So if you went out and bought yourself a brand new Apple laptop or desktop Mac,
you might be wondering, how do I make the new computer look just like the old computer? Well,
in this video, we're going to do exactly that. And don't worry, this process is actually pretty easy,
but it can take some time. So definitely set aside enough time to do this process,
and you will not have access to the old Mac until it's complete.
And I know it may sound daunting to migrate from one computer to another,
but it's. Pretty darn simple. And this process has been around for quite some
time. I've had extremely good success with it over the years. That's not to
say that there can't be issues with it, but in general it should work pretty well.
And if you're watching this after already doing the initial setup on your new Mac,
but you still wanna get your files and applications from the old one,
don't worry. I'll show you how to do that later in the. Now there's actually a couple
different ways to migrate your data from the old computer to your new computer.
The first option would be Time machine, assuming you have a full-time machine
backup of your old computer. Then as we go through this process, you'll see where you
can actually use Time Machine to do the Restore on the new one. In my experience,
especially in the last few years, time machine has been pretty unreliable for me.
As both a backup or restore or an option to basically set up a new computer from a time
machine backup. So I don't think I would recommend it. I don't use it personally.
The next option is setting up your new computer as a brand new computer and going through the
process, and then later going back and migrating your data and applications.
Now this can be a much more invasive migration procedure because you have
to figure out how to get your applications and data from the old one to the new one.
You can use airdrop for files. You can do USB drive. But a lot of the
application data won't migrate seamlessly if you just try and move the application over.
There's lots of files and folders in your hidden library folder that would not move
along with it. So unless you're experiencing issues with your old computer or you know you
have a lot of stuff that you just don't need on the new one, I probably wouldn't
recommend this option either. And the third option is what we're going to be using today,
and that is using the migration assistant, which will as seamlessly as possible,
migrate all of your applications and data and settings and everyth.
From the old computer to the new one. This is by far the most seamless and quickest way to get up
and running on your new Mac. So let's just get started with the process. And the first thing
that you're gonna see right out of the box with your new Mac is going to be language selection.
So we're just gonna go through the process over here and I'll explain things as needed.
So we'll just hit next for English for me. You choose your own language,
of course. And here we're gonna select where we are. I'm in the United States, so I'll select.
Accessibility options. You can roll over these and click on these. If this is
something that you need, I'll just click Not now. For now, and this is where you
will select your wifi connection and I'll go ahead and sign into mine right now.
Next Apple's informing you some information about data and privacy continue. And here is
the start of the migration assistant. And you'll notice down here you have a couple
of different options you can do from Mac a time machine backup or from a startup disc. When you
transfer from a startup disc, that's assuming you have another startup disc inside your computer
or your hard drive has been partitioned into multiple bootable operating systems.
And that's how you can transfer from one of those into. The next option is time machine backup,
which we talked about, and the third option is going to be transferring from another Mac,
and that's what we're going to do now. If you do need to transfer from Windows,
there are some limited files you can transfer from a Windows pc, but that would be a different video.
So we will click on continue. Now it's warning you that. You probably wanna connect to AC Power.
This process can actually take quite a while to complete. So if you don't have a fully charged
battery or a good battery, especially on your old laptop, then you're gonna want to connect
to AC Power. Now the new computer is looking for other computers in the area to migrate data from.
So when you're migrating data from the old computer to the new computer using this,
There's actually three different ways or mediums you can use to connect the two
computers together. The first one is going to be a direct wifi connection. These two
computers will connect directly using wifi, bypassing your wireless router and other
things on your network, and just transfer the data directly from one to the other.
Now, this is actually the slowest method. Of transferring the data and it's not my
recommended path, but if you have no other options, it will work. It's just going to
take a bit longer. The second option is going to be using either net. Well, as you can see,
both of these computers and probably your Mac does not have either net connections.
So if you want to use ethernet to transfer from one computer to the other, you're going
to need a ethernet dongle for each of these computers and a one gigabit ethernet connection
to connect the two of them. Now, this option is faster than the wifi, but it's not as fast as
our third option. The third option is going to be connecting a Thunderbolt three cable.
Between the two computers. This is by far the fastest method to do the data transfers
between the two of them. And if you don't have an ethernet cable at home, I will leave
a link in the description below to one that I recommend. So right now I'm just going to connect
to the new computer. I'll wrap this around and connect it to the old one.
There we go. So with these two computers connected with a Thunderbolt three cable between them,
we can now open migration assistant on the old computer. So to do that,
you're going to go into your applications folder or launch. You're going to look for
a folder called other, and you're gonna click on migration Assist.
A migration assistant is going to be used to transfer all of the data over for you. So we'll
click continue and you're gonna type in your password. And what it's gonna do now is it's
actually going to close all of the applications and log you out of the system. And that's because
you need to be fully out of everything to be able to migrate it if a file or folder or.
Configuration settings are open somewhere, those won't be able to be migrated over,
so it does it for you. And right here you can see right now with migration assistant,
you can say, I wanna transfer to this Mac. Well, I don't wanna transfer to
this Mac because this is the old one, so I wanna transfer to another Mac.
We'll click continue. And it's warning you again about AC power continue. And
now these two devices are discovering each other. So the new computer now sees the old
computer over. So you can see it right here. We'll go ahead and click on him
and click continue. And now what you can see is a code shown on both of these laptops to
make sure that you're actually transferring to or from the computer that you expect.
So the code is the same, so we'll click continue on the old one. And now the old computer is going
to start scanning itself. It's scanning for files and for users and everything else that you might
wanna transfer from the old computer to the new. This will take just a couple minutes to complete.
So on the new computer now, you can see a list of all of the things available to migrate over.
You get your applications, you get your users, you get other files and folders, which is really
application data and configuration settings, and you get your system and network information right
there. So that's things like sharing preferences and computer name and whatnot. Down at the bottom,
you'll see some information about how much data will be transferred if you migrated everything.
And here's an example. If your new computer has a smaller hard drive,
or you're trying to transfer more data, then will fit on the new computer's hard drive.
You may have to deselect some of that information, so you can do that easily
by drilling down into the folder or item. You don't need to transfer and deselect it.
On this one, I'm going to select everything and continue.
And right here it's going to have you set passwords for the administrative users. So
I am an admin user on this computer. It wants me to set a password. Now this can be the same
password as you have on your user account on the old computer. It can be a new password.
It doesn't matter. You just have to set one. So after setting the admin password, you'll see
other user accounts down here that are non-ad admin accounts. And what happens with these is
they get a temporary. For them so that the first time that that user logs in, they'll need to use
that temporary password and then they'll be told to change the password after they first log in.
So you're going to want to write down that password for those users. Or you
can go ahead and take a picture of it with your phone and you know,
use that for logging in later. And when we're done with that, we'll click continue. And yes,
I did save that password. So I'll click continue again. And now the migration is going to.
So during this migration, everything that you selected previously, the applications,
the users, the system information, all of that is going to migrate over. And
you can see down here at the bottom, we are connected with Thunderball. And
down here you can click on connection details and you can see what I mean.
Where Thunderbolt is going to be much faster. So with a wifi direct connection,
it was estimating about two megabytes per second of transfer speed with ethernet
about 41 megabytes per second. And with Thunderbolt looking at over one gigabyte
per second transfer speed, that is way faster than the other options.
So I highly recommend that you pick up a Thunderbolt three cable if you don't. Now
this process is going to take some time. It says one hour, four minutes. Now that's gonna go up
and down drastically as this progresses, but it's probably, I'm guessing, for this amount
of data only gonna take about 15, 20, 25 minutes and we'll see what it looks like when we get back.
And now we just wait an indeterminate amount of time,
especially if you're using wifi. So you gotta find something to keep you busy.
Oh my
God. Will this ever end? Oh, hey, we're done. Well, it's a nice surprise. This actually only
took about 12 or 15 minutes, so actually pretty quick on this migration. You can see over here,
the new computer is going to restart in just a few seconds,
and when it does, it will come back up to. The initial setup process.
So we'll go ahead and let that reboot and then start in just a minute. Okay,
so we are rebooted and in just a moment. Yep, there we go. Migration has completed
and you'll see over here migration completed on the old one as well. We'll click done over
there and we can disconnect that Thunderbolt three cable and then the setup assistant.
We'll continue probably with touch. I. Okay,
apple id. So we need to sign into our Apple id. Now, while this is signing into iCloud,
I do wanna point out that doing this migration does create a little bit of a blip, it seems,
with the iCloud accounts. So it almost seems like this computer thinks it's this computer.
And iCloud sees two computers that are the exact same, trying to talk to it at the same time,
and it doesn't like that. So normally what happens is the old computer's gonna
start to get popups when you log. To say, Hey, you need to re-sign in
or re-authenticate iCloud on this computer, and sometimes that is a little bit finicky.
My recommendation is you just let that sit for a bit until you're done setting
up your new computer, and then go back and do the sign in or the re authentication on
the old one. That will probably make it go a little bit smoother. Otherwise it acts
just a little bit weird. With the analytics, you can choose to send it to iCloud or not.
We'll just hit continue and here's touch id and I'm sure at this point you know how to
set up touch ID next Apple Pay. We're gonna set that up later. There you go. As you can see,
both computers look the exact same at this time, so right now we're getting a little
bit of an air because the naming over here on the old computer will just hit okay, and we should be.
So at this point, all of your user data and applications and files and folders and everything,
all your settings and configurations should have moved from the old computer to the new
computer. So you are basically ready to rock and roll and get back to work. Now,
I do wanna point out that like the iCloud, there are some little issues that you may run into.
Probably to do with app compatibility. Now, if you're coming from an older computer with a,
say an Intel processor and going to something like the Apple Silicon Max,
you may have to install what's called Rosetta, and that's just something that allows you to be able
to run older apps on the newer Mac. A lot of apps have been updated in the last couple of years,
and they basically contain the code for both the Intel and the Apple silicone.
So you won't need to do anything with those,
and some may just need to be updated to the newest. Also when doing a migration like this,
most applications should work just fine. But if you purchased third party applications from,
say, Adobe, or any other third party software site, you may have to reactivate
those applications on the new one, and you may have to deactivate those apps on the old ones.
So that really is going to be dependent upon the application specifically. But if you got
things from, say, the Mac App store, those should migrate and work no problem without
having to worry about any. And for that error message that popped up just a moment ago,
you can see that the old computer is MacBook Air two and the new one is MacBook Air three.
So it resolved that issue by itself. And you can see on the old one,
I am now getting an error or alert about my apple ID on the old one. So again,
I would just wait just a little bit before you do anything with that. Start working on this one,
make sure everything's moved over that you expect, and then later go back.
Fix this issue with Apple id. So now, like I said at the beginning of the video,
if you already set up your New Mac without going through this process and migrating,
but now you wanna go back and bring your old data applications and files
and whatever from the old computer to the new computer, this is how you do that.
Just like before you're going to open up migration assistant on both of these computers,
you're going to go to. The applications folder or launchpad, click on other and
then click on migration assistant. You'll hit continue on both of these.
Type in your passwords, and then like before, it's going to log out of everything on these computers.
So it can do a migration on the new computer you're going to want to select from a Mac,
and then on the old computer you're going to select to a Mac,
and now you will be able to follow the process that we already went through and transfer all
of the data from the old computer to the new existing user profile on the new computer.
But we're not gonna do that right now. We're just gonna hit quit. But
you should have no issues with running that. Awesome. So that is the simple,
easy, straightforward process to migrate from an old Mac to a new Mac. What'd you
think? Was it easier than you thought? Now, an Eagle Eye viewer. Might have
realized that this is an older Intel MacBook Air, and this is a newer M one MacBook Air.
And why do I have an older Intel MacBook Air? Well stay tuned to the channel if
you're curious about that, and definitely hit subscribe. So now that you're fully up
and running on your brand new Mac, you may wanna reconfigure your whole desk
setup like I did. And if you're interested in that, check out this video right over here.
Hit the thumbs up button if you liked it. Hit subscribe if you want, and I'll see you next time.