Apple Mac Air 13″ and Migration Assistant
I’ve had a mid-2011 11 inch Mac Air for two years. This was my first Mac laptop, and the size (perfect for traveling), the instant on and several other features sold me on it. I had Compaq laptops for my duration at Compaq (of course) and had meandered from Sony VAIO’s (good product) to ASUS netbooks before deciding that paying four times the cost of a Windows laptop might actually be worth it. It would be difficult at this point to convince me to go back to Windows (though I do keep a Windows desktop for some apps).
But I upgrade to the just announced Mac Air 13 inch for several reasons:
- Size. Yeah, I know, I said that. But customers squinting at the 11 inch screen to see demos just didn’t get the point across;
- Battery life. The new 13″ was spec’d at 12 hours of battery life. Running multiple apps plus XCODE and sometimes Eclipse just wasted the battery on the little 11″.
- Performance. See above…sure, I could shut some apps off, but why should I?
My local Apple store, who I have a good relationship with, had the fully loaded 13″ (8 GB RAM, 512 Flash storage and the upgraded processor) in stock. My son’s big ole Windows laptop was giving him fits so he was the designated hand-me-down recipient of the 11″ Mac Air.
This lead me to try Apple’s Migration Assistant.
I have never been a big fan of automated migration programs. They either seem to miss a configuration (or several), don’t move all your files, or just plain don’t work.
In addition, I had three types of XCODE development profiles and certificates on my Mac: one set for Media Sourcery, one set for JoSara MeDia (our publishing company) and one customer’s (an Enterprise License that we develop under for them). Having just been through the un-documented gyrations of renewing and reissuing the one Apple Enterprise cert/profile, I was not optimistic.
However, after a false start or two, Migration Assistant blew my incredibly low expectations away.
It not only moved all my files, it:
- moved all of the certs and profiles that XCODE requires, without any additional configuration;
- moved all WiFi configurations;
- moved browser history;
Except for the Microsoft Office license (yes I run Office for Mac, and will as long as my customers use it).
My main hiccup was when I first set it up, Migration Assistant projected a nice 75 hours for copying files over. That issue was attributed because Larry has too many WiFi networks at home, including a new one from an AirPort Time Capsule (more on that in another post). When I made certain that both laptops were on the same WiFi network, Migration Assistant projected a more reasonable 4-5 hours to copy everything over.
I let it run over night, and started getting used to a bigger screen (which isn’t easy…the 11″ is nice…the things we do for our customers). But, just for precautions, I asked my son not to delete anything on the old Mac for a while.