Hi, heard it said before they are more flexible, but they seem a nightmare just to upgrade ram?
Indeed that is the case @steveb - I have always simply ordered my Mac Minis (all 3 of them) with the max RAM possible and configured with an SSD too - coupled with 2 Thunderbolt displays I am not complaining too much with regards to performance
I just refuse to pay Apple upgrade prices for ssd and ram. I accept they are screwing me with the base specs, on that I have no choice, but I refuse to to pay an average six times market value for required upgrades. They purposely produce machines that fall just below the real world min spec (opposed to the nonsense min spec they advertise) knowing that they will easily increase the average retail prices on many machines by charging something ridiculous like £500 for an extra 32gb of ram.
I used to use Mac Minis in a previous business, cus back then you could open them with a wallpaper stripper and everything was upgradable, I don’t even think you can upgrade the ssd in the new ones as they’re soldered in?
I did toy with getting a 2017 model last year and ripping it out of the shell, making a new enclosure for it and thus making it easy to upgrade, until I discovered about the soldered ssd.
My choices now seem to be drop the £1750 on the base, suck it up until out of warranty then pull the screen and put a proper ssd in it, or go back to the 2nd hand market and just take the risks.
There is an eBay reseller I’ve had about five machines off in recent years, I had issues with one and they replaced it no question at six months, so they seem the best of a potentially bad bunch. I’m gonna hang on til June to see if they have a 2015 iMac pop up. Otherwise, it’s new and suck up the shite fusion drive thing.
I hate how Apple is exploiting its Mac user base. They know we are locked in due to software and so are quite happy to rape us. Come the revolution etc.
Anyone ever got RW to work on a Linux box? That would be cool. I bet @isaiah has ;-)
It is utterly perplexing that Apple would supply any form of spinning HD. It was utterly perplexing a few years ago too and I am shocked that this is still the case.
I think that Steve Jobs would have been ashamed to be associated with this practice. However, it doesn’t affect Apples bottom line so why should they care.
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I blame Tim Cook. When you put a logistics and numbers man in charge of a business like Apple, you can be sure that innovation will die. Now they can’t even keep up with the Jones, let alone lead them.
Didn’t Jobs appoint Cook himself? I suspect it was his last “fuck you” to everyone. He would have known the direction Cook would take, and thus make himself (Jobs) seem even more amazeballs.
I made a hackintosh about ten years ago, it was a pain to build and only worked for a few months. I’m far to out of things nowadays to attempt it again, but even if I could I suspect it would have a short shelf life before things stopped working.
I’m going to assume that Mac sales have all but died in recent years. You do see a lot of Macbooks about now compared to even five years ago, but I wonder if they have reached saturation point? Given the pricing of iMacs I can’t see many units shifting. So, I wonder if Apple are ever going to licence OS X for use on other hardware? If they price it correctly it could be a strong revenue stream.
Jobs would never do such a thing, but Cook might well see it as a good way to drive sales with zero investment.
All we can really say for sure is that based on the lack of innovation with their Macs over the last many years, that computers are not a focus of the company.
Didn’t Tim Cook put Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon in charge of computer development?
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My dad always taught me never buy anything that depreciates! Therefore as a small business I lease my IT stuff at very favourable rates. As I’m in UK I can claim, tax relief, Input/Output 50% of VAT payments and then at end of two years hand back/replace or buy at very good price my equipment. I always hand back and upgrade so have new computer every two years. As a business this is what my accountant advises and its very cost effective too. Hope this helps?
Paul
Hi Paul.
Cheapest lease deal on a 27in base iMac is £20 a week for three years. So a £1750 depreciating asset will cost you £3120. Leasing by it’s nature means 100% depreciation (you have nothing of value at the end of it) so that machine will actually cost you nearly twice the rrp.
Unless I’m looking at the wrong sites and the 27in base iMac can be leased for about £7.50 a week? Based on a residual value of £500 at three years, leasing one will always leave you worse off.
If any accountant suggests to you leasing one is a good idea, sack them.
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We pay a load more in Indonesia due to crazy import taxes. The sellers get around this by offering interest free credit card instalments, not ideal but if I make sure to pay the card off every month then it becomes affordable, kind of.
And don’t forget Apples own refurbed units - they too can carry Apple Care warranty if required and can save many $$$$
Not seen any iMacs in the refurb store for months, and nowadays the discounts there are not what they used to be. Often stuff is full price even.
There was a whole bunch when I looked y’day in the UK at least
Of iMacs? Balls. Been looking almost daily, how I missed them I don’t know!
You’re so way off the mark and that’s why you are not in charge of my negotiations! :-) :-) :-)
OK!
To be honest, I’m not in charge of your negotiations mainly cus that’s not really what I do.
If I have my maths wrong, please correct me. If iMacs are available for a lot less on lease please do share the supplier as I’d love to get a good deal too.
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Folks I’ll just leave this here.
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My admin needs a new Mac and I’m thinking of doing this. I reckon I could get a second hand 2012 Mac Mini for about $250 here and all the extra bits for less than another $200. Just need a monitor. https://www.imore.com/how-upgrade-2012-mac-mini?amp
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I’m not s fan of the Minis now as it’s a total flaff to upgrade.
Other than beating my head against a wall, I’m at an impasse on the new mac front. It’s such a nightmare.
An iMac that has what I need is going to cost over £2k to Apple, just then need another few hundred on Ram. My present iMac is nine years old and other than not being able to upgrade to Mojave it brilliant, although I’ve upgraded pretty much all its guts.
If I thought the new iMac would give me about nine years of service I wouldn’t hesitate to drop the £2k, but I know Apple will “end-of-life” it way sooner than nine years, and to upgrade the internals means invalidating the warranty, so my £2k investment might fizzle to zero way too soon.
The chief negotiator that is Paul Moore seems reluctant to hand over the details of his supplier (I suspect cus he’s talking shite) so I’m left in a quandary.
I’m actually looking at MBP’s now, cus at least they are easy to upgrade (or at least used to be), but it’s a direction I don’t really want to go.
Fucking Apple.
Got a top-of-the-range late 2017 5K iMac – kicks arse! Waddya need to upgrade? Add 3rd party RAM to save $$, sure. If you think a 3rd-party SSD comes close to the bandwidth of the Apple internal, you’re kidding yourself. I forked out for a 1TB internal (not “fusion”), no regrets. Plus HD RAID, for capacity, over thunderbolt (pathetic speed-wise compared to Apple internal SSD).
And this is for real-time media applications (audio, video). Unless you’re trying to do something super-complex with web, like cross-fading slides with Impact stack (yes, sarcasm), surely you’d be well covered?