Transferring info from a new MacBook to an older one? I need to move all my data from a newer Macbook OS X 10.9.5 to and older one, OS X 10.6.8. I have tried using a thunderbolt cable and tried wirelessly through migration assistant but the computers cannot find one another?  Any thoughts?
Migration assistant doesn't like migrating to older systems so here's a quick and dirty way of doing most of what you want...


On both machines create a temporary account with admin privileges.
Start up the older machine in target disk mode and connect your Thunderbolt cable.
Log into the new temp account on the newer Mac, in Finder navigate to the Users folder and find the Home folder you wish to migrate across to the older Mac.
Copy your Home folder to the Users folder on the older Mac. You will most likely receive an error that certain items weren't copied, don't worry about this.
When finished eject the older Mac and restart it normally.
Log into temp account on older Mac and go to System Preferences>Users &amp; Groups.
Create a user account (with admin privileges), using exactly the same name and password as the account you just copied over. You will be warned that a user folder with that name already exists, just continue on.
You will probably run into disk permission issues with your home folder, an easy fix is to download and run Onyx which will allow you to reset your home folder permissions (Disk Utility just checks system files and Apple apps).


Hopefully at this point you will be able to log into your user account and access your data, but you will have to copy over any applications over manually.

Another way would be to clone the Users folder using Carbon Copy Cloner, then follow step 7 above. The end result should be the same. I wouldn't copy the whole Applications folder over as there will be many version mismatches with the Apple software - just copy over the software you've installed where possible.

As I said at the start it's a Q&amp;D method but really there's no easy "official" way to migrate to an older system.