-disable
Command re-enable Gatekeeper: sudo spctl --master-enable

Xcode command line, Homebrew, via terminal:

Spoiler

Xcode install:

• Install Apple's command-line developer tools:

xcode-select --install

Homebrew Install

Install Homebrew (the de facto package manager for macOS):

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

Verify the installation:

brew --version

Update Homebrew and package definitions:

brew update


Upgrade installed packages:

brew upgrade


Install a package:


brew install wget


Search for available packages:

brew search ffmpeg


On Apple Silicon Macs, Homebrew is typically installed in:


/opt/homebrew

Homebrew is generally the first thing many command-line users install after the Xcode Command Line Tools, since it provides easy access to thousands of open-source utilities and development tools.

Python3 install:

Spoiler

• Install Python 3.14 with Homebrew:

brew install [email protected]

• Verify the installation:

python3 --version

or


python3.14 --version

• Check where it was installed:

which python3

• Upgrade later:

brew upgrade [email protected]

A quick note for people coming from Linux: macOS ships with components that rely on Apple's own system Python infrastructure. It's generally best to leave the system-provided tools alone and use the Homebrew-installed Python for development work. Use python3 and pip3 rather than trying to replace anything Apple installed.

Permissions related Commands:

Spoiler

• Check permissions on a file or folder:

ls -l filename

or


ls -ld foldername

• Change permissions:

chmod 755 script.sh
chmod 644 file.txt
chmod +x script.sh

• Change ownership:

sudo chown username file.txt
sudo chown -R username:staff foldername

• Check who owns something:

stat file.txt

• Verify your current user and groups:

whoami
id
groups

Mac-specific permissions that often confuse new users:

• Traditional Unix permissions (chmod, chown) are only part of the story.
• macOS also has ACLs (Access Control Lists).

View ACLs:


ls -le

or


ls -lde foldername

Remove ACLs recursively:


chmod -RN foldername

Another common issue is extended attributes, especially on downloaded files:

View attributes:


xattr -l filename

Remove all attributes:


xattr -cr filename

A very common example is the quarantine attribute:


xattr -d com.apple.quarantine filename

If an app won't launch even though permissions look fine, check for quarantine attributes before assuming the file is damaged.

For troubleshooting access problems, my usual order is:

1. ls -l
2. ls -le
3. xattr -l
4. Check System Settings → Privacy & Security

practical advice instead of a technical checklist:

Spoiler

• Install Homebrew early. It's the closest thing macOS has to a traditional package manager and makes installing command-line tools much easier.
• Run xcode-select --install to get Apple's command-line developer tools. A lot of software expects them to be present.
• Learn Spotlight (⌘ + Space). Most long-time Mac users launch apps, find files, and perform quick searches this way instead of browsing folders.
• macOS uses zsh as the default shell, so expect a few differences if you're coming from Bash or another environment.
• Some command-line tools behave differently than they do on Linux because macOS uses BSD versions rather than GNU versions.
• Applications are usually installed in /Applications rather than scattered throughout the system.
• External drives are typically mounted under /Volumes.
• You can open files, folders, and applications from Terminal with the open command.
• If an application suddenly can't access files, the microphone, screen recording, or accessibility features, check Privacy & Security settings before assuming something is broken.
• macOS has strong built-in security protections. Avoid disabling things like SIP or Gatekeeper unless you understand exactly why you're doing it.
• Many system settings are managed through Apple's settings framework rather than editing configuration files directly, so sometimes the quickest solution is in System Settings rather than Terminal.
• When troubleshooting, remember that macOS is Unix underneath, but Apple often expects users to interact with the system differently than they would on Linux.

^ i'm not typing all this, but read it. Do Homebrew after Xcode.

Quick Explanation of editing hosts via Nano

Spoiler

• Edit the hosts file with Nano:

sudo nano /etc/hosts

• Add entries at the bottom of the file. For example:

127.0.0.1 example.com
127.0.0.1 www.example.com

This redirects those domains to your own computer, effectively blocking them.

• Save the file:
  • Ctrl + O (Write Out)
  • Press Enter
• Exit Nano:
  • Ctrl + X
• Flush the DNS cache so changes take effect immediately:

sudo dscacheutil -flushcache
sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

• Test the result:

ping example.com

If it resolves to 127.0.0.1, the hosts entry is working.

The hosts file is commonly used to block websites, override DNS for testing, or force a domain to resolve to a specific IP address. Since it's a system file, sudo is required to edit it.

 

Last edited: Jun 2, 2026 at 7:38 PM

Install Logic