Switching to new intel mac

i would just use the migration assistant, its pretty easy to use.

Intel and PPC installations of the OS use some different code. An Intel install will not boot a PPC machine and a PPC install will not boot an Intel machine.

I don't know what kind of experiences other people have had, but in the 3 or 4 times I've switched Macs since the migration assistant was introduced I've never had it work successfully. There have always been weird issues on the new machine (finder and apps crashing all the time, etc.) and I've had to just do clean installs and move things manually. My attempt to use it when I switched from my PPC TiBook to a new Intel MBP produced the worst results yet...the finder wouldn't even launch on startup. I tried twice (spending like 4 hours each time) with the same results.

I recommend just doing everything manually. In my experience it's actually been easier in the long run.

Not to sound argumentative, but I've done the Migration Assistant literally hundreds of times for myself and my clients. I've only rarely had problems, and usually those were due to problems on the "old" machine.

On the old machine, before migrating, make sure you've run all available updates. Repair permissions using the Disk Utility. If you have Disk Warrior or a similar directory utility, run that as well. This should ensure that your "old" system is running optimally before you migrate it to the "new" system.

Yes...of course I always install the latest updates, repair directories, repair permissions, etc. etc. etc., but I've still had bad luck with it in a couple versions of Tiger (don't remember which ones) and in Leopard (10.5.4...?). I guess MA just hates me Best of luck to the OP.