Hi all
I’m finally taking the plunge and replacing my 12 year-old MacBook Pro with a mini.
Adam’s article of backups has prompted me to ask for suggestions and help.
I’ve got Time Machine and SuperDooper! backups that I could use to transition, but equally, my current machine has system barnacles hanging off it since my original LCII running, ahem, System 6
Should I just let Migration Assistant do its stuff again, or is there a case for carefully transitioning onto the mini ‘by hand’ to have the cleanest system possible ?
Thanks for any advice and experiences people have had.
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I think as you’ll be transitioning from Intel to Apple Silicon then a by hand my be the better solution.
I don’t think (could be wrong) that migration assistant would check for native silicon versions of your apps and then you may install rosetta unnecessarily.
You could also decide to only install apps as you need them, you might find there are apps installed you don’t use anymore.
/2p
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I was in a similar situation. I can trace the lineage of my current M1 MacBook Air to a 2005 12" G4 PowerBook that originally ran OS X 10.3 Panther. At first, I also wanted to migrate “by hand” from an Intel MacBook Pro to start with as clean of a system as possible.
If you only use a few apps, I think that migrating by hand is reasonable, but if you use a lot of apps, building a new machine and migrating files manually can be an extremely frustrating experience in the age of Sonoma/Sequoia. The number of security prompts and other notifications presented by recent versions of macOS can be very intrusive even on simple systems. They are a nightmare on complicated systems with a lot of apps.
I started a manual migration, but the constant barrage of prompts and notifications became so annoying that I abandoned the effort, wiped the new M1, and used Carbon Copy Cloner to make a fresh cloned drive from the old MacBook Pro and Migration Assistant to do the actual migration. There still were more prompts than I would have liked, but far fewer than I encountered during the manual process. The Migration Assistant process ran smoothly, and I’ve been happy with my M1 MBA ever since.
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As I mentioned in a previous post a few months ago, my M1 Air had to be wiped clean at an Apple Store due to a firmware issue. I then used Migration Assistant for my apps and data and it worked fine as I recall although there may have been a few apps that had to be copied manually. I have some older apps I use like iTunes so Rosetta is installed and those work fine at this point under Sequoia 15.2 but it seems that there are various methods you can use. My data was from a Carbon Copy Cloner backup as I don’t use Time Machine.
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Not sure why installing Rosetta is an issue as there are many old apps that can still run on Apple Silicon at least for now.
I didn’t say it was an issue, I said unnecessarily - if all the apps have silicon versions it’s better to use them and then you may not need it. which is surely better, no?
That would depend on whether the Silicon version is truly better than an older one which might have different features. Rosetta works well in my experience.
My theory was that I should set up a new machine from scratch, so as to not carry over issues from the old machine to the new machine.
But this is so much work! It isn’t just the amount of work it takes to reinstall and configure each application; some are difficult to reinstall because the application’s installers are no longer available or don’t work. Or, it turns out that some setting you really liked isn’t exposed in the GUI anymore.
And while in theory it is each to migrate macOS Mail – just copy certain folders and settings – in practice it is a pain.
So I gave in, and now I use Migration Assistant. I do not regret this decision.
I had no trouble using Migration Assistant to migrate from my Intel MacBook Pro to a new Apple Silicon model.
I do have one caveat though: I have had a problem with my MBP for many models and versions of macOS: while my iMac can see the MBP in the Finder sidebar, the reverse is not true. It can connect to it via the Network location, but it refuses to appear in the sidebar on its own until connected. This has defied all my attempts to fix it. So I’m wondering if this is a bug that I’m carrying from machine to machine. Of course, it could be that the MBP is working but the iMac is actually the problem.
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So, am I correct to infer that it’s no longer possible to set up a new computer by booting from a CCC or SD! clone of the old machine then re-clone it back to the new machine because it’s no longer be possible to attach a drive with a ‘bootable clone’ to a new machine and boot from that? In the past I have done this many times but now Migration Assistant seems to be the only path available.
Like Firefox’s compact-size toolbars. At some point in the past, they dropped support for them. People with old installations migrated to the current version still have the option in the GUI, but it’s hidden from everybody else unless you hack the configuration re-enable the option.
Right answer, wrong reason.
You can make bootable backups either using Apple’s undocumented tool (which CCC and SD! both use), or by installing macOS over a data-only backup.
You should be able to boot a new computer from this backup, as long as the CPU architecture matches (Intel or Apple Silicon).
What you can’t do is clone your backup to an Apple Silicon Mac’s internal storage. For a variety of technical reasons, this can’t be done. Which is the actual reason why you can’t migrate a system this way.
But IMO, I don’t think it’s that big a deal. Copying all your data via Migration Assistant is going to be faster than cloning the drive, which would copy the OS as well, even though there’s already a working copy of the OS on that new Mac. And that approach will ensure that if there is some subtle difference in macOS installations, you won’t end up accidentally installing incompatible system software.
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Are we 100% sure about that?
The problem with this subject is there’s things you absolutely can not do, things that definitely work, and then a vast grey area in between.
What we know for sure is that you can’t clone macOS in to Apple Silicon. That is, you can clone out to create bootable backups, but you can’t do the reverse. In SuperDuper! terms, this is an “erase then copy” clone.
But can you clone the Data volume in, while booted from another drive (or using the Apple Silicon version of Target Disk Mode)? That I’m not so sure.
My best guess is…
- Cloning data from a clone of the same computer may work
- Cloning data from a different computer, on the other hand, is either a) not going to work, b) probably doomed to fail but maybe could work, or c) yeah it might work but it is a bad idea. I wouldn’t try it, myself.
Where I think the trouble would be is in establishing ownership of the accounts. Apple Silicon macOS is really picky about that. Must be a chain-of-trust thing.
If you’re asking if I’ve tried it, the answer is no.
I’m referring to the CCC article about Creating legacy bootable copies of macOS (Big Sur and later), which says:
But I may have misremembered that message, or the “Note” part didn’t exist the last time I read this article. So it looks like it will fail on Big Sur but may work on Monterey (and later, I’d presume).
So, give it a try, but be prepared to use Migration Assistant if it fails.
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Depending on the age of the old machine and its macOS version and the hardware involved for both machines…it is possible o do this…but TBH MA is going to be easier. If it’s an old Intel machine…I wouldn’t be tempted to setup the new machine with an admin account, copy the homedir over and then create the everyday user account with the same username so the permissions will get fixed…and then reinstall all the apps. From an Apple Silicon machine just use MA. But…we are way down the rabbit hole here. And as the other reply noted…there are things known to work, things that are known not to work…and a whole lot of dunno in between them.
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A point to remember is that you can always start by trying the migration method, and if you don’t like the results use Erase All Content and Settings to put it back to factory settings with a few clicks….and start again with the fully manual approach.
Nothing lost by trying the easy method first.
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Migration Assistant should do a reasonable job, but given the time period involved here, it might be best to do what I call a Level 2 clean install, where you use Migration Assistant to restore data, but install all apps fresh.
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Hello,
I just got a new MacBook in November 2024.
For the last four new MacOS systems moves I did use the “Migration Assistant” but this time, I thought I would just move what was needed. The only issue with doing it this way was time…
After two weeks I no longer needed to install new Apps or find missing files.
Sadly there are three or four programs that need “Rosetta” but I love the new system over all.
I even freed 1.5TB on this move…
Last night was the first time that I found a setting that was missing, my Photoshop custom “Actions” it did take minute find them on the old system & get them installed…
The only downside to this new system is my SSL VPN connection will not auto reconnect & it drops all the time…
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At the beginning of this month I had to replace my mid 2019 MBP (Intel). I purchased a M4 MBP and used the migration assistant without any problems. Just remember that the assistant must be running on both machines.
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I recently replaced my 2017 Intel iMac with an M4 Mac Mini. I used Migration Assistant with a SuperDuper! backup external drive as the source and it worked great.
For what it’s worth my vote is to take the manual route to rebuilding. I did this when I migrated from a 2014 Retina iMac to my current M2 Mac mini. Yes, it’s a lot of work and you need to plan it carefully. And yes, Adam’s suggestion about using Migration Assistant for data but not for apps is wise. There was so much accumulated application junk on the old machine that might have come over had I used Time Machine etc. I find it annoying that many apps install files in places that a user with admin privileges cannot delete.
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Don’t take this as advice, it’s just what works for me. My last three Macs were: 2016 butterfly atrocity; 2020 M1 MacBook Pro; and 2023 M3 Max MacBook Pro.
For both of the Apple Silicon Macs, I did a clean install and manual migration. It’s not for everyone, but (especially from Intel to Apple Silicon) it was worth it to me.
Yes, it’s work. But if you plan it out, it’s not so much work that it’s heinous. (For some definitions of heinous, anyway.)
I’ve been keeping a log of install and configuration steps for each of my Macs, for both personal and work, for at least the last 3-4 systems. It’s just a note in Apple Notes, with a bulleted list of a summary of the step. But it makes it pretty easy to review the last machine’s details and process, and plan the new one’s build-up.
It’s vastly easier if you’re able to use both machines while you do the configuration, so you can e.g. open an app’s Settings and re-create them on the new machine. I now capture screenshots of each of those panels, and put those in the set-up log as well. (Not every app, but the ones where the config is elaborate, or non-obvious.)
I get the appeal of Migration Assistant, and have used it more than once. At least one of those went badly, and at least one of them went well. I find the non-deterministic behavior troubling. Even though I know Migration Assistant has gotten much better over the years, I prefer to avoid it, unless I’m in a rush.
Or doing someone else’s Mac set up. My wife’s Macs have all been set up with Migration Assistant. But she’s not installing weird utilities, command line tools, and other things that are edge cases for Migration Assistant. When all you really need to migrate is your apps and your Home folder, Migration Assistant is an easy choice. (And if you review Macs and macOS for a living, I would imagine that Migration Assistant is a must.)
Weird side note: I have one persistent configuration weirdness that has persisted through both of the last two “clean” installs. The color names of the flags in Mail are in, I think, Dutch. I was at one point trying to get the localized string of a specific UI element in a number of foreign languages, and so I was changing the language setting in macOS to see what it was. (I’m sure there are easier ways to do what I did, but it was … expedient.)
When I finally went back to English, everything was back to “normal” (for a US English user), except the names of the flags in Mail.app, which remain in a foreign language. I suspect, but am not certain, that this is propagated via iCloud, since my process of migrating Mail’s folders is to export on the old system and re-import on the new machine. (Corrupt a mailbox once, you get paranoid.) I’ve decided it’s charming…
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