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KrisKT

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 12, 2009
15
1
Info: I have a 2017 iMac running High Sierra 10.13.6

Because I have a work laptop that is using Monterey, I never upgraded the iMac OS (partly due to not enough memory available on the internal SSD hard drive!). We use the iMac mainly for internet, mail and Photo/movie management.

A long time ago I moved the iTunes (12.8.3.1) and Photos (3.0) libraries to an external hard drive to save space. All of it is backed up every day to another external hard drive using Time Machine.

Ok, so I just bought the new Mac Studio to be the central home computer for the next 5+ years. My daughter is getting into 3D printing and segmenting medical CT data so we are excited about it!

Will just copying the iMac iTunes and Photos folders from the external hard drives over to the new Mac’s SSD work fine (even though Photos is now version 5)?

And will doing the steps listed below really work to make my iPhone start syncing seamlessly with iTunes on the new Mac Studio right away?

I want to always manually sync my iPhone to the Mac Studio using a USB cable. The iPhone backup is located in my iTunes folder and it is current. But now that there’s Apple Music….idk!

—Step 1: Click on Finder on the old Mac and select Mac's hard drive. Find the iTunes folder:

~/Music/iTunes
—Step 2: Copy the iTunes backup folder and iTunes Preferences files from the old Mac to the new Mac.
The locations are:

~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iTunes.plist

—Step 3: Connect the iPhone to the new Mac. Authorize the new computer and open iTunes. Now you should be able to sync iPhone to new Mac without losing data.

Also, my iPhone Apple ID is my iCloud account, but iTunes uses my other Apple ID that shares my media with our family Apple One premier account. I am unsure if that will affect any of this transfer process.

I do have the updated AnyTrans on the old iMac (? in case). And I do have AppleCare for the iPhone and the Mac Studio, but I have always gotten great advice here. Thanks!!
 
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