Apple was silly to have ever removed such a great feature.
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Moving from Old Mac to a Newer Mac?
- Thread starter everson38
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Nothing beats personal experience, even if you already know what to expect. To test one at a loud and crowded Apple Store doesn't tell the whole story.
What's crazy is that the second-hand market treats lightly used M1 iMacs as if after a year they've already lost a third of their value to much better computers released since − except there aren't any! And at the same time decade old Intel iMacs are traded like fine wine, only getting better with age?
And rightfully so! Magnetic self-plugging is incredibly convenient just like the magnetic lid. Apple should've never dropped MagSafe. It was a huge mistake finally corrected.
I wouldn't say like fine wine. I sold my 2014 iMac 27 two weeks ago for $400. The original price was $3,500 paid by the first owner. This iMac will be worth $300 next year. They are nice machines, particularly if you want a device for office stuff with a nice screen, speakers, webcam and microphone and don't need a lot of compute horsepower. But Intel iMacs are depreciating assets and there are nice sales on refurb or even 2020 iMacs.
Apple dropped MagSafe in pursuit of thin and perhaps thinking that USB-C would be good enough. It was something that Apple cornered the market on and then dropped it. Glad it's back. I waited with my 2015 MacBook pro until they brought it back.
Personally, I have had no end of trouble recently not making the clone but being able to boot from a clone made using CCC (I have paid for the app).
When I try to do so, the progress bar opens, fills about 1/3 of it's length and stalls and then, eventually, my iMac will boot from its internal Macintosh HD. I look at the HD enclosure housing the clone and the light has stopped blinking. [2020 iMac, SSD, macOS 13.0.1] I often wonder if the cloning to an external HD is worth it anymore.
It all depends. I just bought a 2020 27" iMac to replace a 2015 27" iMac because that was the last of the 27" screens for iMacs.
The value of something is determined by usefulness and available alternatives. The original price someone paid in 2014 should not make a difference. I bought my mid-tier M1 iMac for €1050 and the first owner paid €1477. This was a much better deal in so many ways. For one it's not Vintage and stuck on macOS BigSur.
Yeah, the coming 6K iMac Pro will likely have 32-inches, MiniLED, XDR and ProMotion. How much did you pay?
You can run the 2014 iMac on Ventura using OCLP. But I was fine running it on Big Sur.
The 27 has a nicer monitor and it fit in with my other 27 inch monitors.
The reference to fine wine is that something appreciates with time whereas almost all computational devices depreciate with time.
Yes, Intel iMacs are cheaper than they were brand-new, but they are overvalued more for what they offer. In 2014 the 27" Retina iMac was the first and only 5K All-in-One. Back then one could justify the $2500 price tag, but today $400 is a lot of money for a vintage computer.
I don't know if this was answered yet
Yes this will work
No everything will be transferred, the entire time machine data
Perhaps using Migration would be a better option
of during set up there is an option to import from another mac.
i did this from El Capitan Time Machine Backup to a Mojave time machine backup.
and Migration imported CS4 where the original DVDs would not load on the Mojave Macbook.
what OS was on the MacMini?
if Catalina or newer, the Time machine or migration will refuse the 32 bit apps.
i hoped this helped an dim not too late to reposed.
The easiest way is using migration assistant, either from your old computer or from your Time Machine backup. I did this when I replaced my iMac last year.
But this month my wife's iMac got very flaky and slow. I suspect it is a bad disk drive. We wiped it and restored a couple of times before buying a new iMac. My wife was concerned that we might be bringing some trouble along to the new computer.
So, to be safe, I bought an external drive and used Carbon Copy Clone to back up her old iMac. (we have another drive for her Time Machine).
On her old Mac, I made sure to find any applications that had a limited number of serial numbers and unregistered them, then logged out of everything I could find. Then I didn't need her old iMac anymore, and after a couple of days, turned it in at the Apple Store for the trade-in value.
On her new iMac, we logged in to her AppleID. This loaded her mail with all of her folders, her Safari with all of its bookmarks and our photos & music libraries which we already had on iCloud.
I dragged documents & data from her clone to appropriate folders on her new Mac. Anything that wasn't on the cloud will need to be copied. Some applications were copied, but where we could, we downloaded them from scratch. Downloading them got the most recent (and in this case maybe even M1 versions) of the programs.
Her Time Machine didn't have room for the new system as well as the old system, so I erased it and started over.
I'm keeping the Carbon Copy Clone for a few weeks. Then I will be able to use it for whatever I want.
But this month my wife's iMac got very flaky and slow. I suspect it is a bad disk drive. We wiped it and restored a couple of times before buying a new iMac. My wife was concerned that we might be bringing some trouble along to the new computer.
So, to be safe, I bought an external drive and used Carbon Copy Clone to back up her old iMac. (we have another drive for her Time Machine).
On her old Mac, I made sure to find any applications that had a limited number of serial numbers and unregistered them, then logged out of everything I could find. Then I didn't need her old iMac anymore, and after a couple of days, turned it in at the Apple Store for the trade-in value.
On her new iMac, we logged in to her AppleID. This loaded her mail with all of her folders, her Safari with all of its bookmarks and our photos & music libraries which we already had on iCloud.
I dragged documents & data from her clone to appropriate folders on her new Mac. Anything that wasn't on the cloud will need to be copied. Some applications were copied, but where we could, we downloaded them from scratch. Downloading them got the most recent (and in this case maybe even M1 versions) of the programs.
Her Time Machine didn't have room for the new system as well as the old system, so I erased it and started over.
I'm keeping the Carbon Copy Clone for a few weeks. Then I will be able to use it for whatever I want.
$400 is cheap for a 5k monitor, speakers, webcam and microphones though. It's nice when you get a computer with it too. The Apple alternative is the Studio Display. There are lots of folks that want the 5k display without the big pricetag which is why there is a very active 5k iMac market.
I'll say it one more time.
Yes, migrating from a cloned backup may involve a little more time than trying to do it via ethernet, USB, iCloud, etc.
BUT...
The "chances of success" are much better, better chance of a successful outcome, particularly for an inexperienced user (inexperienced insofar as "migrating" goes).
THAT'S WHY I recommend it.
Yes, migrating from a cloned backup may involve a little more time than trying to do it via ethernet, USB, iCloud, etc.
BUT...
The "chances of success" are much better, better chance of a successful outcome, particularly for an inexperienced user (inexperienced insofar as "migrating" goes).
THAT'S WHY I recommend it.
... or the 24" 4.5K iMac with much better speakers, webcam and microphones. And the non-detachable computer runs smoother, cooler and silent at 14 watts. It's not officially supported to work as a monitor, but there's no reason why it shouldn't.
I have a 2009 27" iMac here, which could become a monitor for a 2012 Mac mini with an inexpensive $8 Mini DisplayPort cable and I'm still not excited about the idea. The speakers have too much bass, webcam and microphones won't work in Target Display Mode. Sleep, wake and boot won't work as well as with an integrated display. The iMac CPU has to run all the time while working as a monitor. And for newer iMacs you even need a $39 Thunderbolt cable.
I run a 2010 iMac 27 next to my Mac Studio and it is really fine for office stuff. I should have configured 64 GB of RAM on the Studio but a used 2010 iMac with i7 and 32 GB of RAM was a much cheaper way to go.
I have a 2009 iMac 27 as well and, and it's sitting on the basement floor. It has a Core 2 Duo so it is far less usable. I do not like the 24 inch form factor for monitors.
I have an M1 mini which I am going to put up for sale. It was fine for running my production but it wasn't enough RAM to run all of my production along with my office stuff. One of the other limitations of the 24 inch iMac. I would like to run a Windows VM on the studio but 32 GB isn't enough for that and my production stuff. My old Windows desktop has 128 GB of RAM and that is enough to run multiple virtual machines and my production stuff but the Studio runs it cooler.
Just pull it an inch closer and it looks an inch bigger. 11 megapixels can show a lot of details.
I suspect that most people who claim there's not enough memory haven't tried to run their Mac to the limit. Even with gigabites of swap memory there's hardly any performance drop on Apple Silicon. Faster and faster SSDs have almost eliminated this bottleneck. We just consider RAM size as important out of tradition.
I have 4 27 inch monitors on my table. Sometimes I have five. Moving them closer isn't an option.
Do you have an advanced degree in computer science?
I've been doing optimization work since the 1970s.
I only have an MSCS but I've worked for most of my professional career with people with either MS or Phd in computer science or electrical engineering. The largest system I've worked with had 1.4 TB of RAM. Do you ever go over to the Mac Studio forum where people talk about regret for only getting 32 GB of RAM or only getting the Max instead of the Ultra?
Workloads vary widely.
Which is why I wrote "most people". You can max-out every computer, but for typical use cases of personal computers, I think we've got them covered with the base level M1 with 8GB. Same with iPhones and iPads, they don't need to get any faster. The Apple Watch is still underpowered.
Which reaffirms why there is demand for old iMacs. Those that need or want more RAM can buy old computers cheap and easily add RAM.
And then see how an Apple Silicon Mac with way less memory still outperforms them! That's exactly my point. Old Intel iMacs needed as much RAM as possible, because accessing the hard drive was such a bottleneck. These times are somewhat over.
The 2014 5K iMac still had an 6.0 Gbps SATA interface. Even with an SSD it would only reach read and write speeds of ~500MB/s. You can put as much RAM in this machine as you want, it's just old.
You have a combination of CPU, GPU, RAM, bus speed. Sometimes the CPU can overcome the amount of RAM. But not always. Can your iMac run 2 external 4k monitors? How about 4?
That may or may not work depending on your application. I have one program whtat has 6 windows and I like to spread them out on multiple monitors. But using multiple iMacs is far more cost efficient with old, Intel hardware. I do have a desk shot of three iMacs and two 4k monitors in this forum.