Help needed migrating from a New MacBook to an older iMac
For various reasons I am trying to migrate data and applications from an M1 MacBook Air to an 2012 iMac running Yosemite. Is there a way to to do this?
iMac 27″, OS X 10.10
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That's quite a gap. You may encounter issues both with application, and data format, compatibility.
APFS did not exist yet when Yosemite came out. So to move data between the systems using external drives, you'll need to use one of the following filesystems:
- (Preferred) Mac OS X Extended (Journaled, Non-Case-Sensitive) – a.k.a. HFS+
- FAT32
- exFAT
Another option might be to network the systems, and have one of them act as a file server for the other.
Along the same lines, if both Macs are logged into iCloud with the same Apple ID, you could sync files using iCloud Drive. Yosemite is the earliest version of Mac OS X / macOS that supports iCloud Drive.
Store files in iCloud Drive on Mac - Apple Support
