Do you REALLY need to do a manual install of everything on a new laptop instead of using the "migration assistant?"

[dmccloud]

This is something I've heard over the years to do to improve performance. That when you get a new machine to "set it up as new computer then spend the weekend re downloading all your apps, getting preferences setup, moving over files one by one" and I parroted this myself to many people. The idea was that stuff can get garbled along the way and your system will work better because... reasons.

But is there actually any concrete evidence that this does anything? I'm sitting here looking at a new laptop and with my sketchy internet speed, and all the little tweaks I run in various programs, I'm not thrilled about spending what I estimate to be 10+ hours of my time re-configuring everything even after the downloads are done. Is there any actual A/B testing showing if this matters or if that's one of those hold over myths from the old days?

Setting a new machine up as new will clear out any clutter that has accumulated under the hood of the older machine. However, it's impossible to quantify this because everyone will have different amounts of clutter under the hood. The other consideration (which the the most important one in my mind) relates to applications themselves. Assuming you would be moving from an Intel-based Mac to an Apple Silicon based Mac, I would set up as new anyways because Universal or Apple Silicon apps will have better overall performance than Intel-native apps. As far as documents and other files go, those can just be copied over from the old PC to the new in bulk and only takes as long as the actual transfer between machines. File types are platform and architecture agnostic, which is why you can open a .docx file in Microsoft Word under Windows, Intel Mac, and AS Mac without needing to convert the file, even though all three builds of Word will be different based on the OS and hardware architecture being used.

 

[Gudi]

View attachment 2294669

What an absolutely amazing photography. Look how much the basic concept of the MacBook stayed the same! It doesn't fold backwards into a transformer that's also a phone and a tablet, it's just a better laptop in every which way. And think about how cheap a Mac is, if you spread the daily costs over 10 years. Absolutely wonderful! 😍

 

[Populus]

I do it, but I admit it is mainly OCD. I mean, I even reinstall and configure manually the Mac each time I perform a format and clean install. On both my Mac, my iPad and my iPhone.

To help with the configuration, I have a note with all the steps and settings I have to enable/disable after a fresh install of both MacOS and iOS/iPadOS.

It probably is a placebo effect, but each time I perform a clean install, I notice the machine much more snappy and responsive.

 

[tonyr6]

I did a clean install when I went from my MBP 16 2019 to my MPA 15 2023 only because of the Intel, Silicon apps problems. But any future MacBooks I will be using Migration Assistant.

 

[mslilyelise]

Your mileage is always going to vary. Migration Assistant does a near-perfect job of transferring not just apps and documents but system setup and settings too, because it moves the System and Library directory contents to the new installation. But sometimes that isn't what you want. I did a clean install once Sonoma was publicly released because I'd upgraded from Monterey to Ventura, and then through the various Sonoma beta stages, and I wanted to see if clearing out any left-over cruft would help at all. Mostly, I can't tell the difference.

What you do notice if you do a fresh install is just how many little things you've configured and modified and changed in all of your apps and in the system itself. It took me a week or so to finally get everything back to how it was. I probably won't bother when macOS 15 comes around, and just upgrade in place.

 

[ChrisA]

This is something I've heard over the years to do to improve performance. That when you get a new machine to "set it up as new computer then spend the weekend re downloading all your apps, getting preferences setup, moving over files one by one" and I parroted this myself to many people. The idea was that stuff can get garbled along the way and your system will work better because... reasons.

But is there actually any concrete evidence that this does anything? I'm sitting here looking at a new laptop and with my sketchy internet speed, and all the little tweaks I run in various programs, I'm not thrilled about spending what I estimate to be 10+ hours of my time re-configuring everything even after the downloads are done. Is there any actual A/B testing showing if this matters or if that's one of those hold over myths from the old days?

No. Doing all that manual work only makes some people feel good. In the old days when the software was loaded from floppy disks. Fies would load faster if the blocks in the file were physically consecutive on the disk. Or sometimes it was even faster if they were written in an interleaved fashion. The ide was to minimize the physical motion of the read/write heads and to reduce rotational latency. This is really a big deal in the late '70s and early '80s and then we started using hard drives, the effect was less noticeable but still mattered. When hard drives gain large RAM caches this matters less and now with SSD the concept of physical movement is completely gone and it is best to scatter the file over many random physical locations to "level" wear on the SSD. This 45-year-old advice needs to die.

 

[Ben J.]

I agree. There is no really good reason to do a "clean install" when updating macOS. In my experience, the combination of the scheme with a locked System volume and another volume for everything else, and the Migration Assistant, is rock solid, and have been for years.

Except, two things that I can think of:

1. On first boot after update and MA transfer, one might experience stuff not working and you get error messages. Like, extentions, helpers, login-processes, call them what you will. This is most often just a question of enabling them in the Security/Privacy section of System settings, and is because of … security. Easily done.

2. Sometimes it just makes sense to start fresh. A new mac, expecting to use it in new ways, or you simply feel that you have too much redundant stuff on it. An opportunity to get rid of things. (I'm not saying lots of old data is bad, I have things going back decades. But sometimes I see people thinking "my mac is slow - it's probably because I have so much old stuff on it". Unless it's incompatible software, or your drive is filled to the brink, this is not true.)

 

[spiderman0616]

A new laptop once every decade is a good opportunity for a clean install. Especially if you also switch from Intel to Apple Silicon. If you upgrade more often, just migrate.

I had never done a straight migration on ANY computer with an Intel chip, but for some reason I felt like trying it when I went from M1 Air to M1 Pro and it was so easy and fast. Maybe not quite as seamless as switching iPhones but pretty close.