Hi MPUs,
Back in the day, Katie & David did shows on how they approached setting up a new laptop, nuke & pave vs migration, etc. But the universe has changed with iCloud and subscriptions, and lots else. SO, I’m wondering where the latest advice is about how to do a mindful transfer rather than dragging all the old garbage with me. I’ve had to buy a new laptop because I’m leaving my job, so I can’t count on being able to open up the old one if something is missing. (I’ve not listened to MPU in a while, so maybe I’ve missed a more recent discussion…)
Thanks much!
-P
I very nearly always use Migration Assistant from a clone or TimeMachine backup during OS installation/initial setup. On the very, very rare occasions that I go the nuke and repave route, I buy an external drive and use Carbon Copy Cloner to create an encrypted, non-bootable clone of my Mac that I keep indefinitely.
For me, one of the almost overwhelmingly enormous advantages of using Macs is the fact that I can replace hardware without losing all of the ways in which I’m made a Mac my own by transferring the complete state of one machine to another.
If I were trying to be a little more mindful, I’d still use Migration Assistant as above and omit the applications, and then install those by hand as needed.
All of that is just me though 
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What I’ve done the last two times was, in addition to my Time Machine backup, made a disc image, and also back up irreplaceable files to an external hard drive by hand.
I then cleaned up the old machine, removing apps and files and logs etc. I nuked apps I wouldn’t / hadn’t used. I did some minor reorganization of files. Then I used Migration assistant.
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