Cant find any way to setup new iphoneXS and restore from my iphoneSE

Everyone said settuing up a new iphone from your old one was easy.

Wrong.

I dont have icloud, so I did an ecrypted backup of my old iphone SE using itunes to an external HD.

Then I did the automatic setup which scans a code on my old iphone using the camera of the new.

Then it said it could not proceed because the new iphone has an old version of ios, and I had to set it up as a new iphone then do a manual restore

What a pain.

After some googling, I figured out how to set it up as a new iphone.

Then in itunes, with the new iphone connected, I tired "restore iphone". This complained that find my iphone was on. I have never used find my iphone, this took several hours to google and find how to disable on both the old phone and the new phone.

Now when I hit "restore iphone" in itunes with the new iphone connected, it only offers "restore to factory settings".

There seems to be no option to restore form my old iphone.

I have spent days trying to figure this out. It seems the worst conceived process I have come across in 30 years in the IT industry.

If I cant figure this out, how can the average user?

I am currrently faced with two options:

1) bin the new iphone XS and stick with my SE.

2) manually setup everything by hand on the new iphone.

Neither option is ideal, but option 1) will save be the most time and money.

Very disappointed.

Also there is no mention through any of this process how to get support.