The Product Manager's MacBook Setup Guide

I just started a new role as a Staff Product Manager. Day one was approaching fast, and I had a blank MacBook Pro sitting on my desk. A 14-inch M4 Pro with 24GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.

The question wasn’t what to install. It was how to set up a machine that lets a PM move at the speed of thought: writing PRDs to spinning up prototypes to jumping on a customer call, all without friction.

This is the guide I wish I’d had.

The PM’s Dilemma

There’s a tension at the heart of every PM’s toolkit. You’re not an engineer, but you need to speak their language. You’re not a designer, but you need to give precise feedback. You’re not in sales, but you need to demo the product on the fly.

My philosophy is simple:

Be technical enough to prototype, clear enough to document, and fast enough to never block your team.

That means optimizing for speed, clarity, and collaboration, not engineering perfection. Every tool below earns its place by making me faster at one of three jobs:

1. Writing. PRDs, specs, customer insights
2. Building. Prototypes, MVPs, proof-of-concepts
3. Communicating. Demos, presentations, async updates

First Things First: System Preferences

Before installing a single app, I spend 20 minutes dialing in macOS itself. These tweaks are small individually, but compound into a noticeably smoother experience.

Look & Feel

Dark mode, always. Auto-hide the Dock. Remove every app I won’t use daily. Show battery percentage. Turn on Night Shift for late writing sessions.

Notifications: The Great Silencing

I keep exactly three apps allowed to interrupt me: Calendar (meetings), Slack (team comms), and Linear (project updates). Everything else gets turned off. Context switching is the PM’s worst enemy.

Trackpad

System Settings → Trackpad. Max tracking speed. Enable Tap to Click. These two changes alone make the MacBook feel twice as responsive.

Mouse

If you’re using an Apple Mouse with your Apple Studio Display (or standalone), head to System Settings → Mouse. Enable Secondary Click and set it to Click Right Side. Right-click is essential for context menus everywhere, from Figma to the terminal.

Keyboard Shortcuts

System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Spotlight: disable Spotlight’s Cmd+Space shortcut. We’re replacing it with something much better.

Finder

Open Finder, then go to Finder → Settings (Cmd+,). A few tweaks that save daily friction:

• General tab. Set “New Finder windows show” to Downloads
• Advanced tab. Check “Show all filename extensions” and set “Remove items from the Bin after 30 days”
• Desktop. Keep it completely empty. No files, no folders. If something’s on the desktop, it doesn’t have a home yet.

Security

Non-negotiable: FileVault ON (full disk encryption), Touch ID for everything. If you’re handling customer data, competitive intel, or roadmap docs (and you are), encryption isn’t optional.

Get a password manager. 1Password is my pick. It handles passwords, SSH keys, API tokens, and secure notes in one place. Bitwarden is a solid free alternative. Either way, stop reusing passwords and storing secrets in plain text files.

Terminal Tweaks

A handful of defaults write commands that macOS should ship with out of the box:

# Screenshots as JPG (smaller, good enough)
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg

# Show hidden files, path bar, status bar in Finder
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
defaults write com.apple.finder ShowPathbar -bool true
defaults write com.apple.finder ShowStatusBar -bool true

# Unhide the Library folder
chflags nohidden ~/Library

killall Finder

The App Stack

Here’s where things get opinionated. I split my apps into two categories: GUI apps I interact with visually, and terminal tools that power my command-line workflows.

GUI Apps: One Command

As of this writing, these are my current preferences. They change over time, so check the last updated date at the top.

brew install --cask \
  raycast google-chrome arc firefox \
  ghostty visual-studio-code cursor \
  figma notion linear-linear \
  slack discord zoom loom \
  cleanshot rectangle obsidian \
  tableplus postman docker \
  1password vlc maccy imageoptim

That’s 24 apps installed in under a minute. Let me walk through the ones that matter most.

Terminal Tools

brew install \
  git gh wget nvm pnpm yarn \
  jq tree htop tlrc bat \
  fzf ripgrep eza claude-code

These are the quiet workhorses. bat is a better cat. eza is a better ls. fzf is fuzzy finding for everything. tlrc gives you practical examples instead of man pages. ripgrep searches code faster than you can think of what to search for.

Raycast: The Command Center

This is the single most impactful app on this list. Raycast replaces Spotlight with something that actually understands how you work.

Cmd+Space opens it. From there I can:

• Search files, apps, and bookmarks instantly
• View my calendar without opening Calendar
• Search Linear issues or Notion docs
• Manage windows without reaching for a mouse
• Access clipboard history (every URL, quote, and snippet I’ve copied today)

The Terminal: Ghostty + Oh My Zsh + Starship

The default Terminal app is fine. Ghostty is better. It’s fast, memory-efficient, and GPU-accelerated. Split panes, native macOS feel, and none of the bloat.

Layer on Oh My Zsh for plugin management and Starship for a beautiful, informative prompt:

# Oh My Zsh
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL \
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

# Starship prompt
brew install starship
echo 'eval "$(starship init zsh)"' >> ~/.zshrc

# Hack Nerd Font (for icons in the prompt)
brew install --cask font-hack-nerd-font

Essential Plugins

Three plugins that make the terminal feel like it can read your mind:

• zsh-autosuggestions suggests commands as you type based on history
• zsh-syntax-highlighting colors valid commands green, invalid ones red
• zsh-completions smarter tab completion

These are custom plugins, so you need to clone them first:

git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions \
  ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions

git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting \
  ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting

git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-completions \
  ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-completions

Then add them to your plugin list in ~/.zshrc:

plugins=(
  git
  zsh-completions
  zsh-autosuggestions
  zsh-syntax-highlighting
  docker
  npm
)

My Aliases

These save me hundreds of keystrokes a day:

# Git (the ones I actually use)
alias gs="git status"
alias ga="git add ."
alias gc="git commit -m"
alias gp="git push"
alias gl="git lg"

# Navigation
alias projects="cd ~/Projects"
alias work="cd ~/Projects/work"

# Utilities
alias week="date +%V"
alias serve="python3 -m http.server 8000"

The AI Layer: Cursor + Claude Code

This is the 2025 part. Two tools that didn’t exist in my setup a year ago, and now I can’t imagine working without them.

Cursor: AI-First Editor

For rapid prototyping and MVP development. When I need to go from “idea on a whiteboard” to “working prototype” in an afternoon, Cursor is where it happens.

• Generate boilerplate for proof-of-concepts
• Explain unfamiliar codebases I’m reviewing
• Draft API schemas and data models
• Turn a sketch into a functional component

Claude Code: The Terminal Agent

This is the tool that changed how I work. Claude Code lives in my terminal and handles complex, multi-step coding tasks autonomously. Currently running with Opus 4.6, it’s the best I’ve found for handling PRDs and building quick MVPs.

npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

What I actually use it for:

# Generate a PRD from rough notes
claude "Create a comprehensive PRD for 'user-authentication'
  with problem statement, user stories, success metrics,
  and technical considerations"

# Analyze customer feedback
claude "Analyze this feedback file. Extract themes,
  pain points, feature requests, and sentiment"
  customer-feedback.txt

# Scaffold a prototype
claude "Build a landing page with hero, features,
  and CTA using Tailwind CSS"

Developer Essentials: Git, SSH & Node

Even as a PM, these are non-negotiable. You need to clone repos, review PRs, and run prototypes locally.

Git Configuration

git config --global user.name "Murat Karslioglu"
git config --global user.email "your-email@company.com"
git config --global init.defaultBranch main

# A beautiful git log
git config --global alias.lg "log --color --graph \
  --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset \
  %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset' \
  --abbrev-commit"

SSH for GitHub

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "github"
ssh-add --apple-use-keychain ~/.ssh/github

# Add to GitHub with the CLI
gh auth login
gh ssh-key add ~/.ssh/github.pub -t github

Node.js for Prototyping

# Install via NVM (version manager)
nvm install --lts
node -v && npm -v

# Global tools for quick prototyping
npm install -g serve http-server \
  json-server netlify-cli vercel

The Folder Structure

Simple, predictable, and hard to mess up:

~/Projects/
├── work/            # Company projects
│   ├── docs/        # Internal documentation
│   ├── prototypes/  # Quick MVPs
│   └── research/    # Customer interviews, analysis
├── blog/            # Personal blog
├── learning/        # Courses, tutorials
└── personal/        # Side projects

Everything has a home. Nothing lives on the Desktop.

Your First Week Checklist

If you’re starting a new PM role, here’s what to get done in week one:

• All system access: Slack, Linear/Jira, Figma, Notion, repos
• SSH keys configured, VPN set up
• Dev environment tested. Can you clone and run the product locally?
• First PRD template created in Notion
• Met with your engineering lead
• Reviewed the product roadmap
• Set up your customer feedback pipeline