Attack on Life

After WWDC, I quickly upgraded my iPhone, iWatch, and Mac, expecting a smooth experience. Instead, it felt like an emotional roller coaster, leaving me in tears at times.

Although I was somewhat prepared for the instability of the beta versions, the actual upgrade experience was indeed a roller coaster of emotions.

How to Upgrade

Visit the webpage, download and install the Profile as instructed, and then you’ll be notified of the new version for direct installation.

Note

• Beta versions are typically updated every two weeks by Apple until the fall conference.
• Always back up before upgrading, such as using Time Machine for Mac, recommended NAS solution for its cost-effectiveness, and iCloud for iPhone backups.

Issues Encountered with Various Devices After Upgrading

The upgrade brought some novelty, like iPhone’s Widget and Mac’s new UI, but also annoying problems.

Mac

• Bartender completely broken
• Terminal often not working, requiring restarts to fix, improved in beta2
• Shutdowns often fail, forcing me to do hard shutdowns
• Euro Dictionary crashes
• Frequent memory overflows…

iPhone

• WeChat crashes
• AirPods hey Siri not working

iWatch

Given its fewer features, mainly used for checking time and calories, it was okay.

Upgrading might be fun momentarily, but I advise against upgrading daily essential devices to beta versions due to numerous issues affecting daily work and life.

Downgrading macOS Big Sur

Due to the instability of the new system severely affecting my productivity on Mac, I decided to downgrade. Having continuous backups with Time Machine theoretically allows for a flawless restoration.

However, the actual downgrade process was not as smooth due to incorrect procedures.

Note

• Reinstalling the system directly on the device is futile, as it will install the latest version present, like Big Sur.
• Big Sur currently encounters errors when connecting to Time Machine.

Correct Steps for Downgrading

• Hold ⌘ ⇧ ⌥ R at startup to enter internet recovery.
• Format the hard drive.
• Choose to reinstall the system.
• Upon restarting, select Time Machine - specific date backup - restore.

Final Thoughts

This upgrade journey brought many troubles, but also two valuable lessons:

1. The severe consequences of blindly upgrading high-frequency productivity tools served as a harsh warning and critique. I’ll never make this mistake again.
2. The importance of backup and cloud storage, such as NAS for system-level backups, iCloud for syncing Apple device data, OneDrive for Alfred configuration backups, Google Photos for photo backups, Evernote for cloud note storage, and Jetbrains IDE for GitHub settings sync backups. Planning these services took time, but once a system is established, I no longer worry about data loss. Even with a new Mac or iPhone 11, these cloud data can quickly bring my device back to full functionality.

I have combed before, my commonly used APP, commonly used hardware. This time, I will sort out the plugins that Chrome uses every day, and share my experience.

For the plugins I use, they can be roughly divided into two categories.

To be continued

Daily Used

1. 1PasswordX -Password Manager

   Use with 1Password Mac and iPhone multi-terminal apps. Usually, the shortcut key is used to call out and quickly fill in the password.

2. AdBlock

   The well-known ad blocking tools. Of course, some cannot be blocked, such as iQiyi, and some of them still choose paid services appropriately.

3. Grammarly for Chrome

   For someone with poor written English, it’s fantastic, and is free. Sometimes it is often necessary to write questions and comments on platforms such as GitHub or medium. With this plugin, combined with Google Translate, at least basic communication problems are solved.

4. Synology Download Station

   With the use of Synology at home, you can usually click on a movie download address to trigger the download task.

5. Vimium

​ For some operations on web pages, you can use vim habits, such as G to quickly move to the bottom, yy to copy the current URL. After these operations are proficient, part of the efficiency can be improved.

​ Note that because the shortcut keys conflict with the GitHub webpage shortcut keys, you need to add exclusion rules

6. Octotree

This plugin can browse GitHub repositories in the form of a tree, which I like very much.

7. Tampermonkey
   This plug-in, I personally feel that as a supplement to all plug-ins, uses JS to achieve personalized operations on the target site collection. For example, a movie download website that I often visit, it loads some advertising JS, which leads to entering the website, clicking on the movie, and always jumping to a rogue website first, which is very annoying. So this plugin comes in handy.

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

   (function() { 'use strict'; window.setTimeout(()=>{ const ads = document.querySelectorAll('a[id^="cs_ap_"],div[id^="cs_DIV_cscpvric"],iframe'); ads.forEach(item=>{ item.remove(); }); document.body.onkeydown=null; },200); })();

Developers

1. Wappalyzer

​ A must for web developers to get an overview of the technologies used by the target page

2. Axure RP Extension for Chrome

​ See plugins used for prototyping.

3. [Open SEO Stats](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/open-seo-stats formerly-pa/hbdkkfheckcdppiaiabobmennhijkknn)

   For a website you are visiting, you sometimes need to know the basic information of the website, such as which country the corresponding service is in, IP information, and so on.

4. React Developer Tools

   A must for react developers, needless to say.

5. Redux DevTools

   A must for redux developers, needless to say.

6. Yet Another Jenkins Notifier

   Jenkins build message notification

Plugin download-CRX

For well-known reasons, we can’t access Google normally, and so can’t enter the store to download plug-ins. But chrome can install plugins offline. So how to find the crx file of the plugin?

Recommend such a website, enter the store address of the plug-in, and click to download the file. Also this site is not walled.

https://crxextractor.com/

Plugin installation

Click the chrome extension, drag the crx file into chrome, and it will be installed automatically

Although the above solution can solve the problem of plug-in installation when Google cannot be used. But I sincerely hope that the Google problem will be solved, this is the root cause.

Write at the End

The above are the plug-ins that I commonly use, or the same sentence, don’t use tools for the sake of tools, and don’t use efficiency for the sake of efficiency. It is the best to find the one that suits you and solve the actual problem after being familiar with it.

Because the company project needs to use the company’s internal Maven resources, it is not required at home, so it is time-consuming to switch settings back and forth. To achieve automation, consider making a script to switch sources.

Scripting - Preliminary Scheme

I saw an article on the Internet - script switching, which gave me inspiration. Paste the script here.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24

#!/bin/bash

base_dir=~/.m2
setting_home=settings_home.xml
setting_work=settings_work.xml

PS3='Please enter the number of your choice: '
options=("home" "work")
select opt in "${options[@]}"
do
    case $opt in
        "home")
        ln -sfn ${base_dir}/${setting_home} ${base_dir}/settings.xml
            echo "Switched setting.xml to home!"
            break
            ;;
        "work")
        ln -sfn ${base_dir}/${setting_work} ${base_dir}/settings.xml
            echo "Switched setting.xml to work!"
            break
            ;;
  
    esac
done

As above, you can implement interactive script execution to switch. But this solution still needs to execute the script every time.
Is there a way to do one-click switching? Yes! Alfred can.

Create Alfred Workflow-Advanced Solution

How?

Add input keyword

Add list filter

Add script execution

For the above script, make the following improvements.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

base_dir=~/.m2
setting_home=settings_home.xml
setting_work=setting_work.xml

if [ "{query}" == "home" ];
then
        ln -sfn ${base_dir}/${setting_home} ${base_dir}/settings.xml
else
        ln -sfn ${base_dir}/${setting_work} ${base_dir}/settings.xml
fi

mvn setting default configuration

Here is the maven default settings.xml configuration

Click Here

Add notification

In order to improve the experience, each time the switch is successful, you will be notified.

Final effect

So we can switch Maven settings with one click now. Perfect.

Reference

• Shell 脚本切换 Maven 的 settings.xml

Just listed some computer software that I used on my Mac. Keep it as record, and also can provide reference for some friends.

Keep Updated

Statement

1. Some of them are paid APPs, and there are many free and open source as well, but the APP depends on the output value at last. These APPs have greatly helped my work and life, and they are worth it.
2. Due to personal reasons, some paid apps are solved by student license or trial. Student certification is free and the functions are complete. The trial version also has complete functions, but there is a time limitation, but if there is a way to clear the trial record, you can always use it. Of course, if this trick is not good, you can only TNT.
3. For paid APPs, you can buy it if you can afford it, and support genuine.
4. Some apps on So will be replaced from time to time.
5. When choose constantly and advance the APPs, I have a little feeling that APPs to us is just like a sword is to swordsman, not much, but in its ease and sharpness. So choose the one that suits you, and then learn more about it, and ultimately improve your efficiency and make your work and life better.

APPs List

Summary

There is no best app absolutely, while only the right tool, above is just for your reference.

Reference

• https://github.com/jaywcjlove/awesome-mac