Notes From Setting Up New Apple Devices
This weekend, I helped my non-techie father migrate to a new iPhone 17e and MacBook Air:
Device Transfer initially couldn’t find the old iPhone SE. It turns out that years ago he’d read some article that said Bluetooth was unsafe and so he’d turned it off.
The setup assistant repeated the new age verification question at least four times. Any time we’d go back a step on subsequent screens to change a setting it would jump back to age verification.
This was his first phone with an eSIM. The transfer ended up going quickly and smoothly, but the flow was confusing. The setup assistant led to an AT&T Web site that (on the small screen) was almost entirely a cookie banner. I don’t know why the assistant can’t show you the IMEI or send it to the carrier directly. You have to understand multitasking (and Copy/Paste) to get it from Settings. After pasting the IMEI, it got both the capacity and color of the iPhone wrong. (Hopefully someone wasn’t trying to steal the phone number.) AT&T sends a text message to the old phone that you’re supposed to reply to to confirm, but tapping the notification didn’t allow a reply because the old phone was locked to the Device Transfer screen. After approving the transfer, it sounded like we’d just get a notification on the new phone that it was done, and then it would work. The notification arrived, but the phone still had no service. Tapping the notification didn’t do anything. You need to go back into the Cellular settings. At that point you have the choice of using an eSIM or transferring from another phone. Initially, you had to pick Transfer, but this time you have to pick eSIM. There’s no indication that this eSIM just arrived on your phone or even which carrier it’s associated with.
It did not opt him into Stolen Device Protection Instead, there was an informational screen saying that he could go to Settings to enable it.
Migration from the Intel MacBook Air to the new one using a Thunderbolt cable was quick and easy. The fans on the old MacBook Air ran the entire time, while the new one was silent.
Then we got stuck. Signing into the Apple Account brought up the “Enter iPhone passcode” prompt. It said the password was incorrect. There were three iPhones and two Macs attached to the account. We know what all of the passcodes are—and confirmed by actually logging into those devices—but no matter which one we picked using “Choose a Device” the new MacBook Air kept saying the password was wrong. Of course, I checked the Caps Lock and, based on prior experience, the keyboard layout. (The iPhone passwords were numeric, so I wouldn’t even expect those settings to matter.) It still wouldn’t accept any of the passcodes, either saying that the password was incorrect or showing an infinite progress spinner so that we had to hard-restart the Mac. After a few hours, without doing anything different, suddenly it worked.
It added an unwanted Weather widget to the desktop that didn’t show any weather because it didn’t have permission for Location Services. I couldn’t figure out how to grant this. The Weather app itself did have access. I ended up just removing the default Calendar and Weather widgets, which he couldn’t read on top of the wallpaper, anyway.
He asked why Apple “got rid of the Tab key.” Every other keyboard has always had a key that says “tab”; this one just has the arrow glyph (⇥), which he didn’t recognize. He assumed this was a new key that did something different and so wasn’t going to press it—instead reaching for the trackpad to move between text fields—until I explained the situation.
He was really happy to have MagSafe back and to no longer have to juggle cables to plug in two USB devices at once.
Previously:
- iOS 26.4 and iPadOS 26.4
- MacBook Air 2026
- iPhone 17e
- iOS 26.4: Stolen Device Protection Enabled by Default
- Mac Won’t Accept Correct Login Password
- eSIM and iPhone 14
12 Comments RSS · Twitter · Mastodon
If I were an Apple employee working in HR, I would ask candidates applying for a job in UX or something to share their thoughts on this fascinating list. I laughed at the Weather widget part.
I should add that he was totally happy to keep using the Intel MacBook Air except that the SSD was full (and not upgradeable).
@bob Maybe “age verification” isn’t the right term, since it didn’t actually ask for any documents to verify and I’m not in the UK, but I don’t know what else to call it. It was a new screen at setup that had two or three choices for the age, basically to see whether you’re a minor or not. Maybe it’s for the declared age range API?
Despite Michael claiming his dad isn't a techie, I think he almost is. Wouldn't bluetooth be re-enabled per restart or system update? He must have been constantly disabling it! Plus the dad is glad to have 2 available USB ports!
I recently upgraded from an iPhone 13 to an iPhone 17. It was a huge pain in the neck. So many apps required fresh login. Re-authorizing things took forever. I can’t even remember all the confusing hoops I had to jump through, some of which had to be tried several times to work, without doing anything different. Basically wasted almost a full day of wrangling.
A week later I still run into a random app either on my Watch or my iPhone that isn’t set up properly.
@Paul Yeah, I would have thought Bluetooth would get re-enabled, though he doesn’t remember doing it recently. Only using two USB devices: Time Machine and printer. I don’t remember why he didn’t want to use a hub.
The iDevice migration process is so error-prone and tedious, it's actually one the main factors in me not upgrading my phone frequently. Every time I go through it I'm terrified it's going to just fail in any of a billion possible inscrutable ways, and I'll be permanently stuck with no working phone or no access to any accounts (imagine not having any of your authenticator apps nor access to SMS - not just for a few hours as is sadly normal during the process, but indefinitely).
And that's for *me*, someone with (at this point *too many*) decades of experience using, developing for, and *developing* Apple products (I worked at Apple for a few years, circa the iPhone release). Every time I see a non-techie family member or friend go through the process, I wonder how on earth anyone ever manages to succeed at it.
There's so many things about iDevices (and Macs) these days which genuinely make me wonder if anyone at Apple ever uses these products. And of course what's *really* depressing about that line of thinking is that of *course* they use them, which means that they *know* how bad it is and they *choose* not to do anything about it.
I'll also note that every time i set up a new device, it creates an insane number of emails in my inbox.
Verification Codes
New Login Detected
New Machine added
Do you recognize this login?
etc etc
@Wade Needless to say, the Symantec authenticator app did not preserve its ID after migration so we had to go into various sites to update the credential.
> New Machine added
I have some older machines I don't use all that often, but when I do, they cause a popup on every other machine claiming a new device was added to my account.
The older machine is still signed in when this happens.
I'm in the process of setting up a new phone from scratch instead of restoring it from backup, as I usually do. The amount of work needed to make everything work the way I like/need it is insane.
> Basically wasted almost a full day of wrangling.
Sadly this is not an exaggeration. I'm still not finished after working on this for the third consecutive evening.
