iBook to Air a move into the future but...

[FrankieHolland]

I have finally had to update my computer as my 2005 iBook has become incompatible with many websites and surfing the web has become a drag. I now own a rather nice Macbook Air running OS 10.10.2 Yosemite. The differences are stunning and the MBA is fast and quiet compared to my iBook.

I need some help though as the two computers do not seem to want to talk to each other.

How do I transfer my photos from the iBook to the MBA. The Air has no superdrive so I cannot use my back up photo library disc to move the photos to the Air. So how does one do it?

This is my first post to this forum so if this post arrives in the wrong section please forgive me and feel free to get admin to move it to the right place. To think I had the iBook ten years and never needed any advice, that must say something about how easy the iBook was to use.

Anyway thank you for your help, I look forward to all the useful information you guys can offer.;D

 

[chscag]

How do I transfer my photos from the iBook to the MBA. The Air has no superdrive so I cannot use my back up photo library disc to move the photos to the Air. So how does one do it?

First, welcome to our forums. Probably the easiest way without spending a lot of time and money is to obtain a thumb flash drive of sufficient size or an external hard drive. Copy your photos or the entire library to the drive and then transfer it to your new MBA. USB transfers can be slow especially if you have a large amount of photos but it's easy to do.

There are other ways of doing it but since your iBook is an old machine and you're likely running an outdated version of OS X on it, the USB transfer method is a safe one to use.

 

[FrankieHolland]

Thank you, chscag. that was kind of what I thought I might have to do. I have a large SD card Can I use that? Already have a usb card reader from my iBook days so maybe give that a go....

 

[chscag]

I have very little faith in using SD cards for data and data transfers. Maybe it's because I've had several of them go bad. In my opinion, flash drives and external hard drives are safer to use. But in any event, if you do use a SD card to make the transfer, do not erase the data from your iBook until you're satisfied that everything has been successfully moved to your new MacBook Air.

 

[FrankieHolland]

Thank you for the warning about SD cards, I haven't as yet had any go bad on me. I have though had a usb drive that did go wrong and lost some data.

Is there a brand of USB brive you recommend?

 

[vansmith]

While I think having an external HD is great (you can make it into a Time Machine drive afterwards), you could also set up a shared folder on your old iBook and simply transfer things across the local network. What version of OS X is running on that iBook?

 

[FrankieHolland]

It was the last update compatible with the G4 processor. I haven't got the ibook with me today but will check again when I get home tomorrow.

I am having trouble getting the two notebooks to talk to each other how will that shared folder work on a local network if they do not talk to each other?

Thank you for your suggestion.

 

[vansmith]

What do you mean by "talk to each other"?

The old iBook should be capable of sharing a folder across AFP or SMB, both of which are supported by Yosemite. When you get a chance, head over to System Preferences > Sharing and see what kinds of options are available. If either AFP or SMB are, you're golden.

 

[FrankieHolland]

Hi vansmith, thank you for your help. I am a bit of a "just use it person" I never get to use computers for my work and only have experience of Personal computers at home. So have never needed to use a network. I thought the iBook would be able to be seen via my wifi at home by my MBA I turned on both bluetooth and wifi. But the two notebooks were invisible to each other. Thats what I meant.

I will go to the system preferences and look into the AFP thing... It may need a little more coaching from you when I get to it but I have been called to another job so will not be back home today as planned....