Migration from Macbook Air M1 to M3

I recently inherited a MacBook Air M3 from a co-worker who left. Coming from an M1 MacBook Air, this upgrade feels fantastic. The new laptop has 24GB RAM and a 512GB SSD, compared to my previous 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD. Everything feels noticeably snappier. Plus, the keyboard is a huge improvement. The M1’s keyboard felt shallow, like I was tapping on a table rather than typing.

Migrating to the new machine was smooth and quick using Migration Assistant. Almost everything transferred over seamlessly except the Nix store. I had to reinstall Nix and Home-manager, but since all my configuration is stored, rebuilding my setup took just minutes. Yay!!

I use Docker quite a lot, and these two tricks helped me manage disk usage before. Now, with 512GB of storage, I feel like I have more breathing room.

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alias dgc='docker system prune -a --volumes' # nuke everything

And I always add --rm when running one-time containers with docker run to clean up after themselves.


Last modified on 2025-08-09