And now - Retina

I've just finished migrating to a MacBook Pro with a retina screen. I had ordered it over 4 weeks before heading out on vacation, but it didn't arrive. I was beginning to think Apple was starting to sell vaporware...

A friend coming up to visit brought it up, and I let it sit a few days before taking a deep breath and starting the migration. The first day I had to give up - all applications have to be closed in order to use the migration assistant. So I waited until getting ready for bed, and then started in.

Of course, I had made the usual mistake and set the new one up with my normal account name. I did that by mistake with the last one, and had to re-install the operating system from the disk in order to set up an admin account in a crazy name, and then set up my regular name for me. This computer doesn't have a disk, though, so I suppose I'll have to live with it and rename all the paths in configuration files... groan.

It announced that it would need 5 hours to transfer the 250 GB clogging my old machine (and yes, it ended up taking 5 GB of temp crap with it). After brushing my teeth it was 5.5 hours, after reading a mystery novel for 2 hours it was down to 3:58. Anyway, it was done in the morning.

I got to work after breakfast, and we had some more gotchas:

• TrueCrypt would not work. Panic. I ended up having to install beta version 1.7a before I could decrypt my data.
• Fugu hollered at me that this Mac would not execute PowerPC stuff, full stop. Had to download the pre-release candidate 1.2.1pre1 in order to access the off-machine stuff not on Dropbox.
• Lion felt a pressing need to deal with some updates. It wanted to update all sorts of stuff I never really use, so I unchecked all that. Didn't have the Internet set up yet, just using the old box as a router. Oops: 

  

  This will take all week...

  No way I'm going to wait that long! I figured it was the stupid modem, so I restarted to old box. Sure enough, now we only needed about an hour for it all to download. Installed it, restarted the system, check. 

• Then we had a classic Catch-22: I tried to access the Huawei-Internet modem directly and not through the old box. No dice - I needed a Java Runtime Environment. WTF? I had one on my old system! Why is this not a standard part of the OS? And to download the runtime environment I need what? Right! Internet! So I put the stick back on the old box and fiddled around until I found something that offered to install Java for me. Took another half an hour to get it downloaded and installed.
• Surprise! All of the network definition information was not transferred!. I only have like 25 or 30 different networks I work in that all have bizarre problems that I sort out with my network definitions. Luckily, the old computer was still working (although it is making strange noises). 
• We have Internet! And Adium works, as does YoruFukurou. 
• How about Thunderbird? That tends to be a bitch. And indeed, I am greeted by pristine email boxes, not the 2000+ emails that should be there. And a missing archive. Okay, this will be a path problem, as I couldn't us my normal name. I'll just have to set that up again for each email account. Except that there is no /User/me/Library/... directory anymore. Gulp! Luckily, we have internet, so I mouse around and find the super secret magic trick: cmd + shift + G and blindly enter in the directory you want to visit, and it will be shown to you. And it works, and there was my email. WTF? Is Apple trying to save me from fussing with the OS or what? I looked for the box to tick to show me "hidden" files, nothing to be found. But I did find Tinker Tool while digging around and that had lots of cool boxes to tick to make the Mac work again. Thanks for saving my day!
• I do not like the way the touchpad/mouse scrolls, so I switched the direction on that.
• I started reading my emails, and opened up an attachment. Or rather, tried to start Word. Please enter my product activation key! Excuse me? I figure it out from the old machine, except that that one is a 20 digit number and now it wants 25 digits. Panic email to the engineer as school asking if he has any idea. Nope, we have a school license for as many copies on school computers as we need. I click on the 30 day free trial, enter my email address, and it now defaults back to my normal view and the 20 digit number. Okay, either it now works, or I panic in 30 days. Or start using Open Office in earnest.

Okay, my editing tool works, no more excuses. The calendar and the address book now have a fancy cutesy skin that I can't seem to find a way to shut off. And screenshots keep getting dumped back on the desktop instead of the directory I managed to get the old machine to use instead. Why couldn't it take all of my settings over? I'll probably have to set up the gazillion printers I know and love - yup, they didn't make it over, either. Yuck. 

The screen is very crisp - but I have an eyeache right now. I hope it is just staying up late reading last night. So it cost me a day. Not very user friendly. Oh, and I set up the Save As... to do Export...... I wonder if this is going to be my last Mac? It is getting far too Windows like....

Update: Wanted to fix my web page and called up Dreamweaver CS3. I know, CS6 is the current version, but why pay Adobe all that money for stuff I don't need? Photoshop works. Indesign works. But all I get is this:

Um, right. OK. 

No idea what's up. I did find a thread at Adobe though, and the solution is to copy the configuration directory (mine was 95 MB large?!) from the old machine to the new one. I renamed the directory on the new machine to crap, just in case I needed it again. I didn't. Works like a charm