Will you be able to seemlessly restore an old Mac to an ARM Mac via Time Machine?

[TomOSeven]

Basically, title. Will the difference in CPU architectures make it more difficult / impossible to move from an Intel Mac to an ARM Mac via Time Machine?

 

[r6mile]

Basically, title. Will the difference in CPU architectures make it more difficult / impossible to move from an Intel Mac to an ARM Mac via Time Machine?

No reason why it should, especially with your personal data. Any Intel-only apps that you wish to migrate will run under Rosetta 2 in an Apple Silicon Macs, so there shouldn't be any issues. Of course, we will only know for sure once AS Macs come out, but I imagine Apple will have worked this out by then.

 

[Diskutant]

It worked for PPC to Intel, and it will work for Intel to ARM

 

[amagichnich]

Depends on what you mean by “restore”. Restore the old Mac as an image on an AS Mac - most certainly impossible.
Install MacOS and restore user data from the TM backup - most certainly possible

 

[Spindel]

Been wondering this too.

On the other hand my current "install" is originally from 2008 (last restored 2013 when I switched computer) and I'm thinking it might maybe be better to scrap it all (probably loads of old junk from leopard/snow leopard still living in my system) and start fresh.