My late 2012 iMac (21" Fusion, 16gb) is still going pretty well. It has just started to choke on its workload (Office suite, Sibelius, Logic, Audacity, usually all at the same time), but I think that may be due to some disk problems. I have got a replacement on order and feel I've done well at six and a bit years. It will go on to work for someone else, as well.
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how long has your iMac lasted you?
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I'm still using my 2009 21.5 inch iMac. I wouldn't say it's really slowed down over the years, but it's pretty slow with, say, the very latest version of Lightroom, processing 20MP raw photos and stuff like that. The demands on it are greater now so it seems slower, but I don't think it's slowed down as such. It still never misses a beat though, even if it takes a while to do something. I'll keep it as a backup when I replace it this year. Still have my 2003 G4 iMac as a backup for this one!
To his defense .dll files can be cleaned out like unused preferences and such on the mac. And of course you could alway back up your files and do a clean install, like you sometimes have to do on a Mac. PC's have the advantage that you can update parts over time and extend the life of the Machine. Which is what I loved about the MacPro Towers. I have a 2008 I've been keeping alive for 10 years with upgrades – adding drives, upgrading to 3rd party video cards, more RAM, etc. Maybe their new tower will be as upgradeable, but I doubt it. Most of the Apple products are disposable now.
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My wife owns an iMac she bought in 2013 and is still going strong. Hope to keep it two more years. It suffered from the faulty drive issue that plagued the original 27 in iMacs and had it replaced under warranty. She now has the dreaded dust issue where the dust is collecting on the bottom corners of the screen.
One of the reasons I refuse to buy a modern Apple computer is because the lack of upgradeable/replaceable parts. If they do offer a truly upgradeable Mac Pro this year, I will look at it, but it seems unlikely.
Oh I don't know about that. There have been a number of times I've needed to do a clean install of the MacOS, because of all of the junk. CleanMyMac is good software to get rid of the extra files and speed your mac up. And I feel the OS upgrades have actually made my Mac slower over the years with the bloat. Mavericks was pretty fast and I noticed Yosemite was much slower. I'm currently on El Capitan, it's not as slow as Yosemite, but it really is bloated.
As a collector of older Mac's I love threads like this! My "new" iMac is a Late-2012 27" i7 and it has never given me a single problem with now 7 years of heavy daily use. My oldest that's still used regularly is a a mid-2007 24" C2D Extreme; I replaced the HDD with a larger one about 5 years ago but it's been perfect. I've also got an iMac G3 "Snow" from 2000, two iMac G4's from 2003-04, and assorted other G4/G5/C2D Macs that all still run great. In my experience Macs are well-built and as long as you keep them dry and use them regularly they'll last for many, many years.
My system is a Apple iMac A1207-2118 20" Desktop (Late 2006) "Core 2 Duo" 2.33GHz that I just bought to try out the mac world once again. I had a G3 & G4 years ago that are still running for a couple folks as word processors. 
My Main system is Win7 x64 pro on a HP X600, 3GHz 12 Core, 48GB Ram....and to tell the truth it does NOT run that much faster than my 3GHz Quad Core with 8GB of ram with the software I run. I am a musician, so DAW's, VST-VSTi's, and lots of rendering is what I do. My picture world is very simple, I switch to Linux and use all FOSS software. Linux run better than windows on the systems by a long shot.
All of this to say that I don't feel that it is the hardware as much as it is the software that makes systems obsolete. I have built window systems since the 286 days and it has always been the software updates that forced folks to upgrade hardware......if what you have is working for ya, why upgrade?
My Main system is Win7 x64 pro on a HP X600, 3GHz 12 Core, 48GB Ram....and to tell the truth it does NOT run that much faster than my 3GHz Quad Core with 8GB of ram with the software I run. I am a musician, so DAW's, VST-VSTi's, and lots of rendering is what I do. My picture world is very simple, I switch to Linux and use all FOSS software. Linux run better than windows on the systems by a long shot.
All of this to say that I don't feel that it is the hardware as much as it is the software that makes systems obsolete. I have built window systems since the 286 days and it has always been the software updates that forced folks to upgrade hardware......if what you have is working for ya, why upgrade?
Of course I have no numbers/benchmarks to support my feeling, but I don't have the impression that my 2011 MBP runs any slower after 8 years. Of course, installing the SSD has sped up things considerably, with the hard drive I waited for over 40 seconds for the Finder to appear, now it's done in 10 seconds from switching the Mac on.
However, I also tend to use a "working" OS version as long as possible, and I am still on 10.11, too. I didn't have problems with Yosemite (other than the annoying "hang-up" bug when synchronizing the iPhone/iPad with iTunes), but notice some glitches from time to time with El Capitan. I'm dreading the mandatory Mojave switch when getting my new iMac, I hope that most of my software will still work...
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I just switched to a new iMac 2019, and I'm coming from a iMac late 2012. So I have used my last iMac for 6.5 years. The iMac is still running but the HDD has been replaced in 2017 (Apple did it for free and saved all my data to my new drive) and the SDD needs to be replaced very soon.
I would say my system became a little bit slower over the years with MacOS and Adobe updates. A clean install once in a few years can improve your system performance a bit. When my 2012 iMac has been repaired I think it will last for many years to come, but I needed more computing power so I'm selling this one.
I would say my system became a little bit slower over the years with MacOS and Adobe updates. A clean install once in a few years can improve your system performance a bit. When my 2012 iMac has been repaired I think it will last for many years to come, but I needed more computing power so I'm selling this one.
I had a late 2007 20" Core 2DUO, My son stopped using it a few years back because it was to slow for him. I recently dropped it off at an apple store for recycling. It still worked. Orginal everything except for some extra Ram I added way back...
I can understand your reluctance with giving your kids a more privileged computing environment. As you say, there are scary things on the internet.
But I would urge you to, when they are a bit older than it seems they are now, allow them a fully privileged computing environment.
Before I go on with my opinion, I'll just get it out of the way, that I am merely some random 23 year old who has 0 experience with parenting; I've done some reading, but it's not even close to anything in my immediate future or anything, so what I'm saying now is not as much about parenting, as it is about my own experience with growing up in basically full computing freedom.
Computers are all around us all the time, and whether we call it as such or not that includes the iPad, iPhone and any other device with a processor in it.
The biggest difference between a 'conventional' computer and these appliances it how easy it is to explore the workings of a 'computer'. And really understanding the technology that surrounds us is so crucial these days, just because there's so much of it.
My ex-girlfriend didn't have the admin password for her laptop for a while, because her dad had set it up for her; It wasn't that she couldn't have it, he just forgot to give it to her. - It limited the computer's use dramatically, to the point that she sometimes couldn't use it in class. We met in high school, and until she got the password, which took a while, she couldn't print at the school, since that required the admin password to install drivers. She couldn't install the program we used to draw molecules for chemistry. There were even updates she couldn't install, and at one point, after some scheduled Windows update or something that had apparently been authorised, she couldn't even log in for the rest of the day.
Now that was with Windows, and I frankly think a more granular lock down couldn've been possible with macOS allowing her to work more effeciently even without having the key, but these are just a few examples and not even my main point anyway.
What I'd consider the biggest issue with locking down your kids' computing privileges, is limited access to the Unix shell. I know that not everybody are in training for a computer science career, and that's fine, but I would hate for someone who wants to explore to be blocked from that learning experience.
Furthermore, it's a trust exercise - Your kids will become adults one day, and the best part of granting your kids privileges, is that you show that you trust they'll use those privileges wisely; This of course depends on the kids having an appropriate age, and the potential danger from abuse of those privileges, but if none are ever granted whatsoever, when they grow up and become adults, they might not be able to properly adjust to a life of full privileges, and abuse the power they have over their own life in self-detrimental ways.
I am therefore a big proponent of giving as many privileges as appropriate - what is appropriate is very case-dependant, but I think in the majority of cases, full computing rights is almost a must. Especially when a time comes when your kid buys a computer out of pocket - As long as you buy it and let them use it; well, conditions may apply, sure; Though even then I'd argue for administrative rights in a lot of cases.
This was really off-topic, but since it relates to a post in this thread, I still figured I'd post it here.
To stay somewhat on topic, I guess I'll add that in addition to my 2014 iMac, my 2000 iMac, and my 2003 iMac, I also have a 2014 MacBook Pro running perfectly, an iPad Air that's slow as pancakes, but works and my 2011 MacBook Pro died from GPU failure, but was covered by a replacement program since it was a known issue, I had already purchased my 2014 to replace it when the repair program was announced, but I did get the logic board replaced for free, significantly increasing resale value.
My mid-2007 24" iMac (purchased in March 2008) is still working. Only turned off a handful of times over a decade. Never a problem, but I eventually upgraded the RAM to the full 6GB and replaced the hard drive with an SSD. Recently I replaced the CPU and Wifi card so it could run Mojave. While the machine has been relegated to part-time work at a vacation house (replaced as daily driver by a 2017 27" i7), it's still is fast enough for many if not most daily tasks, and remains 100% reliable.
I have a mid-2011 27" iMac that has been on the go almost daily since I bought it. However, now it randomly reboots a few times on startup, as though some component needs to heat up before the machine runs OK. Also using option-d on startup to run hardware diagnostics indicates there is a problem with the HDD fan. Thus, I'll be buying a new 2019 iMac but Apple's quality control of late hasn't impressed me. The new iMac is awfully thin and I worry about heat buildup due to dust etc.
Such a pity I have to abandon my old machine...
Such a pity I have to abandon my old machine...
I have a mid 2010 iMac 21.5". I use it for 4-5 hours every day. A few months ago it started to give me problems, slowing down, freezing, etc. so I decided to replace the 1 Tb HDD with a 1Tb SSD from Crucial. It was nerve racking swapping out the drives for me because the connectors are so tiny and fragile but I took my time and got it done. Now it runs great and I am very pleased with it's performance. I will definitely buy a new iMac at some point but will probably wait until this one completely dies or a significant updated iMac is released. I am fine with the cosmetics of the current iMac, bezel size and thickness of the machine are of no importance to me but I would like to see 4 TB3 ports, upgraded face time camera with facial recognition, bluetooth 5, wifi 6, etc.
I can assure you that it has been achieved many times over. I myself know of at least three systems that have been in active use every single day 24/7 on roughly 320 days per year in a manufacturing environment by a plethora of different users since 2003, are connected to the internet, and are still running their original Windows Server 2003 operating system.
Windows does not junk up by itself. Neither does Linux, macOS, or for that matter any other desktop or server operating system. It's a very popular myth in Apple forums that if you simply leave Windows running it is going to desintegrate all by itself after a while, just like it's a myth that it keeps crashing all the time. People need bogeymen (aka a favorite enemy) to make themselves feel better and to justify their own decisions and opinions, and hating Microsoft and everything that is associated with Microsoft, be that Office, Windows, etc., is an immensely popular sentiment around Apple and Linux users. Just like Apple is a fantastic enemy image for fanatical Windows, Linux, and especially Android users.
Everyone I know personally that uses Windows has refreshed the OS on occasion, and report performance improvements. Only Windows system of mine that has not slowed down or gotten glitchy after a few years is my Windows 7 desktop, but I don't use it much.
And every other thread on these and other Apple forums now seems to suggest to perform a "clean install" of macOS, either with every (other) major upgrade or anytime users have problems. Does that mean that macOS junks up all by itself? No, it doesn't. It is always user interaction that junks up a system. Installing performance optimization tools, cache cleaners, app cleaners, registry cleaners, tuning tools, uninstallers, etc. Clicking on every button that says "CLICK HERE" in bright red letters on a website. Falling for the usual "My mega trustworty website olkpoiyk2lklnsd.scangate.com.ru has found ${var} viruses on your system. Click here to install SuperDuperVirusRemoverTool to fix it" scam. Opening suspicious links in emails without using ones brain because some random person from Nigeria/Tadjikistan/Taiwan one does not know sent you an invoice/reminder/alleged naked photos of Emma Watson that you totally and immediately must open and read!
That's what kills Windows, and that's what can also kill macOS. It's not the system's fault, it's the user's fault.
That's what kills Windows, and that's what can also kill macOS. It's not the system's fault, it's the user's fault.