Migrating to new MacBook Pro: software & file concerns

ginnyp wrote:

I'm looking for thoughts and suggestions as I start a "process." I will be moving from a 2015 MacBook Pro running Mojave (because of 32 bit software on it) to a 2026 MacBook Pro. I plan to install software fresh instead of migrating it before I migrate my user files because some software will be new.

I think the right sequence would be, (0) make reliable backups with Time Machine or with a cloning tool like CCC or SuperDuper; (1) setup assistant will run automatically on first boot and ask about migrating; (2) say "yes" to migrate from one of your backups and select the option to migrate only user accounts and files but NOT software/apps and NOT settings and other misc things; (3) after migration completes, set up your Apple ID, other settings; and (4) install all new and updated versions of any apps you plan to use. Item (2) above will ensure that your browser bookmarks and preferences and your email will migrate properly.

My scariest move will be my 2007 Quicken files to a new Quicken. I think the files need to be converted, either before the move or after?

Verify this, but I believe you can install the newest version of Quicken on the new Mac and it will offer an option to read in and convert the Quicken 2007 files. Quicken 2007 cannot be run on the new Mac as Quicken 2007 is 32 bit. This should not be "scary," this sort of thing is fairly routine.

I also hope to not lose my Excel and Word files or my PDFs. I'm currently running 2016 Excel and Word and I think they may actually work on the new computer? I still have 2012 Excel (and Word) on this old one, and I sometimes still have to open an Excel file in the 2012 program, so I'm a bit scared what a newer Excel (than 2016) might do to my files.

Microsoft Office 2021 or later is supported on MacOS 26 (Tahoe). Both Office 2012 and 2016 are long ago obsolete, do not even think about using them on a modern Mac. There is no need to be "scared," the newest Microsoft programs will open those older files without any issues. People sometimes choose to buy and install a standalone version of these Office programs to save a little money, but the easiest approach is Microsoft 365 which is a subscription and it ensures you will always have the latest versions, security updates, and features.

If you have Microsoft files from the 1990s, some of those won't open under the latest version of Office or 365. If you can open those with your 2012 or 2016 version and "save as" to the latest format version those will allow, those newly saved files can be opened from the latest version.

As common as PDFs are, I'm guessing that type software is integral in today's computers, or do I need to look for stand-alone PDF software?

PDFs can be open, as before, with Apple's supplied Preview app. If you want a more advanced tool for PDFs, you can always get Adobe's free Acrobat Reader, or Adobe's Acrobat Pro (expensive), or any number of other PDF tools, I use one called PDF Expert but there are others like it that are much less expensive that Adobe Acrobat Pro. PDF Expert even provides OCR capability along with document signing/security. To start, I suggest just use the Preview app that comes with the MacOS on the new Mac and also install the free Acrobat Reader.

Finally, I am still trying to figure out a Photoshop replacement. I can't pay that price, but I do still like to do a little retouching, (and color correction and sizing, etc.) Thanks in advance for your suggestions and warnings of any pitfalls I may fall in!

There are many Photoshop alternatives with much lower costs. I don't use them as we use the full up Lightroom and Photoshop tools (via a subscription) for our photography business but I know there are many other options. I suggest you search online for those options and compare their prices and pros and cons.

You may be overthinking this, the migration should be smooth, but first make a list of all the apps you use, take note of what they do, and check their versions and Tahoe compatibility. I expect many/most apps old versions will not be compatible with Tahoe (MacOS 26) so understand what your options are for each of those and be prepared ahead of time.

If you don't want to pay for Microsoft 365 (or Office), keep in mind that all new Macs come with the Apple provided suite of software: Pages, Numbers, Keynote. These programs are included with your new Mac and can open Microsoft files (Word, Excel, Powerpoint) and also save in those Microsoft formats. Advanced Microsoft users find certain advanced options are not available in Pages/Numbers/Keynote, but "ordinary" use of those apps generally works smoothly.

ginnyp wrote:

Thank you!!! I truly appreciate the input. Back when I was working, I went through the migration process several times, for several users, but never with this many years between old and new, and I haven't kept up on things like I used to do. I run backup through Time Machine to an external hard drive. You're saying migrate from a backup instead of the old laptop, and install the new software after my user files have migrated. I hadn't thought about either of those options.

Apple provides instructions for directly connecting the old and new Macs and migrating that way, using a cable (WiFi is much less reliable than a cable). However, when using a cable with a very old and a new Mac, one can encounter issues with (a) adaptors (the ports are not the same type), and (b) potential issues with the very old and the new Macs interfacing directly. In principle it should all work, but the backup external drive (in my opinion) is the preferred approach because it forces the user to make a current backup -- always a good practice anyway -- and the external drive is not a live computer but rather a passive device so the "migration" involves simply copying files from a drive, a relatively simple and also normally very fast process. I always suggest "keeping it simple" and the external drive backup is one way to make the migration as simple as possible. By the way, many external drives come with cables that will work with both the modern Mac USB-C style ports as well as with USB-A style ports on older Macs. This is something to verify if you are buying a new external drive.

I did a migration from a 2015 iMac to my wife's 2021 iMac, not as long an interval between Macs but the 2021 iMac is an M1 so it was also Intel to Silicon. I just migrated accounts and files and reinstalled all new software. Very straightforward. I also migrated from a Mojave MacBook Pro to an M4 Silicon Mac at work and it was also straightforward, same process with migrating accounts/files only and reinstalling all software anew.

If you simply migrate accounts and files, after the migration assistant does some minor work to set up the identical accounts on the new Mac to match the old Mac accounts, the rest is just file copies. Even if your old software is found to be "compatible" with use on the new Mac, you will simplify everything by just reinstalling all apps. Migrating apps is not improper and Apple supports it but we see numerous queries in Apple Discussions about things that went amiss when migrating apps so that motivated my suggestions.

I think you should obtain a new external hard drive for backups, including for use with the migration to the new Mac. If your current one has Firewire, that means it is so old as to be not likely to last very much longer anyway. Not a good plan for continuing with backups, which must be bullet proof reliable.

Those Thunderbolt 2 adaptors MIGHT work but my experience has been that they do not allow the external device to be powered by the Mac. So one needs separate power supplies, resulting in a tangle of wires with ancient devices. Not a good set up. In one case even with the external power supply for the drive, those multiple adaptors did not actually work for me, the drive did not mount. In other cases it did work.

I suggest: get a new external drive, it can be bus-powered by the computer since you are using it with a laptop. The ones from OWC and Western Digital often come with both USB-C type connectors, which will work with your new Mac, as well as with a small adaptor to enable USB 3 connections, which your old computer has several of, and all these connections are 5 Gbps or more. [Firewire is 0.8 Gbps at best.] The external drive can be a mechanical one (those cost less) or the more expensive SSD types which are much faster but cost much more. Up to you. Then you can use this drive both for the migration/transfer as well as for future backups with the new Mac.

For the external drive, if you get the SSD type it will cost 3x-4x more than the mechanical type but it will be faster. Even faster is a Thunderbolt drive but those cost even more and it is unclear to me why you would do that, but you could. A standard OWC or WD (or other major maker) external drive should be fine.

iCloud is not for backup, it is for syncing content across different devices. So you could use iCloud to populate certain folders on the new Mac with the same content as you have on the old Mac, such as Desktop, Documents, Downloads. But this is neither a backup nor a true "migration," it is simply placing identical copies of limited sets of files/folders on the new Mac. Doing a true migration from an external backup drive is better because it will set up your user account and all your folders/files just the way you are used to seeing on your old Mac.

There are third party cloud backup services you could endeavor to use but those are expensive and require installation of new tools on both Macs, I advise against that for the migration, it will complicate your life. Cloud backup services are a viable approach once your new Mac is set up. But you should still have a reliable local drive with a reliable backup.

I would not bother with trying to set up a WiFi capable external drive, most such drives are not WiFi capable and it will increase the cost and won't perform as well. Such drives also often require custom software and firmware. I would not do it but you can if you wish to. I would keep it simple with a normal lower cost external drive connected with a cable to your laptop and backup to it via Time Machine, which will run automatically.

Unfortunately, it is getting harder and harder to avoid subscriptions. And those who do avoid them find that the vendor sometimes locks out older versions of the software, as Microsoft just did last week with older versions of Office.

steve626 is right about Quicken files. Quicken is very good at converting their older formats to the latest. I went from Ventura to Tahoe with no glitches. I know it isn't as great a change as from Mojave to Tahoe but when I went from Mojave to Catalina there was no problem.

As far as the Work and Excel files there are some free alternatives to MS Office, LibreOffice and SoftMaker FreeOffice 2018. which can read, edit and save as MS Office files or in their own format. I use LibreOffice.

Just a few comments:

Photoshop alternatives: the app Affinity (formerly Affinity Photo) will do a vast majority of things that Photo shop can do. It is available free if you don't use all the AI features. By the sound of your statement about it, that would be just fine. While I use other software for processing my photos, I will often use Affinity for final web posting touch ups. There is also Apple's Photos app which has improved greatly in terms of image processing with recent macOS versions. BTW, do not bother with Photoshop Elements. Adobe as changed to a sort of subscription based purchase. You buy the latest Elements, and three years later it no longer works.

External Drives: Two comments here, unless you are doing a lot of drive intensive processing of files on external drives (massive images, raw video processing), "old school" hard drives are the way to go and are way cheaper per gigabyte than SSDs due to the current market shortages chips do to data center usage (SSDs are 2 to 3 times more expensive than a year ago). A year ago SSDs where getting closer to being on par with HDDs, Not so today.

The second comment on drives, you will be better off purchasing separate enclosures and drives. From my experience, the off the shelf "packaged" drives as I refer to them, have a failure rate that is somewhat high because the electronics in the package to interface the drive to USB or other connection to the drives themselves fails while the actual disk drive is still fine. For several years I have gone with the separate approach. The enclosures are sometimes better built but even if they aren't you can just toss the enclosure, get a new one, and plug the actual drive into it and be running again.

External Components: You have not mentioned anything about any external hardware other than drives that you may have. You will need to make sure that drivers are available for the latest macOS system. If not, you may or may not want to consider newer devices. A work around for this, since your old computer is still functional, is you can use the built in Screen Sharing to access the old computer and File Sharing to move any resulting data. I do this with an old 2010 MacMini connected over my home network with my M4 MacBook Air running macOS Tahoe (I also use it as a file server).

ginnyp wrote:

A pretty specific question... regarding "the vendor sometimes locks out older versions of the software," does this mean if I buy the student/home office 2024 one time purchase that it won't open my files from the earlier versions... 16, or 12? Than you.

I have the latest version of Word (via Microsoft 365) and it can open files created in 2001 with Word. The version of Word last used for those files was "Word 97-2004." So I would say files from Word 97-2004, which long predates your Word 2012, can apparently still be opened with today's version of Word.

I found some Word files from 1995 that I cannot open with the current version of Word with their original formatting. But they can be opened as text files and I can see the text, just that they are not formatted properly.

That's what I meant by locks out older versions ... apparently those files were made with Office 1995 or something ancient like that and they can be challenging to open although it can still be done, opening them as text files with Word or with Textedit. One can still see the text contents but text formatting is not available for them. Those files are 30 years old!

When you get your new computer, do keep your old one around until you have the time to explore older files and apps on the old Mac and have worked out a way to continue with them on the new Mac.

P.S. My daughter has a high end photography business but she is a bit of a Luddite with computers and IT and relies on me to handle EVERYTHING in those areas for her. She has been using a 2019 MacBook Pro but just obtained a new MacBook Pro M4 in January 2026. I migrated all her stuff over and it all went very smoothly using the procedure I outlined for you. The main issues she has are some older apps that she had a "lifetime license" for but the vendor stopped updating them and the new version that runs under the latest MacOS requires a subscription. This happened for a few of her apps and it annoyed her. I got an earful from her being the bearer of bad news, but I don't mind, the prodigal daughter can do no wrong after all ... seriously, though, I expect you too will encounter some subscriptions you might not be able to avoid for apps you used to simply use after paying for them once. I added her to my Microsoft 365 Family Plan so she gets the entire Microsoft 365 bundle for free basically. She also has the Adobe advanced photography app bundle subscription which she pays for and actually likes having, for instance it enabled her to use the Photoshop AI beta which in fact was transformational.

ginnyp wrote:

I hadn’t planned to buy a new hard drive for back up, but I may have to. Mine has firewire ports. Even with this 2015 laptop, I had to get a Thunderbolt 2 to firewire adapter. The new computer has Thunderbolt 5 ports. I understand they don’t make a Thunderbolt 5 (or 4 or 3) to firewire adapter, instead, I’d have to go with a Thunderbolt 5 to Thunderbolt 2, then use my current adapter to firewire.

No, Firewire is no longer supported with macOS 26.x Tahoe. You need to purchase a new external Hard Drive. Even if your Firewire drive supports USB....it would likely only support USB2 protocols at best which can be problematic & extremely slow, plus I would be very concerned about the health of a Hard Drive that old. Definitely time to upgrade the external drive.

As for migrating the data, none of the migration methods should affect the data stored on your old Mac. That data should remain as it is. Just make sure not to erase the old Mac until you are 100% certain the new Mac is properly set up & all of your data has transferred and is accessible. I would verify you can open those migrated files on the new Mac.

Once you decide to sell or recycle or even repurpose the old laptop, you should follow the instructions in the following Apple article:

What to do before you sell, give away, trade in, or recycle your Mac - Apple Support

So far, I have never used the Cloud. I don’t prefer to use it for anything, but maybe it would be OK for backup (only)? Would it be good to backup to the Cloud then migrate from the Cloud to the new computer??? If I buy a new hard drive, it will likely be WiFi capable, which might actually be handy for incremental backups? (I do have pretty good WiFi.)

FYI, iCloud and most cloud file syncing services are not backups. They are made to share files easily between different devices....making a catastrophic edit or deletion will cause that catastrophe to affect all devices connected to that cloud file syncing service.

You want to use some form of backup software. Apple provides Time Machine with macOS to make backups easy for people and is fine for many people, but for some people third party backup options may be better depending on your configuration & needs. There are actual real cloud backup services, but if you have large amounts of data, some of them may be very slow in downloading that data again (it needs to be encrypted with keys you control). For actual backups, it is best to have at least one option being a locally stored backup under your control.

FYI, there are a lot more new ways to permanently lose access to the data stored on the internal SSD of the recent Macs due to all of the hardware, software, and security changes. People need to have frequent & regular backups of their computer and all external media (including the cloud) which contains important & unique data.

ginnyp wrote:

I definitely see I need to get a new external drive for back

up. I have had sporadic mounting issues with what I am currently using, but it

always ultimately worked.

Firewire is not compatible with the MacOS (Tahoe) that comes with all new Macs and that most Macs since ~ 2020 are currently using. If you had sporadic mounting issues, that's a message that the drive is old and starting to not work reliably. Definitely should motivate you to replace it.

I feel it’s still a little “wild west” on these things.

It isn't really like the "wild west" -- your drive is starting to wear out and that causes the problems you may have been seeing. Modern/new drives are more reliable -- they are mass produced to precise specifications. It is not hard to find good ones. Mass sellers (like Amazon, Best Buy, Adorama, etc.) sell huge numbers of them and you can see customer ratings. I always look for models that have at least 3 (and preferably 5) year warranties and have thousands of customer ratings that come out at 4.5/5 or higher. A warranty of 3 years (% years is better) indicates that the manufacturer has confidence in the product enough to offer such a guarantee.

If I’m going to use it for migrating old to new, it definitely has to have the

right two ports.

You need to have the ability to connect to USB-A type ports on your old computer, and also to USB-C style ports on your new computer. On newer OWC and Western Digital drives, the built-in port on the drive is USB-C but a cable is provided that has USB-C at both ends (for use with your new Mac) and there is a small adaptor included to be used when you need to connect to a USB-A style port (old Mac). You will get 5 Gbps or more from this setup and those connections.

I feel 1 TB is probably big enough, but maybe I should go 2 TB?

The size of the backup drive should be about 4x the size of the drive being backed up. If your new Mac has a 500 GB drive, 2 TB for the backup drive is about right.

Even though pricier, buying an old-style hard drive seems like going backwards.

Not really. Mechanical drives are still preferred by many advanced users. They are slower, but your migration is a one-time event. SSDs and HDDs (mechanical drives) each have different failure mechanisms due to their different hardware. Whether one type is better than the other is still a subject of debate.

An SSD @1000 MB/s can copy, backup, or migrate a 500 GB drive in about 10 minutes. An HDD @200 MB/s would require about an hour. After the initial migration or backup, you probably would not notice the difference between an SSD and an HDD as the incremental backups typically take a few seconds or up to a few minutes. SSDs typically cost 4 or 5 times what an HDD costs. HDDs are not "old style," they are modern quality devices.

Then I read that SSD drives have limited write lifespans and data recovery can

be more complex?

SSDs do have a finite number of read/writes. But for typical users, that lifespan can be somewhere in the range of 50 to 300 years, so that might not be a relevant consideration for you. And when an HDD (mechanical drive) fails, recovery services can sometimes separate the mechanical platters and extract data from them, so recovery can actually be done on them. When an SSD fails, that type of recovery is virtually impossible. But I wouldn't worry about data recovery -- even when it is possible, it may cost many thousands of $, more than the cost of a computer. Much easier is simply to have two external backup drives so if one fails you still have the other working, much cheaper than data recovery.

Another word on what you call "old style" mechanical drives. My daughter's photography business has about 50 of these external drives in use and they are all mechanical (HDD). The cost of 50 SSDs would be very high and the advantages not very clear at that scale.

But here I am using an 11-year-old computer with SSD storage

and I haven’t ever had a problem saving or retrieving anything, so that must

not be a real big deal.

For typical users, the SSD lifespan is not a factor. However all Macs today come new with internal SSDs because HDDs would be slow enough in an internal primary drive to hurt performance. For external backup drives, you can use either SSDs or HDDs. I am slowly migrating to use of SSDs everywhere myself, but my daughter's business still uses HDDs for cost reasons (she uses dozens) and they have proven to be very reliable.

ginnyp wrote:

I hadn’t planned to buy a new hard drive for back up, but I may have to. Mine has firewire ports. Even with this 2015 laptop, I had to get a Thunderbolt 2 to firewire adapter. The new computer has Thunderbolt 5 ports. I understand they don’t make a Thunderbolt 5 (or 4 or 3) to firewire adapter, instead, I’d have to go with a Thunderbolt 5 to Thunderbolt 2, then use my current adapter to firewire.

Don't bother. Apple removed all support for Firewire in Tahoe. Even if you have an otherwise acceptable chain of adapters, devices connected via Firewire will not work with macOS 26 Tahoe or this fall's macOS 27 Golden Gate.

Some old drive enclosures could connect either via Firewire or via USB. If your drive is in one of those, you could connect it via USB, even if this resulted in a slowdown (as would be the case if a drive had both Firewire 800 and USB 2.0 interfaces). Another possibility might be to carefully remove a drive from an old enclosure and put it in a new one. A third might be to use an old Mac to clone the contents of a Firewire drive to a newer USB one so that the data can be preserved even if the old drive can't.

I also read that Apple no longer makes the Thunderbolt 5,4,3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter, but I can probably find one on eBay or a similar source. (I also read the vastly different speeds of each could be an issue?) Or maybe buy a new hard drive with modern thunderbolt ports? Or… use the Cloud?

The USB4 / Thunderbolt ports on current MacBook Pros are multi-purpose ports which support

• USB 3.1 Gen 2
• USB4 20 Gps and 40 Gbps
• DisplayPort
• Thunderbolt

They adapt to whatever you plug into them.

The interfaces you are most likely to run into on drives are

• USB-A
• USB 3.0 Micro B
• USB-C (USB)
• USB-C (Thunderbolt) – SSDs and multi-drive RAIDs
• USB-C (USB4 40 Gbps) – SSDs

It's easy to convert USB protocol between USB-C and legacy connectors such as USB-A, Micro USB 3.0 B. And for a lot of everyday stuff, you'll be using USB protocol. Thunderbolt and USB4 40 Gbps only tend to come into play for high-end gear like Thunderbolt docks, high-end SSDs, and displays with resolutions of more than 4K.

So far, I have never used the Cloud. I don’t prefer to use it for anything, but maybe it would be OK for backup (only)? Would it be good to backup to the Cloud then migrate from the Cloud to the new computer??? If I buy a new hard drive, it will likely be WiFi capable, which might actually be handy for incremental backups? (I do have pretty good WiFi.)

Hard drives do not normally connect via Wi-Fi. What you are talking about is a NAS – network-attached storage. This might be something you could consider for backups, or for sharing a drive among multiple computers - but for migrating, you want to use a backup drive that plugs directly into your new computer.

I’ll probably shop for a new home user single purchase Office version. I despise the idea of subscription software.

There is a one-time purchase version of Office. If you scroll down on Microsoft – Compare Microsoft 365 Plans & Pricing (Formerly Office 365), you'll see a column for Office Home 2024. To "encourage" people to go with one of the "subscription" (rental) plans, they withhold some features from it.

ginnyp wrote:

Your last comment about losing access to data on the

internal SSD is disturbing! I have never had an issue on this 11-year-old SSD Macbook,

but at that age, I feel like I’m living on the edge with it. I hope the new

Macbook (and new OS) doesn’t make me regret buying it.

With recent Macs – Apple Silicon Macs, and late-era Intel-based Macs with T2 security chips – the data on the internal SSD is encrypted, using keys held in the Apple Silicon processor or the T2 security chip.

Normally, the keys are left "in the lock", so to speak, but if you ever separate the flash chips from the chip that holds the decryption keys, or the whole thing stops working, what you are left with is so much indecipherable hash. Also, on most such machines, the flash chips are soldered in.

So if the machine dies, you're not going to be "pulling the drive" to attempt data recovery. Not that relying upon that was ever a good backup strategy, even in the old days of unencrypted mechanical hard drives. (One of the most common causes of failure of old computers was failure of the mechanical hard drive.)