> Why did setting up macOS take 3 days? I don't even think it would take 1 day if I set up a new machine from scratch. I think it might depend on what "setting

> Why did setting up macOS take 3 days? I don't even think it would take 1 day if I set up a new machine from scratch. I think it might depend on what "setting up" means. For example, "logging into my main day-to-day accounts" might take a couple of hours, max, allowing for even an annoying system-level issue. But installing, configuring, and gaining access to all one's apps might add anywhere from another few hours to another few days, depending on the number of apps, the location of the files, the version delta between new and old systems, and so on. If you have to do some online research and you hit StackOverflow more than a couple of times as you search around, you may be looking at a serious time bump. And if you have to contact the software vendor...well, yikes, in a lot of cases. Days, understandable. Weeks of suffering--possible. This is not even getting into things like working with local network services and local network utilities, configuring old hardware on the new machine, or even changing or disabling new Mac OS or Mac features to suit one's working style. > It took me two hours to set up Debian by hand yesterday. Congrats, :) but this does complicate the question further because now it depends on what is involved in this "by hand" thing. It took me 20 minutes to set up Haiku OS by hand...10 minutes to set up Puppy Linux by hand...what does it mean? That I used my hands? That I plugged in a USB drive and hit "Next" a bunch of times? That I configured and compiled all sources from scratch?