Transferring data and apps to new 24-inch Mac

Red-25 wrote:

I have a desktop Mac, High Sierra 10.13.6 27 inch and want to replace with new 24 inch Mac desktop.

Any advice and pinpointing of possible problems/pitfalls would be welcome as the Mac I have is quite old.

I have Time Machine backups to external hard drive.

You can use your Time Machine backup drive to transfer your files to your new Mac at the time that you set it up. Connect it to the new Mac and as you step through the setup you will reach a point where you are asked of you want to transfer your data from another Mac. That is when you select the TM backup drive and proceed.

I've run G064 and see that I will have to lose some apps but will I be able to transfer data from Numbers and Pages? Presumably, I'll also need to buy and external CD/DVD drive for my disks?

Yes, the files and documents you have already created in the Numbers and Pages apps will transfer and you can open and edit them with the current versions of those apps.

If you still have optical discs, then yes, you will need to buy an external drive for those. Apple hasn't shipped a Mac with an optical drive in over a decade. However, if those discs are very old commercial app, you might encounter problems reading them. Some may use the obsolete HFS (not HFS+) format that is no longer supported in the modern macOS. You may not know until you try.

Thank you.

You're welcome. 🙂

Red-25 wrote:

I have a desktop Mac, High Sierra 10.13.6 27 inch and want to replace with new 24 inch Mac desktop.

Any advice and pinpointing of possible problems/pitfalls would be welcome as the Mac I have is quite old.

I have Time Machine backups to external hard drive.

I've run G064 and see that I will have to lose some apps but will I be able to transfer data from Numbers and Pages?

Correct. 32 bit apps that run on High Sierra will not work on a current Mac and will need to be replaced with 64 bit apps or native apple silicon app versions.

For Pages and Numbers, you just need to transfer your actual documents and files over, which Migration assistant should do for you. There is no data inside the apps you can access or need to transfer.

Presumably, I'll also need to buy and external CD/DVD drive for my disks?

Yes, if you still use CDs and DVDs for data storage or just to watch movies, you'll need an external optical drive.

If you want to play blu rays or 4k blu rays you'll need a blu-ray or 4k blu-ray optical drive and appropriate playback software as the Mac cannot read or play blu-rays or 4k blu-rays on its own.

Red-25 wrote:

Thank you so much, that's very reassuring.

Hopefully my disks will be readable as they contain personal photos and videos.

We'll see.

Best regards.

You're welcome!

It's worth noting here that the typical CD optical disc storage is ~700 MB and DVDs are about ~5 GB/side.

You might consider taking the time to copy the data on those discs to an external HDD or SSD drive. You can easily find drives in the 500 GB, 1000 GB (1 TB) range or greater starting at about $50 or so. You can store an awful lot of pics on a modern drive.

Also on a positive note, as these are not commercial discs but ones you burned yourself, it's likely you were using the newer HFS+ (a.k.a. Mac OS extended) format. So you're probably okay there. You can check the format by right-clicking on the disc icon on your desktop and then Get Info. Find the format info near the top of the resulting window.

Cheers!

Unless you have the same amount of storage in the new Mac as in your old one, or more, you won't be able to use Migration Assistant to move your data from the old to the new Mac. You'll have to manually copy the files and applications from the old to the new Mac and activate any apps that need activation.