Setting up a New MacBook Pro: The Good, the Bad, the Hideously Ugly

I bought a new MacBook Pro recently, in preparation for a big trip. I transferred everything from my iMac – my workhorse machine – to the MacBook Pro using Time Machine. Mostly it went well. Very well. So well that I can open a Terminal window on the new computer, type “history”, and see all the recent commands I executed on the old computer. Most software works as if nothing has changed. My full development environment works just as before. Which is the good.

Now the bad. Some applications recognise that this is a new machine. They want me to jump through hoops to sort this out.

The worst offender is Adobe Fireworks, and earns the “Hideously Ugly” award. Adobe’s license system assumes I am pirating software and treats me as guilty. It recognises that this is a new machine and therefore wants me to buy a new license. Or disable a license elsewhere. Except the second installation Adobe granted me was lost when I had to replace a motherboard. Now I have to get on the phone and persuade Adobe to sort this out. I did that once before, and it was a painful process.

Fireworks is good software and I spent time learning to use it properly. But due to this ongoing pain their license system causes, I’ve decided to stop using it. Instead I’ll find an alternative that might not be quite as good but will not assume I’m engaging in software piracy whenever I update computers, have a hard disk crash, or suffer other computer problems.