Don’t Migrate From Intel To Apple Silicon

Do a clean setup instead…

There are times when I realise even I lack common sense. And then there are times when I realise, so does everyone else, including Apple! I’ve been writing about Apple M1, testing it, using it, multiple versions of it even and over lengthy periods of time, but I only recently realised, I forgot one crucial aspect to mention. Heck, it deserves a lot more than a mention. It needs to be specifically called out — how you set up macOS on the M1 machines.

Apple very conveniently offers several setup avenues when first opening your shiny new laptop. Traditionally, I would say, none of those avenues are better or worse than the other, however when it comes to the M1, there are three setups I would highly discourage and frankly, I think Apple should too.

• Setup from a Time Machine backup
• Setup from a previous machine
• Setup from a Windows PC

Essentially, any option that the Migration Assistant offers, should be ignored when setting up a new M1 machine. The reasons might not be obvious at first, but after a good number of troubleshooting events and conversations with friends and colleagues also moving to M1, it became clear why I was having no problems, and they were having all the problems, some more exotic than…