Set Up from Time Machine or Fresh?

[Melodeath]

New MBP 16" is arriving on Thursday. I'm coming from an older Mac that's still on OS X 10.10 Yosemite.

What does the set-up process look like in Catalina? Is it going to ask me to restore from a Time Machine backup? Is that worth doing or is it better to start fresh and manually install all of my needed software? And manually copy over any files I need?

Setting up from TM would help cut down on time installing, but I worry I have software that works on 10.10 that isn't supported in Catalina. What would happen in those cases? I don't necessarily want a new laptop with a bunch of installations that don't work properly.

Just wondering what my best course of action is. I appreciate any thoughts about this!

 

[Howard2k]

I would do a clean install for sure. Spend a couple of days keeping notes of key apps and key data so you can migrate as efficiently as possible. Pre-download installation media. As long as you’re organized it’s slightly less stressful and frustrating, but will be worthwhile I’m sure.

 

[Nacho98]

Clean install, meaning set it up brand new manually. Note for a brand new computer, the OS is a clean install by default and you don't need to go through the process of creating a boot usb stick etc. like during an update on an older machine.

 

[DanMan619]

I like clean set up for a new machine. I boot up the new machine like it's my first machine, then i just go to my time machine backup on an external drive and pull what i need from it onto the new machine. I've never actually tested it concretely but i feel like that's the cleaner way to do it than let it do a full restore where it'll take all the old junk files/documents i probably don't need along with what i do need onto the new machine.