In the near future I hope after 10 years and not before time, to be upgrading to a new Mac Pro and was just preparing myself mentally for the crossover. Presumably certain types of apps, like Quark & Adobe stuff for example will need re-installing rather than leaving it to Migration Assistant or is that smart enough to copy over all the Serial, Validation & Activation mumbo jumbo.
Kryten
offtopic mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options
On 5 Mar 2009, at 17:15, Kryten wrote:
Presumably certain types of apps, like Quark & Adobe stuff for
example will need re-installing rather than leaving it to Migration
Assistant or is that smart enough to copy over all the Serial,
Validation & Activation mumbo jumbo.
I don’t see why it won’t work.
Example: We got some shiny new iMacs where I work. All was fine and
dandy, CS3 was installed a humming. Then, my machine developed a disk
error that didn’t go away when repaired.
Having got a full Time Machine backup, I proceeded to reformat the
drive and install the OS. I used the option in the installer to use
the Time Machine backup to restore me to where I had been before the
problem.
After a couple of hours, everything was fine and dandy and CS3 was
still humming.
What the Migration Assistant will do is let you pick and choose what
you copy over. I’m pretty certain it will bring all the dependencies
over with the software. I migrated most of my old user from an old
PowerBook to a new MacBook Pro in just that way.
But then, there’s no such thing as a guarantee, so be prepared for the
worst.
=o)
Heather
^-^
http://www.flickr.com/photos/snaptophobic/
iFlickr
http://gallery.me.com/heatherkay#gallery
A growing collection of personal pixels
http://snaptophobia.blogspot.com/
Blather and bluster about photography
¬_¬
offtopic mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options
It works pretty seemlessly really, but does take many hours. I upgraded to a MacPro from a PowerBook and everything worked as it should after migration. I did this because even though I had a G4 desktop at the time, most of my current applications and work files were on the laptop.
offtopic mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options
If you’re upgrading from PPC to Intel, expect to re-install to get Universal versions of your apps in many cases. The Assistant is smart enough to not even attempt to copy over PPC-only apps.
When I moved from my Aluminum PowerBook to a new MacBook Pro last year, I had to re-install tons of stuff that the Assistant skipped (presumably for my own good), and I still have a lingering (but wildly intermittent) printing problem that I’m told will only go away for good if I format the drive, re-install the OS, and then manually restore my applications and such from backup.
Walter
offtopic mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options
Well that’s good news in general then. But yes Walt, I had temporarily forgotten the PPC → Intel thing. I’ll wait until I’m going through a quiet patch to keep my blood pressure stable. Thanks to all as ever.
K.
offtopic mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options
I had a ‘minor’ problem with the Migration Assistant lately at a clients studio. Two major things changed at the same time. Migrating from a G3 to Intel, but also from Tiger to Leopard. We had to redo the whole process several times, the one with NOT copying the network settings was the right one. Still do not know why. Silly, sometimes these things…
offtopic mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options
Last year I went from PPC PowerBook G4 to an Intel MacBook Pro and a seven
year-old PowerMac to a Mac Pro using Migration Assistant.
I do a lot of odd software and general presentations [on the portable] at
the Oxford Mac Users Group, and as a consultant, consequently my
Applications and Utilities folders are STUFFED with apps. The OSX system is
also pretty complex too and as you can imagine I was in trepidation of
having to reload everything.
My best advice on the PPC Mac is to patch OSX on the old system to make
everything as up-to-date as possible. Load all your vital apps in turn and
make sure they’re all patched to the latest versions. Then run AppleJack** a
few times in “auto” mode to run all its utilities. The Intel Mac has been
around for a while so most apps are now universal, so unless you’ve used an
application so “slim down your system” removing foreign language and
multi-processor support you’ll have a relatively smooth transition.
Start the old Mac in Target disk mode, connect to the new Intel Mac, start
the Leopard install on the new Mac and during the install Leopard will
notice the old system disk and offer to migrate your old data and
applications. Doing it this way you still have your old working system and
can test everything you need on the new Mac before before mothballing the
old.
If however your system is a pretty simple [say with FW, CS, pile of fonts
and a few other apps] and you have time, it might be worth doing a clean
install of just those apps you need and/or want because then you’ll have
nothing unwanted or undesirable in your various System and Library folders.
BTW the system I’m running now migrated from one PowerBook to another and
then on to an Intel MBP.
** AppleJack a Freeware system utility, I install on every Mac I have to
deal with to quote:
“AppleJack is a tool to make it easy to troubleshoot your Mac when no other
startup disk is available to you. The script gives you an interactive
menu-driven environment for basic disk check/repair, permissions repair,
.plist validation, cache cleanup, and swap file removal. You can do basic
system maintenance even if your GUI won’t start up at all, simply by booting
into single user mode, and typing ‘applejack’.”
HTH
Best wishes Peter
–
================================
Peter Tucker, Oxford UK email@hidden
offtopic mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options
Peter, a million thanks for the excellent analysis. It all makes perfect sense. I won’t be upgrading for a month or two, but I just wanted to prepare the ground so-to-speak. If I encounter any problems I shall certainly be posting back to this thread.
Thanks to all for the helpful advice.
K.
offtopic mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options
Thanks to all the guys who responded on this. I actually received the new Mac Pro yesterday and spent the day setting it up. Migration Assistant worked absolutely flawlessly with only 1 app needing a Serial number re-entry, namely FreewayPro and Quark with Re-Activation. Otherwise completely painless.
Everything else such as Network settings, emails etc., bookmarks etc., came in a treat. Apple should be proud of themselves for this. Can you imagine if Microsoft attempted something similar? It doesn’t bear thinking about does it? It makes me laugh just thinking about it.
Kryters
offtopic mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options
on 27/03/2009 09:44, Kryten at email@hidden wrote:
Thanks to all the guys who responded on this. I actually received the new Mac
Pro yesterday and spent the day setting it up. Migration Assistant worked
absolutely flawlessly with only 1 app needing a Serial number re-entry, namely
FreewayPro and Quark with Re-Activation. Otherwise completely painless.Everything else such as Network settings, emails etc., bookmarks etc., came in
a treat. Apple should be proud of themselves for this. Can you imagine if
Microsoft attempted something similar? It doesn’t bear thinking about does it?
It makes me laugh just thinking about it.
I can tell you the doing this under Windows is NOT pretty at all, I have to
do it from time to time!
Just be thankful you’ve a Mac ;~}}
Best wishes Peter
–
Peter Tucker, Oxford UK email@hidden
offtopic mailing list
email@hidden
Update your subscriptions at:
http://freewaytalk.net/person/options