I am coming to pick up new MacBook Air and would like data transferred at same time. Is this possible?

UpsyDaisy1 wrote:

I don’t have Apple Time Machine so what do I do?

Use whatever backup tool you have. There are many ways to back up a computer; iCloud is not a way.

If your old computer is a Mac you do have Time Machine: Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support

Or, pick up the new computer then use Migration Assistant to transfer your data to the new computer.

As mentioned above, iCloud doesn't back up your current MacBook Air. It does back up certain documents, provided you've set them up that way.

Their are three basic means of running Migration Assistant to transfer everything from one Mac to another:

• A Time Machine backup external hard drive.
• If your current MacBook Air has a Thunderbolt port, you can get a Thunderbolt->Thunderbolt cable to connect the two computers together and run Migration Assistant that way. (This is the method I chose a couple weeks ago when I purchased my new 15" MBA...and it's probably the fastest method).
• Migration Assistant can also be used to migrate everything via WiFi, provided they're both on the same WiFi network.

Hope this helps.

UpsyDaisy1 wrote:

If I use iCloud for backup, would I be able to transfer data to new computer?

iCloud is not a computer backup mechanism. If you have douments on iCloud, when you log into your iCloud account with the new computer the files in iCloud will be synchronized with your new computer. Time Machine provides Mac computer backup.

You have it; TM is built-in to the OS. You need to start backing up if you're not.

There are also third-party programs such as Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper! that can make bootable clone backups of Mojave startup disks onto external drives.