I received my new Mac mini with M5 Pro on the 22nd, but I didn’t around to migrating to from my iMac until this evening.
I did the migration between the iMac and and the Mac mini using Migration Assistant and a Thunderbolt connection between the two, and what used to take an overnight migration or more was complete in an hour or two. So that was good.
The new Apple Studio display is very nice. I received it weeks ago, though I ordered it with the Mac mini. It makes up for setting aside the iMac and its display.
The Mac mini is noticeably faster than the iMac.
I set new passwords for both my user account and my admin account, so it’s taking a while to get used to them.
Now begins the process of the actual migration — Migration Assistant can do only so much, basically user accounts, applications, and some settings.
Strangely, my Backblaze backup seems to have automatically inherited the backup from the iMac, which is not what I expected. I usually have to jump through some hoops to get it moved over to a new machine.
Unfortunately, a whole lot of permissions across the system appear to have been hosed. Notes. Mail. Photos. Messages. Who knows what else.
This is going to take a while. Everything is complicated by the fact that my user directory has long been stored on an external SSD. There’s more there than can fit on Apple’s expensive internal drives, and theoretically, moving user accounts from an old machine to a new one should be straightforward. Unfortunately, major macOS upgrades often seem to change the way external user directories are handled, and this one seems to be pretty bad.
Luckily, I haven’t updated my MBP yet, so I have that to fall back on until I work out the masses of kinds on the new mini.
-awlabrador