Updating Before Migrating to New Mac
It’s normally very easy to migrate, but this time they threw a curveball at me. In order to use the Migration Assistant, I have to upgrade the previous machine (the one I’m typing this on) to the latest Mac OS. That’s exactly what I don’t want to do. This is my safety net against incompatibilities in the new version of the OS.
That seems like a strange requirement for that reason—and also because the old Mac might not be able to run the latest OS. Apple’s documentation says:
Migration Assistant in Mavericks and Yosemite can transfer information from other computers that have OS X Snow Leopard v10.6.8 or later installed. If you’re migrating from a computer with an earlier version of OS X, update your older computer first, or manually copy your data from one computer to another.
Perhaps he misunderstood, and Migration Assistant only wanted him to update from 10.8.2 to 10.8.5. I don’t envy the person who had to write that error message.
