MacBook Air migration

I’m just about done setting up my new MacBook Air. I hit a few bumps, but I think everything has worked out in the end. My initial plan was to restore from my most recent Time Machine backup with Migration Assistant. But that didn’t work out, for a variety of reasons. So instead I just dragged and dropped the files I needed from Time Machine to the new Mac. That took a while, but went smoothly enough.

Buying this MacBook Air was a bit of a compromise. For the most part, it’s at least as good as my old MacBook Pro (and better in some ways), but it only has a 256 GB drive. (The Pro had 512 GB.) I could have gone with a 512 GB drive on the Air, but it would have added about $300 to the cost, which I couldn’t really justify.

After getting rid of all the movies and TV shows I had on the old laptop, I’ve managed to fit everything else from the old drive onto the new one, with about 40 GB free. I have some other old files I can get rid of too, so I should be fine for the time being.

I’m trying to avoid the option in macOS to store documents in iCloud Drive. First, I don’t want to pay for iCloud Drive storage. And second, I don’t really trust it. There are other things you can do to free up space on a Mac, and I’ve reviewed those.

I’m currently syncing my entire OneDrive account to the Mac. That’s about 40 GB. I could probably turn off a few folders there to save some space.

I’m also toying with the idea of throwing a 256 GB SDXC card into the card slot, for additional storage. Those can be had for about $100. I really don’t need one yet, but it’s something I’m considering.

I’m a little annoyed that I don’t have a CD/DVD drive on this thing. I wasn’t really using the drive on the old MacBook that often, but I did get some use out of it. I’m going to have to do all my disc burning on my desktop PC from now on.

There’s one cool feature that works on the Air but never worked on the old Pro: unlocking it with my Apple Watch. (I was never sure if it was supposed to work on the Pro, but it definitely didn’t.) It’s a pretty minor thing, but it’s nice.

I still have a few minor things on my setup checklist, but the machine is functional now. I want to make a full backup with Carbon Copy Cloner soon, then set up a new Time Machine backup. And I need to pull the SSD from the old MacBook, recycle the machine, and repurpose the SSD, assuming it’s still good. (I may actually use it as a new boot drive for my desktop PC, since I only have an old-fashioned hard drive in there. That’s a project for another day.)

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