Don's Home Technology Macintosh How to transfer Content to a new Mac |
Moving to a new Mac with an M1 processor (also called "Apple Silicon")
In 2021 Apple started releasing Macs with their new M1 processor replacing the old Intel processor.
The new macs include software "Rosetta 2" which will let intel based programs run on an M1 mac but they are sometimes slow. The M1 is much faster than INTEL so most are OK.
Application developers are encouraged to re-write their software to run directly on M1, but they have 3 options. 1. Keep the old Intel program which requires to Rosetta 2 translation 2. Create Universal 2 software which includes both intel and M1 versions - Universal Binary 3. Create a new M1 only version which won't run on old Macs
How to see what versions you have | iMore
Copying information to a new mac:
Move your content to a new Mac - Apple Support Migration Assistant
Migration Assistant can either restore from a time machine backup, or by using WIFi.
See How to Transfer Data From Your Old Mac to a New Mac
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See Migrating from Intel iMac to M1 MacBook Air: My five-day journey - June 2021
My summary/comments on the above article:
You probably wouldn't have as many problems as him.
He uses things like photoshop and other adobe apps which can be problems
He was transferring from an iMac to a MacBook Air which could be more trouble.
He had problems connecting the new mac to the old mac with a docking station.
You would probably not need that.
In this story he reports problems with Adobe Apps (Photoshop, acrobat, ..)
He ran appcleaner but it didn't help.
Two things related to this.
1. Most mac guru's hate adobe. They say to use preview (An apple program not Adobe Acrobat to view pdfs)
2. Most of those programs like appcleaner and malware cleaners are actually spyware (not malware). They make most of their money by gathering information from your system and selling it to advertisers.
Apple support did recommend Adobe's "Creative cloud cleaner" which worked.
Result: Only 5 of 150 applications didn't run and installing a new version of them fixed the problems.
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I didn't use migration assistant.
I had a lot of old applications and associated preference files I never used and didn't want to copy them over.
So I just copied my data, pictures, ... and re-loaded new application as I needed them.
I had 107 applications on my old mac.
After 3 or 4 months I now have 65 applications.
It would not have been a problem to leave the old applications there.
They only took 22 GB out of my 256 GB hard disk.
Pictures and my websites took up 60 GB
Notes from macnexus | Sacramento User Group
Cleanup apps don't do a very good job Apple's Migration Assistant is selective and very good now Best to only copy documents Some things e.g. photos may be copied directly from icloud Reload apps from the web Don't move apps so you clean up 32-bit apps and other old apps Do a time machine backup first so you can get apps you might need Don't use timemachine May need to check icloud settings Don't copy library 32-bit check 32-bitCheck & ArchiChect – The Eclectic Light Company How to check if your Mac’s software is 32- or 64-bit Macworld