Are (i)Macs becoming less and less bang-for-buck computers?

[sartrekid]

If longevity is your main concern, you'll not be happy with any solution, no matter what system you opt for, be it an of-the-shelf solution or a custom build. There really isn't much else to say as everything else is mere speculation and personal opinion.

Pick your main parameters and base your choice upon those.

 

[tromboneaholic]

Dark mode, Stacks, modernized App Store, Finder Gallery View, News app, custom accent colors (no longer just Blue and Graphite), and Software Update moved outside of the App Store again (which I like much better) are the main new features.

To be perfectly honest, I was expecting dark mode with every new release since Yosemite's incomplete implementation of just the menu bar and Dock. It's very disappointing that Apple would prevent 2011 Macs from getting this feature, let alone all the other Mojave features.

I would imagine something like the News app would use Metal, since it's probably a port from iOS, but I could be wrong.

Also, Mojave is paving the way for a single app to be written for both iOS and macOS, so Metal support would be needed.

I tried out dark mode on my wife's MacBook, and it was a little jarring to me personally.

 

[redheeler]

I would imagine something like the News app would use Metal, since it's probably a port from iOS, but I could be wrong.

I assumed this as well, until I tried the Mojave beta on my unsupported 2011 17" MacBook Pro. News and the other apps ported from iOS work fine on OpenGL.

Also, Mojave is paving the way for a single app to be written for both iOS and macOS, so Metal support would be needed.

This may apply to next year's release, but not to Mojave.

 

[tomscott1988]

why are you getting personal? these are just observations i'm making about a company i longer trust and my frustrations. can we stick to apple and not me?

A 10 year business plan for singular machines is a ridiculous expectation from anyone, especially for portable devices. Its not frustration your expectations are out of kilter and your being pedantic.

 

[Peter_M]

At work I'm still using a 2009 MacBook Pro, now 9.5 years old. The performance is still fine for Internet browsing, Office, videos, YouTube, Spotify etd. If it wasn't for the battery getting really poor, and the audio out connection being finicky, I could still go on using this computer for another couple of years. It's even been dropped on the floor a few times, but otherwise fine. (It goes without saying I installed an SSD in the machine, when I first got it.)

Not that I would bother with this machine anymore outside my work office, it's only a simple work horse...

 

[Tigerman82]

Thank you everyone for your input to my dilemma. Well, after nearly a decade I decided to move away from Macs to Windows PCs. Would've loved to buy a new iMac but, at least for my purposes, there were too many cons and not nearly enough pros. Just bought and finished setting up Intel Hades Canyon NUC(8i7HVK) with a Dell S2719DC 27" 1440p display. This setup looks extremely clean and compact, runs silent and is powerful (16 gigs of RAM, a Samsung NVMe 970 M.2 SSD drive and ability to run Witcher 3 at 1440p getting 40-60fps... not bad for a 1.2-litre chassis). The cost? Over a thousand bucks cheaper than the 5k iMac. I do miss OS X and its 3rd party apps but the current Win10 Pro with dark theme applied is actually surprisingly good (although many 3rd party apps look like they were done twenty years ago). I am left with fond memories of Macs but I can't help feel like what started with the use of Intel CPUs and Bootcamp in terms of making entertainment computers that weren't tied just to Apple-only apps, is now a mere afterthought.

 

[Peter_M]

Check out the newest lineup of Corsair One machines, which totally crush the iMac. You loose the slim all-in-one factor including the 5K screen, but otherwise the new Corsair One lineup is really impressive.

 

[tele-fragd]

The short answer is, if you don't need a high PPI display, then it's not good value.

 

[kazmac]

Or now is a GOOD time to buy an iMac, before it's redesigned with a 20% bump in price, non-user-upgradeable RAM, and the T2 chip that's giving some iMac Pro owners fits.

^ Agreed.

If I would get another iMac, I’d buy a 2017 or older model. Apple doesn’t deserve my desktop/laptop money though, so I’ll stick with cheapest iPads, and move on until I can find excellent Apple Pencil and Procreate substitutes.

I found the most bang-for-my-buck iMacs were the last two I purchased. Both were stock models and handled everything I threw at them (the 2013 27” is finally slowing down and developing all kinds of fun problems). And both were between 1600-1800 with Apple Care.

 

[AlaskaMoose]

You might want to look into some of the issues under Steve Jobs' leadership that you've managed to forget about.

• The polycarbonate enclosure on MacBooks from 2006 - 2009 prone to developing hairline cracks (https://gizmodo.com/5204395/apple-privately-admits-white-macbooks-notorious-crack-problem)
  
• The screens arriving cracked on the new 27-inch iMac in late 2009 (https://www.digitaltrends.com/apple/apples-new-imacs-are-shipping-dead-or-with-broken-screens/)
  
• The GPUs in 17-inch MacBook Pros from 2011 prone to failing, necessitating an entire logic board replacement (https://www.apple.com/support/macbookpro-videoissues/)
  
• Time Capsule hard drives failing (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2009/nov/04/apple-time-capsule-failures-early)
• iPhone 4 Antenna Problem (yes, it was a problem – Apple chose to thread the antenna around the phone making it easy to degrade the phone's signal strength by bridging the antenna) (https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-acknowledges-antenna-issue-in-iphone-4)

Want me to list more? Or are you satisfied that you've seemingly created this illusion in your mind that Apple used to be perfect?

I haven't had a single issue with my early 2011 21" iMac. It has been running nothing but flawlessly since the day I bought it. All I have done to it was to install all the RAM possible, and last year replacing the hard drive with a 1TB SSD. I use this iMac for photo editing with a standalone CS6 app, plus NIK Software (now DXO), but that's is about all I used it for. In 2011 I paid around $1,100 for this iMac, and today I would be paying a lot more for it, even if it had an Apple fusion drive. The only thing that is preventing me from buying one of the "sort of upgradeable PC mini" is OS-X (don't like Windows). The idea of "compactness" has made it very difficult to partially upgrade, and to cool the iMac of today. Macs are getting too expensive these days, so I probably continue using mine until it dies someday

 

[danwells]

Bill Gates himself said that the goal for lifespan of Windows computers was 3 years, with heavy users upgrading every 18 months. This was a while ago, and one thing that has happened in between is the Great Intel CPU Stagnation. Years ago, the expectation was that CPU power would double every 18 months to 2 years (Moore's Law). Now, that's gotten close to 10 years. When you add in Apple's being two CPU generations behind, it IS 10 years on the iMac). I looked this up on EveryMac, using the single core Geekbench 4 score for various generations of the top 27" iMac from 2009 (first quad core i7) to the present. Multi-core scores actually progress a little less rapidly (although a 2019 iMac that has more than 4 cores will see a huge boost in multi-core score, possibly coupled with a decline in single-core performance).

Mid 2009 - 2536
Late 2011 - 3506
Late 2014 - 4740
Late 2015 - 5275
Late 2017 (current) - 5581

Only a little more than double the CPU performance (about double +10%) over a decade...

The new iMac when it comes will probably be only slightly faster in these single core scores (maybe slower), but it'll have a huge multi-core boost. For reference, an 8-core iMac Pro is about 10% slower than the top 2017 iMac in single-core performance (5040 vs 5581), but 40% faster in multi-core performance (30893 vs 18914) due to the higher core count.

No iMac Pro is as fast as the 2017 iMac on one core (the fastest is the 10-core at 5302), but they all have very high multi-core Geekbench scores, right up to the 18-core at 47221.

The 2019 iMac will probably top out right around 5800 on single-core Geekbench, but it will have a multi-core score above 30,000, maybe as high as 35,000. The majority of PC Geekbench 4 scores (excluding heavily overclocked scores at the top) range from about 5800-6200 single-core, with multi-core scores around 33,000-36,000. I'm guessing the iMac will be towards the bottom of these range, both because of cooling issues and because many PC motherboards (and system builders) apply a slight default overclock, especially on performance boards that are likely to host a K-series chip. Apple won't do that.