Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => The Knowledge => Ctrl-Alt-Del => Topic started by: jezzasnr on 12 February, 2020, 10:45:29 am
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I've just taken on my dad's old iMac.
It's had a restore to factory settings done, and latest Catalina OS added.
Just started up last night all seems to be well, and everything is updating via our glacially paced internet.
Is it worthwhile using something like CleanMyMacX to give it a tidy up, or just trust to the good lords of Apple to let thing run their course?
I don't expect, or need, super fast whizz bang performance as it will just be used for a spot of browsing, Music through Logitech BT adapter and HiFi and some gentle photo managing/editing.
Any other top tips for must have apps much appreciated.
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Mac cleanup utilities are universally scammy spyware shite.
Have you wiped the disk completely or just reinstalled the OS?
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I would use gentle software on it. If you have older versions of current packages I would use them.
Attempting to run Office 365 or Adobe currentware will kill it - the spinning beachball of death is alive and well. I struggle with that on a 2 year old Mac.
[edit] And what grams said. Also - how on earth did it even accept Catalina? I have much newer Macbooks that reject that saying the computer doesn't have the right spec... but well done :)
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Mac cleanup utilities are universally scammy spyware shite.
Have you wiped the disk completely or just reinstalled the OS?
My bold.
^This. Mostly.
Although Malwarebytes seems to be one noteable exception to this.
I've been using it for a few years without issue.
Recommended to me by my tame mouse jockey.
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Attempting to run Office 365 or Adobe currentware will kill it - the spinning beachball of death is alive and well. I struggle with that on a 2 year old Mac.
Intel processors have barely gotten any faster since 2012*, so performance is largely determined by how much RAM your Mac has. Hopefully 8GB, ideally 16 GB.
(* they’ve sprouted more cores but that isn’t the same thing)
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Thank you all, and so quick!
All seems to be well.
I'm not sure if dad did the reset & Catalina install himself or if he got "the bloke in the computer shop" that he knows to do it.
Its got 8GB of RAM at the moment so i will see if that suits my needs, or I spend some money & up it to 16GB
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Biggest difference in performance I've found in most recentish Macs is by avoiding older spinny-hard drives. Either hybrid or solid-state makes a HUUUGE difference.
But then it depends upon what you're doing with them.
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I'm still running a 2008 iMac with 6G of memory & an SSID instead of the original hard drive. Fine for my modest needs (mainly browsing) , but it won't run anything later than El Capitain. When that becomes a problem I'll cough up for a new one. 12 years of faultless service breeds brand loyalty.
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I do have a "decent size when i bought it" external drive which i am going to use for Time Machine just as soon as i can find it. I've put it somewhere safe since the last house move, so still searching for now.
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I'm still running a 2008 iMac with 6G of memory & an SSID instead of the original hard drive. Fine for my modest needs (mainly browsing) , but it won't run anything later than El Capitain. When that becomes a problem I'll cough up for a new one. 12 years of faultless service breeds brand loyalty.
I think that you'll be pleasantly surprised when that happens.
I bought a MacBook Air a few weeks ago.
It is blisteringly fast compared to my 2015 iMac - which is painfully slow to start up - mostly because it's running an OS which is optimised for SSID - and it is actually a hybrid.
In fact, it is slower to start than my 2012 iMac -but conversley, that has a spinny disk, and a old OS - but it will run all of my ancient Power PC native software - which the newer machines won't.
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What everyone has said so far!
An SSD would make a huge difference. The Modern OSXs are rotten written1 for SSDs and are glacially slow on hard drivers. The tricky bit with an iMac may be (depending on the model) install ing an internal one. You can boot from an external one, but it depends on what ports you have as to how successful that is.
With regards to software, yes, you are now in a no 32bit environment, so some old packages will not work. There are ways of running 32bit apps, but they usually cost, take time to set up.
Malware etc. Malwarebytes (free version) does a good job. If there is nothing on the machine you want you might consider reinstalling OSX completely, rather than as an update (which is I assume how Catalina got onto it) https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904
1 Interesting auto corrupt!
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If you have older versions of current packages I would use them.
That is not possible as Catalina is the first Mac OS to only support 64 bit programs. 32 bit is now history as far as Apple is concerned.
Good point! My bad
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I have an old Mac Mini (2009, I think) running as a headless server. I did fit an SSD. Won't run the lastest MacOS but to be honest, it's shockingly good considering its age. I also have a 2011 Macbook Air that still more than capable for surfing* and writing. SSD is the key, the OS is optimised for it, and the moment you have one, spinning rust seems glacially slow.
Yeah, avoid Office and Adobe, they max out most configurations (I'm never clear why, they do little that previous versions don't). My mothership Macbook is getting old now (c2017), but despite heavy use with monster spreadsheets and design packages, rarely uses the full 8GB RAM it has on-board. I doubt I've ever got through the 24GB on my iMac (it was on offer).
I've never bothered with any kind of clean-up, MacOS should do its own maintenance.
*I was reading the other day that someone finally managed to permanently beachball his Mac Pro by simply opening 6000 browser tabs.
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(I'm never clear why, they do little that previous versions don't).
They spend the majority of their time updating as far as I can tell.
Actually *using* the software seems to be of secondary importance to being 'up to date' .
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I find it interesting that people find their older iMacs slow. I have a late 2013 27" iMac that is used mainly for photo editing with Adobe products, Logic Pro, and it runs the latest version X-Plane 11 flight sim. The performance on the flight sim isn't the best but it manages a perfectly usable 40 fps on 2 x 27" monitors at a decent quality level and with quite a lot of add ons running. Admittedly the cockpit is managed over the network by a raspberry pi and a couple of old iPad mini's so it is just dealing with the scenery and flight modelling. I don't find my shiny new 2019 macbook pro any faster in day to day use for photo editing. I did max out the spec when I bought the iMac (32GB ram, fastest CPU, top Nvidia graphics) and upgraded the hybrid HD to 6TB when the original spinning drive died. I regard it as the best bit of computer kit I've ever owned, I've held off upgrading to Catalina (it says it will install it), as i have some 32bit apps I can't find 64bit versions of.
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Ref 32bit on Mac:
I've recently upgraded my Parallels and used it to create a Virtual Machine of Mojave. My 32bit apps (which are mission critical) run it it, so I'm ready for the upgrade to Catalina. I'm most likely to do that by getting a new MBP as this one has reached an age when it can be my back-up machine.
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There’s no particular need for anyone to upgrade to Catalina, so if you have 32 bit apps, ignoring it is also an option.
(Not a great long term strategy, obvs)
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Yes, it is long term I'm thinking about. Like a new machine that won't run old OSs, or when newer apps won't work on old OS.
I should have said above, other virtualisation tools are available.