Restoring a new Mac little by little

[axisofphilippe]

I just ordered a new Retina MacBook Pro (!) and, when it comes, I'd like to restore files/apps as needed, rather than do a full Time Machine restore.

I was planning on doing this:

•*Restore my system settings/user data/important media & documents from Time Machine right away

•*As I need applications, I'll restore them one by one via Time Machine.

Here is my question: If I restore applications like this, is it as simple as finding the app in Time Machine and hitting restore? If, for example, I want to restore Final Cut Pro and I just navigate to the app and restore it, will that restore all the associated files? Or will this break the functionality of some of my apps? Is there a better way to do what I want to do?

 

[Weaselboy]

Here is my question: If I restore applications like this, is it as simple as finding the app in Time Machine and hitting restore? If, for example, I want to restore Final Cut Pro and I just navigate to the app and restore it, will that restore all the associated files? Or will this break the functionality of some of my apps? Is there a better way to do what I want to do?

That will only work for apps that are fully self contained and have not support files installed as part of the install process.

For example, apps that come in a DMG where you just open the DMG and drag the app into /Applications... those will work fine is you just restore the app itself from Time Machine. But any app that runs an installer and puts files in ~/Library/Application Support will not work that way and Time Machine will not know to automatically move those support files over. For apps like that you will need to run the installer on the new machine.