Partial migration to new Mac off ropey old Time Machine possible?

[Iouis]

Hi all

Long time lurker, new poster.

I've just purchased a new MBP and I'm regularly annoyed by my current MBP. (It takes about 1-2 mins from boot to settle down and has some foibles and likes to show me the marble of doom for random reasons).

I believe this is mainly due to being migrated to a new Mac every few years since 2009.

With my new MBP I decided I wanted to start afresh, but can't bear the thought installing all the apps and setting up all their configs etc. Is there a way I can move settings for some apps without carrying over all the legacy issues and ensure my new computer is perfect from the get go, please?

Thanks!

 

[BrianBaughn]

I consider myself relatively knowledgeable about the subject (Apple Certified Support Professional) and I wouldn't attempt it. Actually, I didn't attempt it…started from scratch a few months back with my Mac Studio.

In the past I've also limited the number of macOS version upgrades I'll do on a particular Mac before I do a clean install of a newer release.

 

[Iouis]

Thanks. I think "Apple Certified Support Professional" sells me on the fact I should probably start from scratch!

Whenever I've upgraded the OS or moved it's always been a migration onto a fresh install, it's clearly just got some legacy lag!

 

[BrianBaughn]

Thanks. I think "Apple Certified Support Professional" sells me on the fact I should probably start from scratch!

Whenever I've upgraded the OS or moved it's always been a migration onto a fresh install, it's clearly just got some legacy lag!

You've been lucky. Some old stuff (third-party) can cause things to completely malfunction.

 

[Iouis]

I certainly have numerous notifications of legacy/unsupported when I boot and at times I can wait a minute for finder to finally come to life.

I'm also guilty of leaving my MBP on for weeks at a time (mainly to save turning it on, as for the most part it's decent once it's running). I hate to think what the i9 does for my electricity bills.

Probably should've fresh installed this first, it's only 2 years old, but as I use it everyday for work, it's been a plaster I didn't want to rip off.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP asks:
"Is there a way I can move settings for some apps without carrying over all the legacy issues and ensure my new computer is perfect from the get go, please?"

There is.
It's called "manual migration" (i.e., NOT using setup assistant)

One can do this (I have), but it's a slower and painstaking "process".

And I'm not sure one could do this from a tm backup.
One CAN do it from "a cloned backup" created with either CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper.
Reason why:
CCC and SD backups mount right "in the finder", and look like any other drive would on the desktop. Once you take steps to deal with permissions problems, you can "grab" just about anything (including preference files) and move them over to the new Mac.

Also:
If you're intent on doing things "manually", it would be a good idea to set up the new Mac next to the old one, so you can have BOTH OF THEM on at once, and move things over in small "bits and pieces". Kind of like this (pics from an earlier manual migration):
On the left (old g4):

And to the right (on the same table, new 2012 Mini):

 

[AppliedMicro]

Is there a way I can move settings for some apps without carrying over all the legacy issues and ensure my new computer is perfect from the get go, please?

Fully migrate your user folder, system and network settings.
But install applications anew. Only the ones you need.
That’s a sensible compromise.

Most apps’ configuration is just a couple (or many) configuration files - they aren’t going to slow down your Mac if you don‘t have the application installed. Even gigabytes of old application support and preference files in the Library folder won‘t slow your Mac down - unless that application is being „run“. With very few exceptions (e.g., if you have ton a fonts installed on your user folder, they may slow a word processing application you open that tries do cache and preview all of them in a list - even if it’s a different application than the one that made you install these fonts).

 

[Iouis]

Thanks, so by migrating the above I negate the potential historical crud.

What is it that gets migrated over that causes all the lag within a new Mac? (I'm hoping to understand, I've always just blindly migrated everything for the last 14 years.)

 

[Fishrrman]

Applied wrote:
"Fully migrate your user folder, system and network settings.
But install applications anew. Only the ones you need."

There's a problem here.
When you include the "settings and data" option in setup assistant, you are migrating ALL your old app settings and ancillary files. This is usually where "the crud" is.

Even if you don't migrate an old app itself, there is a lot of stuff (in your home folder library) that will get carried over, too. That's because setup assistant doesn't let you pick-and-choose when migrating settings -- it just moves everything.

To start really, REALLY clean, one would need to install NEW apps into a NEW user folder (that has no old settings in it), and rebuild preferences and settings from the get-go.

 

[AppliedMicro]

When you include the "settings and data" option in setup assistant, you are migrating ALL your old app settings and ancillary files. This is usually where "the crud" is.

As I stated above: They may needlessly consume some storage space, but they will (usually) not slow down a Mac. EDIT: Though occasionally, an item may indeed hide as "ancillary files" in the user folder. A notable example (and exception) is the Google "Keystone" Updater. But that is easily detectable in System Preferences' "Login Items".

I just looked, and I've got more than 20GB in /Library/Application Support in my user folder.
I also got than thousand items in /home/Library/Preferences. The oldest one, a .plist dating back to May 2004.

Yet my base model M1 Mac mini starts up blazingly fast. Because I have hardly any services or apps automatically starting. And I haven't installed drivers or utilities I don't really need.

I certainly have numerous notifications of legacy/unsupported when I boot

👆This is exactly the crud that will slow down a Mac: Installed applications, extensions and drivers, especially when they're invoked automatically upon startup. Settings files will not, and neither will ancillary files (with few exceptions).

👉 But there's actually very few places of settings in macOS that govern which programs, including and "hidden" background helpers, utilities and services get automatically started when you turn on or log into your Mac. You may want to check manually for such automatically starting items: https://www.macworld.com/article/221774/take-control-of-startup-and-login-items.html.

So here's what I would do:

1. Migrate User Folder and Computer and Network settings to new Mac using Migration Assistant.
   
   👉 This should save you so much time in setting up your configurations for applications
2. Check Login Items in System Preferences and/or the folders mentioned in the article above, especially:
   /Library/LaunchAgents
   /Library/LaunchDaemons
   /Users/your-username/Library/LaunchAgents
   
   👉 These contain .plist files. And if you look at them in QuickLook, they should show you the path for the application/component that they will run. E.g. "com.microsoft.update.agent.plist" will cause a small programm located at "/Library/Application Support/Microsoft/MAU2.0/Microsoft AutoUpdate.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Update Assistant.app/Contents/MacOS/Microsoft Update Assistant" to run.
   
   👉 You should recognise the entries as coming from applications you've used/installed. If not, that's probably not a good sign.
   
   👉 Here's the thing: It's probably save to remove all of the entries (.plist files) in those three folders, if you are going to reinstall all your applications anyway.
3. Restart your Mac
4. Reinstall your applications
5. Check those folders again, removing any unwanted entries (do you need a background process waiting for your multifunction printer's "Scan" button, if you're only scanning from an application on the desktop?).
6. Enjoy

👉 All in all, this should just take a couple of minutes of work - in addition to freshly installing your applications. Freshly installing applications is probably good practice at this point anyway, to ensure they're up to date, cope with your new OS, permissions and privacy settings and make sure that the licensing works.

And it'll most probably take MUCH less time than setting up all of your applications' configs and workspace again.