Last night I connected a brand new MacBook Pro to the latest Time Machine backup of my (now) old MacBook Pro. A few mouse clicks later I started the restore process and left the machine alone. Some hours later, the restore was complete. I had a perfect replica of my old laptop, up to date. I was amazed. I’ve used Macs for many years and like them for several reasons but this just blew me away. This was the most effortless transition I’ve ever had with a computer.
There were only two minor issues. One of them was of my own making.
First, I noticed was that some applications that need network access were crashing on launch. Safari was working fine so I searched online and noticed that others had reported a similar issue. Apparently some network configuration was incorrect. I rebooted the laptop and the issue was gone.
Second, I had to manually copy over some folders that I had deliberately excluded from the Time Machine backup. These include large amounts of media that I have backed up on another drive. I realize now that there is no point to excluding them and that if I hadn’t excluded them to begin with, this issue would have been non-existent. Also, I would have saved myself some time since an overnight restore would’ve restored them along with everything else without any manual intervention.
This morning I left the old laptop at home and took the new one with me. It worked quite well. Everything was where it had been, where it was supposed to be. I haven’t had to boot the old laptop at all.