Getting Current ML Image on to Refurb Running Lion

So I bought a new MBA from the Apple refurbished store. It comes with 10.7 installed and is eligible for the 10.8 upgrade program. I don't really care about the free upgrade program as I already bought 10.8 and have it on USB, a .dmg of it on a NAS device, etc... My current MBA is running 10.8.2 and I'd like to use Migration Assistant to move my user account and everything associated to the new MBA (running the older pre-installed 10.7 OS) and wind up ultimately with a clean and stable 10.8.2 installation on the new MBA.

Does anyone have a recommended strategy? I've noticed in the past that there can be errors with things like iPhoto and Mail where you get a message that states that the current version won't work with the old version. MY wife had this issue when she tried to downgrade from 10.7 to 10.6 a while back. I'm assuming that moving data via Migration Assistant isn't going to upgrade the OS, so therein lies the problem with importing (for instance) email, photos, calendar events, etc... created in the latest version of an app to an older version of an app, and then trying to upgrade again to the current version after the migration.

My first thought is to just boot up the new MBA (running 10.7) create a dummy admin user, and run through the upgrade using a USB stick with 10.8 on it. Run through all the updates via Mac App Store, and then run Migration Assistant to bring in my user. That makes me wonder if I'm stuck with the new dummy admin user being attached to my Apple ID and any issues it might spawn if I delete the dummy admin user...

The other thought is to just use a CCC backup image of my current 10.8.2 MBA connected to the new MBA via external USB drive, boot to that drive on the new MBA, launch CCC from that drive, and clone the image of the 10.8.2 system on the external drive to the new MBA's internal drive. Something tells me that hardware/kext/driver differences between the 2011 and 2012 MBA models might make this a bit of a dubious installation. Plus, even if it worked, I'm stuck with all the baggage like old .plists and whatnot from the old MBA.

Confused yet? I am. Anyone have any ideas?

I'd be sort of curious about how a CCC clone works cloning to a newer machine myself.
I'd probably try it just to see - but I've only used FW and SD! which can clone 100GB+ in under an hour.

The best option since you've got ML on a USB, might be to do a clean install of ML instead of upgrade. Then on first boot, do the import when it asks if you want to import from another machine or backup. That way you should't have an extra user account to deal with on it.

Don't know what happens if trying to import using 10.8 from a 10.8.2 machine or if that will have any issue at all.

Yeah, I'm tending to go towards the idea of just booting from the 10.8 USB installer stick from the get go and running a 10.8 install as my first act. After that, I'll run Migration Assistant on just the user, but no apps and as little data as possible. That should get my user account set up. From there, I'm hoping to log in as "me" and then run all the updates for Apple software. After it's current, I'll run Migration Assistant again for applications and data. I have everything backed up to TM and an external HDD, so there's really not much to lose other than time.

Just be careful running the Migration Assistant for the User account as that may wind up creating another user on the new machine. Migration Assistant works great before any users have been setup, but not so good after.

chscag said:

Just be careful running the Migration Assistant for the User account as that may wind up creating another user on the new machine. Migration Assistant works great before any users have been setup, but not so good after.

Click to expand...

Yeah, that's the crux of the problem. No good clean answer I'm afraid. Now I'm trending towards setting up a generic Admin user to get it up to 10.8.2, and then running Migration Assistant to pull in my user. That assumes I don't run into issues with the generic Admin user using my user's Apple ID, and then deleting that generic Admin user.

Don't think there's an issue with the Apple ID as long as that's the one you're ultimately going to be using on the machine.

Well, I got off easy. Though it seemed to indicate that it would ship with 10.7, it actually shipped with 10.8 installed. I ended up just creating a generic admin user and giving that user my Apple ID to do all the updates. After I was up to 10.8.2 on the OS I added in the iPhoto, Safari, etc... updates. I then just used Migration Assistant to import my user account. MS Office 2011 needed it's activation key re-entered, Nook, Kindle and Dropbox needed to re-authenticate (as if they were installed for the first time) and RSA SecureID needed it's token reset/deleted and then re-imported. About 2 hours of work and downloads spread out over 4 hours. Not too bad.