Transfering to laptop (machine-independent replication)

That's both ridicilous and pathetic.

If Tiger is installed on a Macbook and on a Dual G5, the system is the same, although perhaps the executables vary due to the architectures.

However, the user/admin changes, settings, themes, preferences, are all 100% architecture independent. There is absolutely zero reason for all of these not to be cloneable.

If this application you have suggested is not capable of performing this task, then there is a clear market need for such a tool. As Apple's hardware and software offerings change, there seems to be a need for such a tool.

I simply haven't been able to locate it, so I keep copying things manually. Now I'm being forced to learn how to code because the companies that do the coding don't think ahead.

What I'm suggesting is that no aspect of a system configuration should not be transferable, cloneable, or whatever the appropriate term is. Certainly different architecture's system files will be different, obviously the extensions will differ, sizes, dates, and so forth - however the configuration of a system, such as services, data, and process files will not differ. The hosts file does not change between architectures tremendously, and neither does the DNS nor firewall configurations. And even if they do, it is these settings that I am interested in transfering, and user settings, data, themes, etc.

In other words, anything that is not architecture-specific.

I disagree with the naive part. While there are aspects that may be hard-coded to specific IP addresses, basic regexp can update every IP dependecy in an entire system with proper system administration methodologies. Thus if a firewall rule, IP-based virtual host, a hosts file, a round-robin DNS setup, and an smtp junk table all refer to a given IP, they can all be replaced with a variable and/or a regexp tool at the time of migration.

In fact, it makes little sense to edit each individual file manually with an IP address - makes far more sense to simply utilise a system-wide IP address tool that updates all the variables on the administrator's behalf.

I think it silly, naive, and a waste of time, to hard-code manually IP addresses, such they can change, should change, and are rarely in control of a given organization to whom they may be allocated to - and far too often are upstream dependant. Unless you own your own /8, in that case, please hire me! 🙂