iMac 2017 Coming to Good and Geeky

New iMac on the way and it’s a beast

Usually when buying a new computer I tend to go for the middle of the range as it seems a good compromise between the price and the capability of the computer. This time with my purchase of a new iMac I went for the top of the range. Not only that, I also added a 1 TB SSD and the i7 processor which added another couple of hundred to the price. The standard machine came with the Apple mouse, but I haven’t used a mouse with my iMac for the last six years. So it was a given, with this new computer I would also get the new Magic Trackpad which is a little bit bigger than the one I presently use. So I have lots of things to look forward to with my new iMac.

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Follow the money – Follow the iMac

I put my order in on Monday. The next day the order was ratified by the removal of a large sum of money from my bank account. It is now Friday and I’m expecting the notification that the computer will be sent off to the shipping company. It’s always nice to do that thing where you follow the progress of your new purchase using one of the applications available. It will probably be moving by UPS and I have the UPS application on my iPad and iPhone. It does tend to work a little bit better with an application called Deliveries which also shows progress on maps. With the order of the Apple AirPods I was able to follow from Shanghai, to a place in Korea, then to a distribution centre in Köln Germany before it made its way to Barcelona. A friend in England who ordered a very similar iMac on 8th of June got delivery on the 15th. She said hers came from Cork in Ireland, but I’m still expecting mine to come from China.

Should I have bought a MacBook Pro?

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I had thought about getting a more mobile notebook computer. The reasoning being that I wouldn’t necessarily be chained to my office desk for writing by dictation. I could always run upstairs to a quiet room and continue working without distraction. I decided against this because the upgrade to the iMac, as given to us at the WWDC event was more compelling. Even though the MacBook was also given some love, I still think it is limited to a maximum of 16 GB. With the top of the range processor and a 1 TB SSD storage in the iMac, space is going to be super. I’ll complete the iMac purchase by having at least 32 GB of RAM. I could even go completely mad and get 64 GB of RAM. The other advantage of having the top of range iMac is that there is 8 GB of video RAM. This will give me a fantastic visual experience with the retina quality iMac screen. This will be my first Mac retina screen, something I already take for granted on iOS by having a iPad Pro 12.9 inch.

Is it kind of over the top?

The answer to that question is that it is possibly over the top for what I want to do with the computer. The iMac I’ve ordered is for longevity, for the applications and abilities of future software. The iMac I have at present has been a fantastic computer and still performs sterling service. The time for making a change came with the updates to the iMac in WWDC 2017. The previous big change to the computer was in 2015 and there was nothing compelling for me to upgrade at that time. With this latest set of changes to hardware announced by Apple I’ll be glad of the latest Bluetooth technology. This will allow me to unlock my computer by the mere proximity of my Apple Watch and AirDrop will also work better than it does presently. I have some photo editing software from Topaz which does not work properly with my current iMac. I’ll be looking forward to getting more use out of that new version which has been unavailable to me for the past year.

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The iMac I’m running now I was able to extend the useful life of it by having it boot from an SSD drive. Rather than opening the computer up and changing the spinning drive to an SSD inside I was able to do the same with a Thunderbolt connected drive. So it’s going to be cool having an internal drive as my boot drive once more. I’ll still be hanging a couple of drives off the back of the computer. I have a Thunderbolt drive containing a 2 TB spinning drive and also a USB drive of the same size. The Thunderbolt has been my main storage and the USB drive is a backup of that. Superduper which is my backup software creates a clone of the Thunderbolt drive every other day. I’ll be using the same setup with this new computer.

What’s to be done with the 2011 iMac

This 2011 iMac will be going to my wife because it’s still going to be good for many years to come. It will be a super machine for her video editing. I’ll give her the opportunity to do some video editing on my new iMac. If the difference in performance is huge and I suspect it will be, she may be allowed to do all her video editing on the new iMac. The other iMac will still be sitting there and I can get work done while the new machine has been taken over. I will of course also have my iPhone and iPad which I use for quite a lot of my computing these days too. She won’t have to try and do this video editing on her current MacBook which gets hot and bothered as it is creating the video files. Our office is going to look quite impressive with my Mac and its connected extra monitor. The old iMac will also have an extra monitor. There will be screens all around the room! I might have to consider also buying a new uninterruptible power supply so that both iMacs are protected from power outages.

It’s Just a Waiting Game

There’s nothing I can do now to hurry the procedure. Hopefully today I’ll get a message to say the iMac is on the move. It’s slated for delivery between the 22nd and the 26th of June and of course I hope it comes the soonest possible. It’ll be nice if it arrives on my day off next Wednesday so I’ll have time to set it up and play with it.

UPDATE: As I am posting this I just got the notification to say it was on its way. Delivery day set for 23rd of June. Have to be the day before or after as 23rd is a holiday here in Spain.

Start Fresh or Use the Migration Assistant

I’m thinking I’ll start fresh with this computer and so it will be just ready for the operating system upgrade coming in autumn, High Sierra. This will mean extra work for me to set up all the applications from scratch. On the other hand, I am a little bit tempted to use the migration system because it is much quicker to get up and running. I’m tempted to use that method and decide on the nuke and pave in autumn. That will give me more time to make sure everything is ready for a completely fresh start. The new Mac operating system, when it comes, is going to be using a new Apple filesystem. This is another good reason for starting fresh. The main thing, whichever way I go is to have good backups to make sure I don’t lose any data during the move.

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