Migrating MacBook Pro to M2 MacBook Air

[Dennis Kane]

I plan on using CCC or SuperDuper to clone my MacBook Pro for safety sake and then using Migration or Setup assistant if it can hook up to my mid 2012 MacBook Pro using ethernet, Thunderbolt, wireless or whatever works with Catalina.

Should I use CCC or SuperDuper?

How should I connect the two machines to use Migration or Setup assistant?

Regarding the second question, I would have previously used target disk mode, but who knows if that still works. I think that I have the right dongles… maybe. I am sure that I have USB-C to ethernet but do I have Thunderbolt to USB-C, probably not.

I can probably stumble my way through this, but it doesn’t hurt to ask to head off any pitfalls.

Dennis

[all...@podfeet.com]

Great questions, Dennis and I can almost answer them.

Apple don't allow cloning of the entire system anymore, so that's not really an option no matter what you do. Mike Bombich is rebranding Carbon Copy Cloner as CCC Backup and I suspect the change by Apple is why.  That said, I find CCC to be highly superior to SuperDuper! and I've used both of them extensively.

You don't actually tell us what you're cloning from/to. You wrote that you want to clone your MacBook Pro and that you want to hook it to your 2012 MacBook Pro. Are you saying you have 3 machines and you want to clone the middle one back to the 2012 and then somehow migrate to the newest one? That makes no sense but I'm tangled in what you wrote.

If we start from scratch and imagine you have a Mac with data and maybe apps you want to migrate to a new machine, then I can take a stab at this.

• If your older Mac is Intel and your newer one is Apple Silicon, I would highly recommend that you not migrate anything but your data. If you migrate apps and settings, you'll likely install old Intel apps that will run in Rosetta (emulation) on Apple Silicon. 
• Assuming this is the path, I'd run CCC to make a good backup from the old machine
• I'd plug the backup from CCC into the new machine, and run Migration Assistant from the new machine and point to the backup drive
• I'd choose ONLY your data
• Then I'd install all of the apps you need from fresh downloads
• I realize this is time-consuming but if you're going from 2012 to 2024 that's twelve years of old cruft you don't want to bring along

If you really want to plug one Mac into another,  you can use an Ethernet dongle, but I've had trouble beating Migration Assistant into submission to use the cable instead of WiFi.

Hope that helps. If I guessed wrong, set me straight!

Allison Sheridan
Podfeet Podcasts at https://podfeet.com
Technology geek podcasts with an EVER so slight Apple bias!
Follow me on Mastodon @pod...@chaos.social

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[Dennis Kane]

Oops, guess that I wasn’t clear.

From - MacBook Pro 2012 with Firewire, Ethernet, Thunderbolt running Catalina (newest MacOS that it can run)

To - MacBook Air 2023 15"

[Steven & Carol Soloski]

I did a very similar xfer a couple of months ago. 2012 1Tb iMac to 2023 1Tb M2 Macbook Air. Apple has a usb C to old thunderbolt adapter for $49. When I did the Migration assistant, I could not get the xfer to work with either the usb C ethernet or thunderbolt adapters. I finally got it to migrate peer to peer and .9Tb took over a half day, but it did work. I could confirm the adapter connections for other things but not the Migration assistant.
If your setup doesn't work with ethernet, peer to peer will do it sloooowly.
Good luck
Steve s
Ps
I used CCC for a backup clone. Very easy to use.
Sent from my iPad

> On Jan 23, 2024, at 3:19 PM, Dennis Kane <denni...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

> I plan on using CCC or SuperDuper to clone my MacBook Pro for safety sake and then using Migration or Setup assistant if it can hook up to my mid 2012 MacBook Pro using ethernet, Thunderbolt, wireless or whatever works with Catalina.

[all...@podfeet.com]

The M2 MacBook Air is a spectacular machine (I have one) and you'll be soooo happy with it! That is if you take my advice and only migrate your data!!!

Allison Sheridan
Podfeet Podcasts at https://podfeet.com
Technology geek podcasts with an EVER so slight Apple bias!
Follow me on Mastodon @pod...@chaos.social

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/machacers/83515610-73CA-4180-9208-C172BA9A60F6%40gmail.com.

[Dennis Kane]

Yes, unlike any past utterances on my part, I am fully on board with migrating data only although I wonder how it will work with semi-hidden data like mail, music and photos. I guess migration assistant will move those without moving the applications.

BTW, I just looked in my backpack to see which dongles, connectors and converters I have. I have at least a dozen  including cables plus a whole large cardboard box of various cables in the bedroom. I should get rid of 2/3 of this crap but fortunately for me, my wife is not on this mailing list.

--Dennis, Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 23, 2024, at 4:19 PM, all...@podfeet.com wrote:

The M2 MacBook Air is a spectacular machine (I have one) and you'll be soooo happy with it! That is if you take my advice and only migrate your data!!!

[all...@podfeet.com]

If you're using IMAP, don't move your mail, just set it up again. It takes seconds to do that even for bad-habits people like me who rarely delete mail.

If you use iCloud Photo Library, don't move your photos either, let them download. I have over 100,000 photos and it works well (takes around 3 days for originals to download but you're probably not nuts like me).

I don't do music so I'm not sure if this strategy deals with this category or not, perhaps others can weigh in.  I know it depends on whether you have locally stored music not in the cloud.

Allison

[pa...@mactechservices.com]

Hi

When you use Migration assistant I usually select all except the Applications. 

It will ask to set a password for any administrator users you are migrating. 

Photos and Music are Apple apps anlread installed with the system.  

Your user library will contain its invisible Library which has all the Mail settings. 

Your photos, music and movies folders are subsidiaries of your user folder, so those all come along nicely. 

Sent from my iPhone. Some imagination required. 

On Jan 23, 2024, at 5:00 PM, Dennis Kane <denni...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[DENNIS KANE]

I do use IMAP but I have a number of local legacy mail folders. It will be interesting to see if it picks those up.

I use Google cloud photo storage. I pretty much do not use the Mac photo application, and I’ve already copied everything from there to Google photo cloud. There may be some random music left hanging around, but I pretty much use Apple Music subscription for my listening enjoyment.

Migration, assistant, and Setup assistant are busily talking to each other at the moment, wireless peer-to-peer. The whole thing will probably take 19 hours.

By the way, I’ve mentioned this before but there’s a good chance that you can access Google Drive with unlimited storage if you’ve been to some sort of college, including community colleges. I have unlimited storage through my old Ucla ID which had to be reissued since when I intended Ucla all the records were paper. Oh, I have to go now, so I can yell at the kids to get off my lawn.

--Dennis, Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 24, 2024, at 7:42 AM, 'pa...@mactechservices.com' via MacHACers <mach...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Hi

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[Mario Obejas]

I migrated my 2012 MacBook Pro on wired ethernet to my M2 Macbook Air on wired ethernet  using this USB-C to ethernet connector, without issue:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082K62S48?th=1

Just make sure you have wireless turned off on both and they are both are connected to the your router's same wired internal LAN network (ie, not your internal guest LAN).

On Tuesday, January 23, 2024 at 03:32:07 PM PST, all...@podfeet.com <all...@podfeet.com> wrote:

[snip]