Restoring a new macbook pro from time machine backup with High Sierra

Setup assistant (at first run) will ask you to Create new user account.

If you are ready, you can just say, "over there" and point to your connected computer or Time machine backup. It will Migrate your old data instead of creating a new Account.

If not ready at day 1, you can use Migration assistant later:

NB>> What you can NOT do successfully is a brute force restore from time machine backup -- that will bring over High Sierra as well, which can not run on your new machine.

Hi,

Yes, music, photos and movie will be OK to move to new MacBook Pro, though if their respective applications are 32bit, you can't move them.

If they are 64bit, no problem to transfer them to new MacBook Pro.

Hi,

I think you can't move all your files over to new MacBook Pro without any issue, since Catalina doesn't accept 32bit applications.

Hi,

High Sierra's iPhoto is 32bit Application, you need to convert iPhoto library for Catalina's Photos Library. It's easy, just move iPhoto Library to Photo folder then double click on it to start convert to Photos Library.

High Sierra's iTunes is quite different from Catalina's iTunes which is divided two applications, iTunes and Podcast.

You need to import iTunes Library to Catalina's iTunes one by one, actually select all of musics, click top music to bottom one with shift key once to import them.

The main reason folks can not Migrate their data on first run is that they did not aquire the cables needed ahead of time.

¿What would it take to connect your Time machine drive to a new Mac which is likely to have only USB-C connectors?