Migrating from iMac to MacBook

[Bob Marsden]

I have an old iMac 7.1 on OS X 10.6.8. I recently bought a MacBook Pro on OS X 10.10.4 which has put its contents onto iCloud. I want to get the stuff on the iMac on to the MacBook or on to the iCloud, but I don’t know how to do it. Can someone show me in actual operating instructions what to do?

 

[honestone]

First of all, by "stuff", do you mean all the non-system items, like applications, data files/folders, etc? Secondly, how certain are you that the non-Apple applications you now have will work with OS 10.10.4?

 

[Bob Marsden]

I want to transfer from iMac to MacBook files and folders, contents of Mail, bookmarks of browsers.



I don’t know if BusyCal will work on 10.10.4, but I imagine it would be possible to copy its calendar contents to iCal on the iMac and port that over. I use Scrivener a lot, but don’t know if that’ll work.



10.6.8 doesn’t know about iCloud, just some subscription service called MobileMe which I’ve never used, so I don’t know whether the iMac’s contents could reach iCloud.



I think that the iMac 7.1, which dates back to the early years of this century, can’t install later versions of MacOS. I’d like to update to the newest operating system possible for the iMac, but transfer all the important information to the MacBook and iCloud before I risk it.

 

[honestone]

OK, that's good information. I assume your new MacBook Pro has a Thunderbolt port, and I am just about certain your iMac has at least one Firewire 800 port. With that being the case, here is what you can do:

1. Make a backup of everything on your MacBook Pro to an external device (Time Machine is OK, but a bootable backup is better).

2. Shut down the MacBook Pro.

3. Purchase a Thunderbolt-to-Firewire 800 adapter (costs $49 US from Apple).

4. Plug in a Firewire 800 cable to the "Firewire" side of the adapter.

5. Boot up your MacBook pro, and then plug in the adapter to the Thunderbolt port.

6. While the iMac is still off, plug in the Firewire 800 cable to one of the Firewire 800 ports.

7. Boot up your iMac in Target Disk Mode. To do that, hold down the T key while the iMac boots up.

Your iMac's internal drive will appear as a hard disk on your MacBook Pro's desktop. You can then launch Migration Assistant from the MacBook Pro (located inside the Utilities folder within the Applications folder), and then "migrate" (copy) all non-system stuff from the iMac to your MacBook Pro.

Again, the "risK you are taking is that possibly some of your applications will not work under Yosemite, OS 10.10.4, and could possibly be upgraded.

By the way, a new version of Yosemite, OS 10.10.5, was released earlier today. I am waiting until the OS 10.10.5 Combo Updater is available (most likely no later than tomorrow).

By the way, I use such an adapter to connect an external drive, via Firewire 800, to my 13" MacBook Air. It works perfectly!

 

[Bob Marsden]

Thanks. I’ll get a ThunderFire cable from the Apple shop in town, but not tomorrow as we’re due thunderwater deluge all day up from the Continent.



I’ll let you know how I get on. My experience of finding things out from the Apple website isn’t very good, but I may be able to discover what the furthest I can go in upgrading an iMac 7.1 operating system is. The current OSX 10.6.8 seems to be degrading progressively. When I leap into the future, I’ll miss Spaces 16 screen display which has been essential to being able to manage things.

 

[honestone]

Your machine can run Yosemite, OS 10.10 (and anything in between Snow Leopard, OS 10.6.8, and Yosemite). This link lists all Macs that can run OS 10.10:

http://coolestguidesontheplanet.com/mac-good-enough-take-yosemite/

Since you are running OS 10.6.8, you would first upgrade to Mavericks, OS 10.9.5, and then to Yosemite, OS 10.10. Once you are at the "virgin" OS 10.10, you can get the OS 10.10.5 Combo Updater here:

https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1832?locale=en_US

and be completely up to date.

 

[Bob Marsden]

Thanks again. I shall embark on a voyage of discovery, my personal computing revolution, forthwith.

 

[Bob Marsden]

I’ve docked, but only just.

Migration wasn’t straightforward - there were several actions which in my ignorance I should have taken that botched the process incomprehensibly. I had to leave Target Mode to restart the iMac to enable Migration Assistant. And on occasion the MacBook would ask me to make forced choices before I could go on, but of whose implications I was ignorant. So the MacBook has two users, Old Me and New Me.



I couldn’t find out how to upgrade the iMac to Mavericks, so went straight to Yosemite.



The replacement for Spaces, Mission Control, is frustratingly unfit for purpose.You can’t name the Desktops/Spaces, nor can you have items such as Stickies and calculators in all spaces, and I can’t remember where the last instance ended up.



With Spaces you could customise it with Hyperspaces, and could use the tabular display of all spaces to see where everything was.



There doesn’t seem to be anything similar for Mission Control. It shouldn’t be too difficult to let people just put items into a Space and have them stay there, and open something in a Space and not be shunted into another Space for it to show. Then you have to drag it to where you want it. I wonder how and why they’ve dysfunctionalised something that worked.



I understand that in the new Spanish version of Mac OS X they’re not following their spaceflight metaphor and referring to Captain Pickard, whose instruction was “Make it so”. Mission Control will have split screens but still not work properly.



Is there anything I can do to make life easier with Mission Control?