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The best way to transfer to a new MacBook is faster (and cheaper) than you'd think

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Adrian Kingsley-Hughes/Kerry Wan/ZDNET

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ZDNET's key takeaways

Transferring to a new MacBook over Wi-Fi can take several hours.

It's much faster to just use a Thunderbolt 4 or 5 cable.

There are cheaper cables on the market that work just as good as Apple's.

Over the last few years, the files on my MacBook Pro have certainly piled up. I do my best to manage it, consistently transferring data to the NAS (network-attached storage) after I'm finished using it. But still, my MacBook is home to close to a terabyte of data, mostly videos that I need to edit.

This is not normally a problem, but the other day I upgraded to a new MacBook Pro – faster processor, more RAM, and more storage space – and at this point, even with all this storage, managing the data has become a headache.

Also: Forget Apple's pricey Thunderbolt 5 cables - I found a quality one for $40

See, normally when I was moving to a new Mac, I'd fire up Apple's Migration Assistant, connect both Macs to the same Wi-Fi network, and let them do their thing. But this time, it was going to take the Macs almost 20 hours to complete, and I'm sorry, but that's just way too long.

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