Issues with migrating to an iPhone 13

TidBITS Talk
1

I used the ‘Quick Start’ method of migrating my iPhone 12 Pro to an iPhone 13 Pro. It took about 90 minutes and moved almost every setting and login appropriately. It even paired my Apple Watch to the new phone so that I didn’t need to go through the awkward Unpair->Migrate from old iPhone to new iPhone->Pair watch to new iPhone procedure. I also moved all wallet items to the new phone. However, there were a few rough spots and at least one change I’d like Apple to make:

  1. The change–this is a general problem with Apple hardware migration: The migration procedure migrates the name of the old device to the new device. I wish that either Apple would prompt for a name for the new device or automatically provide some variation. Unless you change the name of one of the devices, it becomes hard to confirm certain things (for example, did the watch pairing actually move?)

  2. As part of the migration, I was prompted to set up each credit card on the Apple watch again. That was fine with me, but I really would like a way to reorder the cards without needing to unpair them and then r-pair them in a specific order.

  3. All of my Authy codes for 2-factor authentication migrated from one iPhone to the other. I did need to actually play with one on the phone to get the Watch app to work.

  4. On my Macs, I needed to reauthorize the Apple Watch for unlocking the computers and apps (via System Preferences->Security and Privacy->General.

The one other glitch was having to update IOS 15.0 to a new IOS 15.0 to fix a few issues Apple caught after the OS was installed on the shipping phones. Unfortunately, they missed the ‘Apple Watch Face ID’ issue (as I discovered while grocery shopping on Saturday).

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Interesting!

I concur entirely about the iPhone name problem. Because we have so many old iPhones around and want to take non-personalized screenshots, my iPhones are always named clever things like “iPhone 11 Pro.” After migrating to the new iPhone 13 Pro, it was called “iPhone 11 Pro.” And when I was initially asked if I want to move my watch over to the new phone, it asked if I wanted to move it to “iPhone 11 Pro” with no way to tell which one was being discussed.

I didn’t have any issue with having to set up credit cards on the Apple Watch again. I did have to enter the three-digit security code for each one as part of the setup assistant, which was slightly tedious, but generally reasonable.

Nor did I have to reconnect my Apple Watch with my Macs. I don’t entirely understand what can cause that connection to be severed, since it has happened to me in the past at various times (and clearly did to you in this case).

Authy migrated fine, though I mostly use Authy Desktop on the Mac now. The only two apps that forced me to log in again were LastPass and Gmail, and I wasn’t offended at all that they required some extra security. 1Password required a new login too.