Will this iMac last me 10 years of normal use? (no gaming, no video editing etc)

[navaira]

You must have a really small room. I also never said anything about 2 monitors. I don't think multi monitor setups will ever be mainstream and will be only for power users.

No, me and my fiance share a studio with a large desk, I have studio monitors next to the screen, and we pretty much occupy the entire desk. If we went for 40" screens, one of us would have to move to another room. Also I'd need someone to tell me what's happening on the left side of the screen while I am looking towards the right

There's a Bill Gates quote about 640 kB being enough for anyone out there somewhere....

I know but still, at some point we simply don't need more bits and bytes. I am doing pretty well with 16-bit, 44.1 kHz sound. Let's say we go to 24-bit, 96 or 192 kHz. Sure. But 256 GB RAM is 32x what I have in my current laptop. Will we go to 32-bit and 384 kHz just because there's more RAM or something? Will we watch 20k movies and complain the pixels are too large? I think that unless a DRASTIC change happens – a complete rethink of how we use computers – there will be no need to go above, say, 64 GB RAM for an average user. At some point human eyes and ears stop discerning any difference, even if you're an audiophile or Jony Ive designing the new calendar application. Once the system loads for two minutes, a SSD update that gets it down to 10 seconds is amazing. But are we ever really going to complain "I can't stand waiting for 0.25 second till Mac OS X 10.15 loads, so I updated to 256 GB RAM and now it takes 0.15 second, phew"?

 

[bent christian]

...and iPhone will still come with base storage of 16GB, yes.

I just bought an Andoird phone a couple of months ago with 8GB of storage. It was on $40, and pretty sweet deal. I don't care about phones. What I have works for what I need to do. Lots of people in the world don't care about having the latest and greatest. They have a task that needs to be done and they buy a tool to get that task done.

 

[navaira]

I tried to use a LG tablet with 8 GB storage but it was near impossible. It constantly complained about having not enough memory left and I had about 10 apps on it. $40, though, is a good deal provided you don't expect much more from your phone than just calling and texting

 

[bogg]

No, me and my fiance share a studio with a large desk, I have studio monitors next to the screen, and we pretty much occupy the entire desk. If we went for 40" screens, one of us would have to move to another room. Also I'd need someone to tell me what's happening on the left side of the screen while I am looking towards the right


I know but still, at some point we simply don't need more bits and bytes. I am doing pretty well with 16-bit, 44.1 kHz sound. Let's say we go to 24-bit, 96 or 192 kHz. Sure. But 256 GB RAM is 32x what I have in my current laptop. Will we go to 32-bit and 384 kHz just because there's more RAM or something? Will we watch 20k movies and complain the pixels are too large? I think that unless a DRASTIC change happens – a complete rethink of how we use computers – there will be no need to go above, say, 64 GB RAM for an average user. At some point human eyes and ears stop discerning any difference, even if you're an audiophile or Jony Ive designing the new calendar application. Once the system loads for two minutes, a SSD update that gets it down to 10 seconds is amazing. But are we ever really going to complain "I can't stand waiting for 0.25 second till Mac OS X 10.15 loads, so I updated to 256 GB RAM and now it takes 0.15 second, phew"?

Computers of today don't load the os much quicker than they did in the 90s, I remember that windows 95 used to boot in less than 50 seconds once bios had done its thing...who needs computers that boots in less than a minute? Should have staid with Windows 95 and a Pentium mmx

A FULL windows 95 install was about 57MB. The entire OS could fit easily in the efi partition on your mac... And on most modern hard drives be copied to RAM in less than 1/4 of a second...

 

[bent christian]

I tried to use a LG tablet with 8 GB storage but it was near impossible. It constantly complained about having not enough memory left and I had about 10 apps on it. $40, though, is a good deal provided you don't expect much more from your phone than just calling and texting

Google Maps, Web browsing, photo editing with VSCO. I don't ask a whole lot of my phone, but I do quite a bit outside of calling and texting. Actually, most of what I do on it is not calling and texting.

 

[throAU]

I know but still, at some point we simply don't need more bits and bytes. I am doing pretty well with 16-bit, 44.1 kHz sound. Let's say we go to 24-bit, 96 or 192 kHz. Sure. But 256 GB RAM is 32x what I have in my current laptop. Will we go to 32-bit and 384 kHz just because there's more RAM or something? Will we watch 20k movies and complain the pixels are too large? I think that unless a DRASTIC change happens – a complete rethink of how we use computers – there will be no need to go above, say, 64 GB RAM for an average user. At some point human eyes and ears stop discerning any difference, even if you're an audiophile or Jony Ive designing the new calendar application. Once the system loads for two minutes, a SSD update that gets it down to 10 seconds is amazing. But are we ever really going to complain "I can't stand waiting for 0.25 second till Mac OS X 10.15 loads, so I updated to 256 GB RAM and now it takes 0.15 second, phew"?

Some potential CPU/RAM hogs of the future...

Video. 3D video. Higher frame rates.

8k video at 120 Fps will chew a heap of RAM and processing power. And lets say you are doing that sort of throughput 2x for stereoscopic 3d on something like an occulus.

Meanwhile, your machine will be doing proper real time voice recognition that actually works, retina tracking for context so you can task switch without needing to use the mouse or whatever.

You'll be able to program your computer via normal everyday english which gets interpreted on the fly similar to the way python or a scripting language does today. You'll be able to say something like "fix the red-eye flash in all the photos i took of Jane on the weekend" and it will just do it.

Yes, there will be major changes in how we use computers because of the resources improving.

Maybe we'll have machines capable of sensing your brainwaves via a sensor on some part of your body? I suspect the signal processing required for that will be significant. Who knows.

Sure if you want to continue to run OS X 10.13 then sure, you can probably do that. Everyone else will have moved on though.

 

[ToroidalZeus]

No, me and my fiance share a studio with a large desk, I have studio monitors next to the screen, and we pretty much occupy the entire desk. If we went for 40" screens, one of us would have to move to another room. Also I'd need someone to tell me what's happening on the left side of the screen while I am looking towards the right

That's a really unusual situation and not exactly common at all. So it's a moot point.

There's a Bill Gates quote about 640 kB being enough for anyone out there somewhere....


We don't know, we can only speculate, but for the past 40 + years memory, storage and CPU power has trended upwards at an exponential rate. We're currently in a bit of a lull, but the long term trend will continue.

I remember thinking that 8 MB was a huge amount of memory back when my 486 was running DOS. And then i tried OS/2 warp... and Linux... 8 MB was the bare minimum for acceptable performance... that was in 1993-1995.

I remember thinking that the FPU in my machine was pretty pointless, but fast... and then Quake happened. And the 486 FPU was suddenly JUNK, Quake needed a Pentium to run properly.

... and a heap of other anecdotes regarding machine spec being awesome until suddenly it was crap...

The thing is 8GB of RAM is more than enough for regular usage. The only program I've seen that eats up ram is Google Chrome. I have 16GB of RAM and the only time I've seen the ram usage exceed 8GB is while gaming with chrome open. So 16GB is already pretty future-proof and 32GB is easily overkill.

 

[bent christian]

Some potential CPU/RAM hogs of the future...

Video. 3D video. Higher frame rates.

8k video at 120 Fps will chew a heap of RAM and processing power. And lets say you are doing that sort of throughput 2x for stereoscopic 3d on something like an occulus.

Meanwhile, your machine will be doing proper real time voice recognition that actually works, retina tracking for context so you can task switch without needing to use the mouse or whatever.

You'll be able to program your computer via normal everyday english which gets interpreted on the fly similar to the way python or a scripting language does today. You'll be able to say something like "fix the red-eye flash in all the photos i took of Jane on the weekend" and it will just do it.

Yes, there will be major changes in how we use computers because of the resources improving.

Sure if you want to continue to run OS X 10.13 then sure, you can probably do that. Everyone else will have moved on though.

In 2006, did you think people would be buying new systems with 1.6GHz dual core processors? I couldn't imagine it, but they still do.

 

[sunapple]

You can also just buy what you need and can afford right now, upgrade whenever you need to.

Looking back our 'family iMac' from 2007 has served quite well all these years, but the usage has dropped a lot since the MacBook and iPad took over. It's also rather slow and laggy with El Capitan. And it still has to keep going for another year and a half to get to your 10 years of life expectancy which just seems... Too much of a pain if it would be your main machine.

It's great to keep using computers for over a decade, but it will probably not be used for the exact same purposes in its lifespan. Can you still use a 30 year old Macintosh Plus? Yes, as a clock.

Funny actually, the title suggests gaming is not the sort of thing you can expect from a ten year old computer, yet it is the only thing our 9 year old iMac is being used for these days (my sister plays Minecraft on it, almost daily)

 

[throAU]

The thing is 8GB of RAM is more than enough for regular usage. The only program I've seen that eats up ram is Google Chrome. I have 16GB of RAM and the only time I've seen the ram usage exceed 8GB is while gaming with chrome open. So 16GB is already pretty future-proof and 32GB is easily overkill.

You know I could take the above numbers, divide by 8 and it pretty much sums up the exact same situation from 2005, yeah? Pretty much exactly those specs... same situation in 2005. 1 GB of RAM is nowhere near "more than enough" for regular usage today. but it was back then... until vista came out.

The same sorts of programs were hogs back then, even the decade before, i remember the biggest driver for more memory in 1996 was Netscape...
[doublepost=1453132189][/doublepost]

In 2006, did you think people would be buying new systems with 1.6GHz dual core processors? I couldn't imagine it, but they still do.

a 1.6 gHz dual core machine of today is likely 1000% faster than one from 2005-2006, depending on the tasks it is doing. you can't just compare clock rate and claim they're the same thing...

 

[bent christian]

a 1.6 gHz machine of today is likely 1000% faster than one from 2005-2006, depending on the tasks it is doing.

The same basic design is still being used ten years later. Why? Because the dual core design still works for many uses. I have no reason to believe an i7 quad core processor will be obsolete and unusable any time soon.

 

[ToroidalZeus]

You know I could take the above numbers, divide by 8 and it pretty much sums up the exact same situation from 2005, yeah? Pretty much exactly those specs... same situation in 2005. 1 GB of RAM is nowhere near "more than enough" for regular usage today. but it was back then... until vista came out.

Right now my PC is using 1.1GB for Kernel. .5GB for Twitch. .5GB for Safari. .9GB for Youtube (3 vids). So rough ~4GB for total system usage. I still have 4GB left till reaching the 8GB limit and 12GB till hitting the 16GB limit. So even 16GB will be future-proof for a long time in the OPs case.

 

[bogg]

Right now my PC is using 1.1GB for Kernel. .5GB for Twitch. .5GB for Safari. .9GB for Youtube (3 vids). So rough ~4GB for total system usage. I still have 4GB left till reaching the 8GB limit and 12GB till hitting the 16GB limit. So even 16GB will be future-proof for a long time in the OPs case.

In 2007 I had 2GB of RAM and couldn't imagine a need for more. You do know it sounds ridiculous when people state things like that there will not be a need for more because right now _I_ don't use more? How in the world is "right now" relevant to 5-10 years from now?

16+ ram let you change your usage patterns drastically, you no longer need to shut off applications to start new ones. If someone offered me 64GB RAM for a reasonable price I'd jump on it in a second. I usually hover around 17GB of ram during normal use, and normal use for me is both non-gaming and non-creative, that is normal use is browsing, watching videos, having a bunch of tabs open and a few applications (that I never close because I don't need to).

Future OS X versions will undoubtedly use more ram and more cpu in itself, not to mention all the applications

 

[bent christian]

In 2007 I had 2GB of RAM and couldn't imagine a need for more. You do know it sounds ridiculous when people state things like that there will not be a need for more because right now _I_ don't use more? How in the world is "right now" relevant to 5-10 years from now?

We can look 5-10 years in the past and see how little things have changed, extrapolate from there.
(typing this from a 2005 Dell 5100, Pentium 4 CPU 3.00GHz, 1.99GB RAM)

 

[navaira]

How in the world is "right now" relevant to 5-10 years from now?

Well, the thing is nobody knows how. There might be 3D video or not. There may be holograms or not. There may be VR without need for glasses of some sort or not. Six months before the first iPhone was premiered nobody thought a phone without keyboard at all could exist.

 

[ToroidalZeus]

having a bunch of tabs open and a few applications (that I never close because I don't need to).

Future OS X versions will undoubtedly use more ram and more cpu in itself, not to mention all the applications

2 Things.

1st) Modern OS are designed allocate as much memory as possible. So they'll artificially bloat memory usage, With OS X you have to look at the memory pressure to see how much memory you actually need instead of the amount wired.

2nd) You are probably just jacking up your ram usage with a bunch of tabs (especially if you are using chrome).

We can look 5-10 years in the past and see how little things have changed, extrapolate from there.
(typing this from a 2005 Dell 5100, Pentium 4 CPU 3.00GHz, 1.99GB RAM)

Bingo

 

[bent christian]

Well, the thing is nobody knows how. There might be 3D video or not. There may be holograms or not. There may be VR without need for glasses of some sort or not.

Flying cars!

 

[navaira]

I want a jetpack!

Also there's a good chance world will not exist in 10 years because some overexcited dictator will press a red button

I bought a Macbook Air which I hope lasts 5 years. No, the screen is not 4K. Or 2K. But looking at specs in 2011 and in 2016 I am pretty sure it will function in 2021 and do what I want it to – again, unless there is some massive breakthrough that will alter the way we consume data and technology. I don't need Force Touch in the Macbook but if in March Apple unveils 3D 8K screens, well, all equipment I own will suddenly become outdated.

 

[bogg]

Well, the thing is nobody knows how. There might be 3D video or not. There may be holograms or not. There may be VR without need for glasses of some sort or not. Six months before the first iPhone was premiered nobody thought a phone without keyboard at all could exist.

That's why you check history and see how it has progressed so far. Not trying to tell people things will stagnate because it will never do that.

In 1995 a mid-level computer ($1500-2000 or so) would ship with 8MB of ram and 250-400MB of HD, $2000+ would give you 16MB of RAM instead.

In 2005 you would get 512MB in a decent mid level computer, 1GB if you were a gamer.

2015 a mid level computer most often was equipped with 8GB of ram, 16GB if you went a bit more expensive (even a $500 PC has 8-16GB of RAM today).

Do you see a pattern here?
Between 1995 and 2015 (20 years) the amount of RAM in the computers increased by over 1000 times (8 GB VS 8 MB)
Between 1995 and 2005 the amount of ram in the computers increased by 64 times
Between 2005 and 2015 (512GB vs 8GB) it increased by 16 times.

Even if we say it will increase by just 4 times (64/16=4, 16/4=4) to follow a declining trend this will give us 32 and 64GB of RAM in 10 years as the "low end" and "enthusiast" levels. With people who today want 32GB of RAM (like me) probably going for 128 or even 192GB of ram...
[doublepost=1453134693][/doublepost]

2 Things.

1st) Modern OS are designed allocate as much memory as possible. So they'll artificially bloat memory usage, With OS X you have to look at the memory pressure to see how much memory you actually need instead of the amount wired.

2nd) You are probably just jacking up your ram usage with a bunch of tabs (especially if you are using chrome).


Bingo

1. Yes, and having ram to allocated will probably mean that in case the applications want more RAM they already have it. Right? Ok, so the result of that is? Quicker response!

2. Sure I am, and that's the whole point, that with more RAM i can have more tabs open without needing to close them as I need to free up RAM (however artificially occupied it might be)

 

[navaira]

Even if we say it will increase by just 4 times (64/16=4, 16/4=4) to follow a declining trend this will give us 32 and 64GB of RAM in 10 years as the "low end" and "enthusiast" levels.

Yup! Still nowhere near the "1/4 to 1/2 TB in low-end laptops"

(I am loving this thread, although I think it got somewhat derailed)

Current 27" iMacs can be upgraded to 32 GB RAM, am I right?

 

[bent christian]

In 2005 you would get 512MB in a decent mid level computer, 1GB if you were a gamer.

I don't think this is correct. I think your numbers are a bit off. 512MB was a very small amount of RAM in 2005.

I bought my first computer in 2000. A brand new Gateway with a Pentium 4 processor at 1.0GHz and 512MB of RAM, 40GB IDE hard drive. This was not a great system at the time. It was a lower end model. I ended up maxing the RAM out to 1.5GB in 2004 or 2005. It was still not super fast compared to what other people had. The second system I bought was in 2007. A Thinkpad T61 with 2GB of RAM and a 2.0GHz Core Duo. We still use that today. It has 3GB of RAM. It's a tank. Again, 2GB was not a lot of RAM at that time. You could order up to 4GB from Lenovo, and max it out at 8GB after the fact. People were absolutely using 4GB in 2007 and before in mid-tier models. They were using 2GB and 3GB in years previous.

 

[bogg]

Yup! Still nowhere near the "1/4 to 1/2 TB in low-end laptops"

(I am loving this thread, although I think it got somewhat derailed)

Current 27" iMacs can be upgraded to 32 GB RAM, am I right?

I'm not the one that stated 1/4 TB (256GB)
I find 32-64GB more reasonable for entry level computers in 10 years.

Late-2015 iMac can be upgraded to 64GB (albeit by 2026 very slow ram). I'm still surprised that Apple didn't go with ddr4

 

[ToroidalZeus]

That's why you check history and see how it has progressed so far. Not trying to tell people things will stagnate because it will never do that.

In 1995 a mid-level computer ($1500-2000 or so) would ship with 8MB of ram and 250-400MB of HD, $2000+ would give you 16MB of RAM instead.

In 2005 you would get 512MB in a decent mid level computer, 1GB if you were a gamer.

2015 a mid level computer most often was equipped with 8GB of ram, 16GB if you went a bit more expensive (even a $500 PC has 8-16GB of RAM today).

Do you see a pattern here?
Between 1995 and 2015 (20 years) the amount of RAM in the computers increased by over 1000 times (8 GB VS 8 MB)
Between 1995 and 2005 the amount of ram in the computers increased by 64 times
Between 2005 and 2015 (512GB vs 8GB) it increased by 16 times.

Even if we say it will increase by just 4 times (64/16=4) to follow a declining trend this will give us 32 and 64GB of RAM in 10 years as the "low end" and "enthusiast" levels. With people who today want 32GB of RAM (like me) probably going for 128 or even 192GB of ram...

I'm just going to point you toward this video here:

Looking back 20 yrs ago isn't good for data to extrapolate forward. For instance cloud computing is changing things. A lot of people don't need recourse heavy email applications such as Outlook because they can use webmail. The same applies to suites such as office and adobe that are moving to the cloud.

1. Yes, and having ram to allocated will probably mean that in case the applications want more RAM they already have it. Right? Ok, so the result of that is? Quicker response!

2. Sure I am, and that's the whole point, that with more RAM i can have more tabs open without needing to close them as I need to free up RAM (however artificially occupied it might be)

1. That's not how it works. A program like Pangu to jailbreak my iPhone won't need 4X the ram 10 years from now. In the past programs were maxing out system resources while today most programs have enough ram overhead even on modern specs.

2. Anyone can jack up their ram usage by opening every single application at once or opening up as many tabs as possible.

I have a video playing in the background, 4 chrome tabs and bittorent streaming the background, using <3GB RAM. I think you are paying a lazy tax for so much ram and then trying to make it seem like that's mainstream.

 

[jerwin]

Ram is the least of your worries when trying to think of what's next in the computing world.

(2.11 wired, 10.64 Active, 10.27 free)

13 tabs. Mail. A bunch of programs that I don't need to close.

Lately I've been noticing that instead of writing text like normal people, all of these journalistic web pages are embedding lots of videos so if, you know, you're illiterate, you can hear somebody read the news story to you instead of reading it yourself in a tenth of the time.

The big ether of ram, besides photoshop and badly coded programs, is the virtual machine. Those might get popular for things like sandboxes.

By the way, 3d oculus rift released their recommendations a couple of months ago.

• NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater
• Intel i5-4590 processor equivalent or greater
• 8GB+ RAM
• Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
• 2 USB 3.0 ports
• Windows 7 SP1 or newer

Ooh. 8 gigs plus. Wowee
Oh wait. I don't have a AMD 290. Damn.

If this sort of thing expands beyond games, the computers in a couple years time that do 3d virtual facebook will be real powerhouses compared to your "futureproofed non gaming machine". Things could turn out differently, of course.

 

[bogg]

I'm just going to point you toward this video here:

Looking back 20 yrs ago isn't good for data to extrapolate forward. For instance cloud computing is changing things. A lot of people don't need recourse heavy email applications such as Outlook because they can use webmail. The same applies to suites such as office and adobe that are moving to the cloud.



1. That's not how it works. A program like Pangu to jailbreak my iPhone won't need 4X the ram 10 years from now. In the past programs were maxing out system resources while today most programs have enough ram overhead even on modern specs.

2. Anyone can jack up their ram usage by opening every single application at once or opening up as many tabs as possible.

I have a video playing in the background, 4 chrome tabs and bittorent streaming the background, using <3GB RAM. I think you are paying a lazy tax for so much ram and then trying to make it seem like that's mainstream.

1. Haha, no, of course not.. But OTHER apps will. I don't see how that's such a big problem to understand. And I wasn't talking about future apps, you were talking about apps allocating ram that they didn't use (due to OS X Memory Management), and I said that's how it is supposed to work as they can request writes to the RAM without needing the allocator to allocate more space for them...)

2. Sure, but I don't jack them up, i use the computer as I see fit and that's the end result... I hit the ceiling constantly when using systems with 8GB of RAM. I leave apps open that I use often because I CAN and they will switch on faster if not swapped out or closed (even faster than the fastest SSD would allow them to).

People keep talking about SSDs to speed up their computers. Damn, if you use 10+ apps on a regular basis and have them all open, all the time. They will be on in an instant, the CPU usage will be minimal when IDLE and the only thing they will occupy is RAM. Which you, if you have plenty of it, can spare...
I've heard people say things like "Oh, well, with the new SSD I can start Excel in a third of the time compared to before".
Ok, how often do you use it? Every day
Oh... And How often do you start it? "Fourteen times a day maybe?"
Why? Oh...Your RAM usage? Ok... Why not add more RAM? Because you don't need it?

I keep all my most used applications started always, because I don't want (or need) to wait for it to start if i do...
In my mind People are using RAM the wrong way... As soon as you close one app or tab or whatever for no other reason than to save RAM, you have too little RAM. RAM is Cheap.