Store Pick Up Refurb Macbook Pro M4 Questions

[rwh63]

FINALLY working towards retiring my early 2011 13" Pro. Ordered a 14" M4 16/512 refurb from Apple. Will be going to the store to get it. Was planning on bringing my 2011 and getting them to help transfer all data. I do have a cloud acct., but need to make sure the original documents, photos, music etc is actually transferred to the laptop. If they are just on the cloud, and i cancel the account, all items disappear from my laptop (just had that happen on my iphone music. All music disappeared on two devices because itunes match was cancelled. Originally all music was transferred to my phones from my laptop. Signing up for itunes match meant the music was no longer actually on the device).

anyway, my 2011 has inoperative usb A ports. does have TB1 and firewire. Got about 300 GB of material on the 2011. About 100 Gb is copied on the cloud. Most of it is music/photos/documents.

Any suggestions on how this will go?

 

[960design]

I purchase new iPhones (x3) every year(x17?) and new macbook pros (x2) every three years (x??).
I have yet to lose a single item in a transfer. Your concerns are justified, as crazy stuff has happened to many on mac rumors.
Step 1:
Log into iCloud account via Safari.
Step 2:
Verify all data is found under Drive > Browse.
Step 3:
That's it. If the file is NOT there it will not transfer when you sign into the new mac using that iCloud account.

What do you mean by "cancel the account"?
Wipe your computer, remove your account from that mac?
That just removes all data from the Mac and verifies you would like to remove your iCloud account as well. It does not remove items from iCloud.

Easy way is to just mirror the computers by sitting them next to each other and turning on the new computer. The new computer will run you through a few prompts and then transfer all data, exactly like the old computer ( could take a few hours, depending on amount of data ).
Before you wipe the old computer, verify everything is on the new computer.

User Experience Note:
Ensure you have put everything you want to keep in you Documents folder.
Verify Settings > iCloud > Drive > [x] iCloud Drive & [x] Desktop & Documents Folder are enabled.
Whatever is stored on your desktop, files or documents folder will now sync to the cloud and will be available to all devices signed in with your account.

Good luck, you got this!

PS
iTunes Match allows you to retain access to all original music on the original device. If the service is cancelled, the device with the original song retains the song (forever, you own it) and the copies on the other devices are removed.