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Hey all, I have recently decided that I am going to be purchasing an iMac for the family computer and shedding ourselves of our various laptops and kids computers which are getting minimal use. I am not asking about whether or not there are new iMacs on the horizon as no one truly knows, but wanted to find out what deals you guys typically wait for before pulling the trigger on one. I'm scouting the refurb store right now and am fine with that price, but am not aware of the cadence or typical specials that occur throughout the year. Are we approaching a time when one is more likely or is there probably going to be a drought until later in the year? Just hoping to get a little intel on making sure I don't make the purchase just outside the window where I can get a better deal/special. Appreciate any feedback, and looking forward to getting that thin beast. Thanks!
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Jul 9, 2013 13:49
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 07:10 |
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Thanks everyone, this is the kind of feedback I was looking for re: 21" iMac. I would consider the 27", but the space that it is going in only has a clearance of 21" and the iMac sits at 20.25" with the stand. Does the 30 day return if a new one is released apply for refurbs? Getting the educational discount (which I can) and a $100 app store gift card may make it worthwhile not to do the refurb and reap all of the benefits of a brand new one and they're promotions. I'll be dropping on one quite shortly! Thanks! fake edit: Are there two hard drive bays on the iMac? Can I put the OS on a SSD and have the TB for storage?
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Jul 9, 2013 19:23
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Bob Morales posted:Early models showed there isn't even an SSD connector on the 21" model. It uses the same SSD as the rMBP (AFAIK). But that wouldn't stop you from sticking a 2.5" SSD in the spot where the HD is (they don't have 3.5" drives like the previous model) and then just use an external enclosure for your storage drive, it has USB 3.0.... Hrmm... that really is making me second guess my decision to go with the new model. I'd imagine that getting a 2011 one and putting a SSD in there for the OS would more than make up for any speed losses that I would likely encounter. I'm hardly doing any heavy lifting on this thing. I MAY one day put a game or two on there... But the thin is so sexy.
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Jul 9, 2013 20:25
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Ultimate Mango posted:You could get one with a Versa mount back instead of the stand and install the thin one into the space with a mount. Maybe, just maybe it gives you another option. I just realized that the 20.25" measurement is on the 27" and not the 21.5".... that changes things now. Perhaps I will look into the 27" 2011 models now.
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Jul 10, 2013 14:07
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benisntfunny posted:You'd still need to do the VESA mount to make it flush if your space is cutting it that close. Just to be clear, is there a difference between a VESA and a Versa mount? If not, and it's just a typo, why would you stay away from a VESA mount? It seems like an ideal solution and pretty slick as well.
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Jul 10, 2013 15:12
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I finally pulled the trigger and ordered my iMac. After all the discussion and debate, I settled on the 21.5" new iMac but ordered it with the VESA mount and the fusion drive. I tried messing around with every possible configuration (older one, but add SSD for two hard drives, update the ram, etc) and every time the total bill came out to be just about the same. Without the cost benefits of getting an older model I'll stick with the newest and a $100 gift card to the App store for my trouble. Ordered a $20 articulating arm that'll mount to my kitchen wall that will make this thing pimp as hell. Can't wait to consolidate 2 laptops and a kids PC into one centralized machine for my family. Thanks for the insight, everyone!
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Jul 11, 2013 20:59
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My new iMac is arriving this week with a fusion drive. How does that work with bootcamp? Can I allocate a portion of the SSD to it or strictly the regular space? Can I do a mix of the two?
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Jul 15, 2013 15:27
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Star War Sex Parrot posted:Fusion relies on CoreStorage which is an integral part of OS X, thus will never work for Windows. Ok, I reasoned as much but wanted to understand that before firing away at partitioning. I'm only going to be using bootcamp for steam games that don't work on Mac. Bummer it won't be able to use the SSD but there are worse first world problems. Thanks!
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Jul 15, 2013 16:01
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~Coxy posted:You could always de-Fusion the drive and use it as two separate volumes. Thanks for the suggestion but that sounds like a potential headache for minimal gain. I'm not a huge gamer so waiting a little bit won't kill me. If it were trivial, that'd be one thing.
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Jul 16, 2013 14:21
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Random question on the new iMacs. What are the methods that are possible to facilitate a second monitor? Only thunderbolt? I'm not familiar with TB at all, is it easy to convert that to HDMI? The reason I ask is that my new iMac is going in my kitchen at a counter-top/desk dealie and above it is a space for a TV where I have a LCD that would be sweet to act as a second monitor to display pictures or other cool static things.
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Jul 17, 2013 17:36
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Bob Morales posted:You can go from ThunderBolt or DisplayPort to HDMI or DVI with a cheap adapter. Terrific news. Thanks 
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Jul 17, 2013 18:01
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Stick100 posted:Also most user hate Windows 8 and it's not very usable from an OS perspective. I'd think they'd want to make an OS usable from an OS perspective.
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Jul 19, 2013 20:16
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Kenny Logins posted:Thanks for the response. Good to know in advance of getting a new MacBook and doing all that setup. I had been considering getting one of the two just for convenience factor but a big chunk of my mandated Windows use will probably end up being for Steam games, so I'll stick with my previous Boot Camping ways. There are games that are coded for Mac also. I just got my iMac and am using OSX for those that are and then bootcamp for those that are not.
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Jul 19, 2013 21:30
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Stick100 posted:Many games coded for OSX just run like crap compared to bootcamp unfortunately. SC2, Borderlands and Bastion all ran horribly on OSX and great on bootcamp. That's upsetting, really hoping to play BL2 in OSX. Here's hoping you have an old PowerPC and my new i5 2.7 will rock. yes, i know it's code and not power!
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Jul 19, 2013 21:44
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Wasn't sure if this should land in the Hardware or software thread, but here goes: I have a newer iMac on a wall mount in my kitchen and despite my greatest intentions never seem to play any of the steam games that I loaded up on in the last sale. I figure because it's not a great location to game and would really want to do some couch gaming. I'm thinking about running a long HDMI from the thunderbolt port with an adapter and USB cable to my living room and plugging the HDMI into my Soundbar (handles all the video switching) and then putting a USB hub on the other end for a keyboard/mouse/Xbox controller in order to play some games on the big screen. On the surface, I can't think of any reason that this wouldn't work, at a minimum in mirrored monitor mode. Would sound travel over the HDMI or would I need to split off the stereo cable I have going to a set of speakers in the kitchen? Another thing I just considered, I typically boot into Bootcamp to game, I know that this is a Mac thread but can anyone think of any potential issues that could come up from this set up? The only thing that I have white space around is how Windows treats the Thunderbolt port. Appreciate any feedback, this could be a sweet weekend project!
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Nov 27, 2013 19:19
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PRADA SLUT posted:There's no reason the iMac wouldn't work exactly like a PC would--they have the same hardware. Ah, there goes my ignorance over hardware in the past decade! So audio would travel over the TB/HDMI?
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Nov 27, 2013 19:26
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PRADA SLUT posted:Audio travels over HDMI just like it does in Windows. Sweet, thanks! Can't see any reason for my plan to come together then.
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Nov 27, 2013 19:33
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Electric Bugaloo posted:You might have to set the sound to "output over HDMI" in the system prefs (or possibly menu bar? I'm not sure) but everything should come together fine. Just wanted to chime in and say how well this all worked out. After finally figuring out how to get the screen size adjusted to fit my TV in windows I was on my way. Last strange thing I have to troubleshoot is that if I use a hub and plug in both the Xbox controller and a Bluetooth dongle for a mini keyboard mouse the controller trips out and switches to player two. I unplugged the dongle and was gaming away like mad. Thanks! I will find a more Windows/Steam centric location to discuss the remaining issue.
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Nov 28, 2013 14:07
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Greetings Mac goons! I have a Late-2012 21.5" iMac which was ordered without the stand, but instead the VESA mount. Does anyone know if it's possible to attach the OEM stand option if I picked one up on Amazon/eBay? I'm not squeamish about taking things apart, provided a decent guide is available. Alternatively, does anyone know of a VESA mount solution that looks somewhat similar to the stylings of an iMac? Thanks!
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Oct 18, 2015 14:21
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So the touch bar is going to kill dual-booting into Windows via boot camp, right?
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Oct 28, 2016 17:03
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ethanol posted:It's expensive. It got hot and touching the screen was uncomfortable. It's not as wieldy as any ipad I've ever used. It's too heavy. It runs Windows 10 . The kickstand felt unbalanced, you can't really use it on your lap. It's easy to just knock it flat over by accident. The type cover is a so-so keyboard. The touchpad was terrible. The keyboard cover goes flush up against the screen, and folds flat behind the surface pro so any table dirt that attaches to the bottom of the surface becomes the screen cover. The cover was an extra $130 when I bought it. Battery life wasn't good enough for me. The pen was kind of glitchy and not as accurate as I thought it would be, so it wasn't a good replacement for paper for my purpose, which is writing equations. Resting an arm on the surface felt horrible, because it was too hot. Regarding the pen, the one that comes with it is trash. I picked up a nice Sony for about $30 and it works perfectly 100% of the time. Game changer in the pen department.
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Oct 29, 2016 03:10
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SourKraut posted:For what it's worth I do PDF markups and drawing redlines on an iPad Pro and it's great with the Apple pencil. It's definitely nice having it out in the field during construction instead of an unweieldly set of drawings or specs. Are you redlining on PDFs or using other apps to do it? Just got a bunch of iPads for my field planners and would love some app ideas to improve their lives. We still use a ton of paper but that's what happens when you're a 150 year old gas utility....
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Oct 30, 2016 00:45
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Whomever joked that the startup chime was next to go was prophetic. http://www.iclarified.com/57557/apple-kills-the-mac-startup-chime-with-the-new-macbook-pro
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Oct 30, 2016 23:37
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mitztronic posted:e: rewatched the video and my observation was wrong, disregard! This guy clearly has never been to Detroit.
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Nov 3, 2016 22:40
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Please just shut this thread down now, we've hit peak insanity when .5lb on an Apple product (which are already lighter than everything else) is factoring into buying decisions.
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Nov 4, 2016 15:06
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Cingulate posted:You call it .5lb, I call it 25%. Yes, you can use percentages. However, when you begin to divide by small amounts then large percentages are created to sound much more impressive. I don't lift percentages, I lift pounds.
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Nov 4, 2016 15:48
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Shaocaholica posted:Would it be correct to say that Mac desktops are designed not to hit tjmax at full load with stock and custom fan control right? I haven't done a deep dive into how the more recent Mac minis and iMacs(pro) perform. Did you install a thermal sensor on the SATA drive? The stock HDDs have one built in so without it the Mac flips out and runs everything full tilt. I just replaced the HDD in my late-2012 iMac and had to do it. Unfortunately, they either sent me the wrong one or completely misdesigned it as there was no friggin way that pigtail was fitting inside the case so I just didn’t install the 2.5” bracket and let it hang in there like an animal. It’s not going anywhere. I started receiving S.M.A.R.T failing errors on the fusion drive so I decided it was time to swap it out for an SSD. I didn’t know that I needed to split the fusion drive apart first so had a hell of a re-install until I figured it out and nuked it from Internet Recovery. It kept viewing the 128GB SSD (which turns out that is what was failing, not the HDD) as the 1TB fusion drive and crashing on re-install when it ran out of space. Strange thing though, I was going to slap the old 1TB HDD into an enclosure and use it as a secondary Time Machine backup (first backups to my NAS) and my Windows PC confirmed it was healthy, but now whenever Time Machine gets over 500GBish the backup fails. I’m going out on a limb here and thinking this drive is actually toast and cut my losses but if anyone has any ideas please let me know.
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May 6, 2020 02:12
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Binary Badger posted:Download and install the trial of DriveDX, then run it with the 1 TB plugged in, it will tell you the exact condition of your drive and if it's failing or not. Even in an enclosure? I'm not opening this bad boy again! It's my only Mac so will need a Windows solution if it needs to be internal. E: a simple drive and it is working. Load cycle count: 2,943,491. The text says normal laptop drive lifetime is 300k-600k. Yikes! Running the self test but thinking I have an idea here! Thanks for the recommendation TraderStav fucked around with this message at 03:22 on May 6, 2020 |
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May 6, 2020 03:13
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To that end, the onboard SSD is showing up failed (173, wear leveling count) as I expected. Anyway that I can disable this guy so it doesn't show up in the drive list? I tried formatting a few different ways but keep showing up as available.
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May 6, 2020 03:26
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Binary Badger posted:Maybe if you booted a Linux USB key and formatted it to ext3, but then at every login you'd get a window asking if you wanted to initialize the disk.. Thanks, I just opened it up to replace the HDD with the SDD, not planning to do that ever again if I can help it. I'll deal with it and just have it labeled as "DO NOT USE" for my wife.
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May 6, 2020 16:12
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"I'm not sure what I expected" I'll make this correction later.
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May 6, 2020 16:21
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Shaocaholica posted:Yeah Luke Miani did some MXM swapping in his earlier youtube career on the 2011 and apparently it didn't work with the cards that were 'worth' doing the swap for. I was lucky and got this iMac already with the 2GB card. That's the same OWC pigtail they sent me for my Late 2012 21.5", there's no room in there like there is in yours though since it's not replacing a 3.5" drive. They probably sent me the wrong one or just plain ignoring that fact.
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May 6, 2020 18:54
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Bob Morales posted:iPad + Mac Mini Now someone 3d-print an articulating arm and bring back the iMac G4 style.
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May 12, 2020 16:55
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Small White Dragon posted:So Steam currently lacks ARM support on MacOS, and in my experience, few games are available via the Mac App Store. Should I expect that Rocksmith won’t work? Considering getting an M1 in the near future and really want to make sure that works.
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Jun 6, 2021 01:13
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Thanks for the clarification! Checking that one off of the list!
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Jun 6, 2021 04:27
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Mu Zeta posted:Logitech K380 is a solid $30 bt keyboard. And it has Mac keys on it like CMD If you're willing to pay a little more the MX Keys may be the perfect keyboard.
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Aug 17, 2021 12:27
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Legit sitting here waiting for a new M1 Mac Mini with >1 monitor support and I'll insta-buy.
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Sep 9, 2021 21:58
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Bah, I wasn’t aware of that, good news! But the HDMI caps out at what resolution? Maybe I’m waiting for it to support 3 then.
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Sep 10, 2021 04:56
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Not sure why I had hdmi capping at 1440p in my head, I'll be damned. I'll sit tight to see if there's a pre Christmas refresh (unlikely) and jump on a 16gb next time I get a chance. My current set up uses 3 monitors but I want to move up to an UW 49" so that would change things. Thanks!
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Sep 10, 2021 05:19
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japtor posted:I vaguely recall reading about some weird ultrawide issues on the M1 Macs, like it wouldn't run full resolution despite being lower than the 16:9 supported resolutions and having the right cables and such. Pretty sure there's some billion page thread on the macrumors forums about it. Thanks for the heads up, it looks like Apple acknowledge the issue back in December but I can't find a follow-up that they resolved it. Perhaps this huge UW is not the panacea that I'm envisioning, but the idea sure is awesome.
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Sep 10, 2021 15:26
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