Just attach an external disk and turn on Time Machine and let it do a full backup. Then when you get the new machine, attach the TM disk and option key boot to it then click restore. Done.
I don't have an empty 1 TB external drive laying around. I'd rather just connect the two somehow with usb and copy/clone the filestructure directly from one mac to the other.
I don't have an empty 1 TB external drive laying around. I'd rather just connect the two somehow with usb and copy/clone the filestructure directly from one mac to the other.
Without an external drive, the easiest is just to use the included Migration Assistant to move your data from one machine to the other.
USB cannot be used like that to directly connect one Mac to another. You can use a Thunderbolt cable or ethernet cable if both machines support that. Or you can just do it over wifi on both machines, but if you have a lot of data, then can take awhile to complete.