MacOS – Moving individual specific applications from Leopard to Mountain Lion

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I'm moving from an old 2007 MBP running Leopard OS X 10.5.8 to a new MBP running OS X 10.8.2 and I want to keep the new system as clean as possible.

Therefore, I chose not to use the Migration Assistant. I'm wondering if it's possible to manually move specific applications by copying files from a Time Machine backup?

In particular I'd like to move Cinema 4D R12.5, but may also want to move other smaller applications.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Best Answer

It depends, primarily on the way the application got installed initially

  • Apps which get installed by drag&drop'ing the .app file into /Applications can just be copied to the new system. You will loose your preferences (unless you copied your ~/Library as well) but the application should work
  • Apps which need an installer may or may not work depending on whether the installer wrote stuff to other folders besides /Applications. Most installers probably do (there isn't a technical reason to use one otherwise)

And of course you need to keep in mind that PPC applications are no longer supported under Mountain Lion.

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