Problems with Migration Assistant and New iMac

My daughter just bought a brand new iMac with a single 1TB drive and 8GB's of Ram. I believe with the latest OS 10.10? She had been using an older white iMac with 10.6.8. She has used time machine on her older machine to back up her hard disk and then tried Migration Assistant on the new computer. The first time we used MA, it seemed to crash the entire new machine...didn't boot... probably because it transferred the older operating system (along with it's inherent bugs on that particular machine) as well as the programs and data. I had to take it back to the Apple Genius Bar to get a fresh reinstall of the OS.

Well my daughter still wants the programs she was running on the older Mac, but several of them came with the machine(purchased used from an individual)...which makes me think she won't be able to transfer them anyway without a license. A few she paid for and downloaded.

When I tried Migration Assistant again...it only transferred the OS applications, but none of the installed applications that are in the Applications folder. I don't understand what's happening. It's supposed to be an easy process. My daughter went on to try MA again a couple of different ways and now the computer has crashed again and won't boot. Help!

Because I can't get the OS on disk and the iMac doesn't have a disk drive anyway, how do I create a boot disk if something goes wrong?