Fastest way to migrate an application between Mac's?

Question

after using the Migration Assistant each time arrives a new OSX or i buy a new MacBookPro, its time to tidy up my work machine,

Since upgrading my current MBP(mid2009 2.8GHz 4GB DDR3) to Lion many applications stall randomly, i got a new 7K2 rpm HDD (no budget for the ssd yet...) but they still go slow.

Last week i Reinstalled Lion from scratch in the New HDD, and right after installing the OS was incredibly fast, like it should be with a laptop like this, then i ran the Migration Assistant for my Profile stored in a TM Backup, and the performance went back to what i had before reinstalling lion,

My conclusion is that somehow theres a bunch of preferences in my profile that are making my system slower, and after trying to fix that myself (looking at logs, Daemons, Launch Services..) and cleaning them manually, i still have no performance improvements.

So, i will reinstall Lion from scratch and then, go App by App (only the ones i use which are 20% of the ones i've installed) migrating the .app itself and their preferences.

Which is the easier, faster, and maybe programmable via Automator or AppleScript to migrate a simple application? Ideally i would like to end up with some workflow where you introduce the App name in one side and all related files are copied to the new Volume.

Thanks for your Help.

Answer 1

Fastest way and best way may not be the same in your case, based on the info you provide.

Since you have found that Migration of apps bring the slow performance back, I'm not sure I'd do any more migration, but would try re-installing the apps instead. This would create new preferences, eliminating an "bad, old preferences" that may have been the cause of the slow down.

Re-installing will take more time, and apps like those from Adobe that require key #s are going to be a pain, but the end result of a properly performing Mac is your goal.

The problem with Migration is that it can bring the problems with it, as you have seen.

The problem with re-installing is that you will never know which caused the problem. You won't be able to avoid creating the problem again. It may not have been anything you did, but a built-in glitch that is going to occur whenever a particular set of apps and actions are present.

Perhaps a faster way to solve the problem of what causes the slow down:

Make sure all 3rd party apps are in the Applications folder, or have aliases there, so all User accounts have access to them. Then log out of your account and into another account and test for performance problems. I have an account called "Test" (non-Admin) just for this purpose. This account will have its own preferences for those apps, different than yours.

Now, in that Test account, start using the apps and your Mac, watching for slow-downs.

Whatever you do to solve this, please come back and report it- what worked and what didn't. We all can learn something from it.