Apple Update 2...

[seawasp]

Now, another question that probably has a simple answer. When you get a new Apple these days (as I did for Chris a while back), when you first boot it up it gives you an option to basically copy the setup and files from another machine.

Is there a way to trigger that for a not-new but cleaned off Mac? I've got a laptop for my younger son, Gabriel, but I want to duplicate the setup on Chris' machine (especially since it has all the stuff on it that he'd like to use).

Comments

[kjn]

Yes. Any fresh install will ask you if you want to get settings from an old Mac, a Time Machine backup, a network drive or just start from scratch.

[ninjarat.livejournal.com]

Fire up the Migration Assistant. It's in /Applications/Utilities.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Note that the Migration Assistant really, really likes the new mac and the old mac to be not more than one point release of OS/X apart -- i.e. going from 10.4 to 10.5 is okay, or 10.5 to 10.6, but if your old Mac is on something like 10.3 and you've got a new machine running 10.6 you will save yourself a world of hurt if you upgrade the old machine to at least 10.5 before you try this.

Secondary note: if the old machine is a PowerPC Mac and the new one is an Intel model, don't, don't, don't copy applications across using Migration Ass. It's dumb enough to copy PowerPC binaries of stuff like iTunes over and trash the newer Intel binary versions of same.

It's safest to use Migration Assistant to only copy the user accounts, and to do everything else (Apps, network settings) by hand.