TFY unwisely agree to Do Something about 70-year-old in-law's laptop, which is 9 years old and running Word 2008 atop a version of macOS unsupported since 2018 …
You have a spare M1 Probook to upgrade him to. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, he's forgotten his login password, never had an AppleID, and his old machine doesn't recognize APFS filesystems for that old-time floppy-style SSD shuffle.
And the cable to the only SSD they have is flaky.
(Now back home, screaming quietly in Mac.)
UPDATE: job done.
For all that the Migration Ass. didn't want to work across a 4 OS version mismatch and I had to do everything by hand, I've got the machine sorted. Took hours, but significantly less painful than doing the equivalent job on Windows (don't ask, I speak from experience).
@cstross I've found it... tolerable on more recent versions of windows so long as everything you're running [and care about] is written for the NT branches. Still have to reinstall software from scratch though, the worst of which in my case is the softsynth-and-effect plugin collection much of which wants to be remotely authed the first time it's used as well (these wouldn't be any easier on Mac, ofc).
But there's at least a decent equivalent of /home/ that's actually respected by most software these days, even if you need to know about some of its hidden contents. The 9x branch and software written for it, not so easy.
Charlie Stross
Philippa Cowderoy