Good night, Intel Macs

[throAU]

The first 10-11 years of intel macs were great.

If intel delivered what they promised in 2016 they'd still be great.

Alas, intel failed and as a result we got 5 years of garbage. Same as in PCs, but worse because you can tell that apple planned their form factors, cooling, etc. based on what was PROMISED (lower power/heat) rather than what was delivered.

Well, the 2019 mac pro was decent, but that's such a niche device in terms of sales as to be almost irrelevant.

 

[BSDnostalgia]

Good night, 8088. Good morning, ARM. The first 45 years were "interesting".

 

[ADGrant]

RIP Intel Macs. You had a good run, but the race is over.

The Mac Pro (2019) will always have a special place in my heart because it was the one machine I could never get but always wanted.

You can still buy one on eBay

 

[boswald]

You can still buy one on eBay

I meant the price is way out of my league.

 

[ADGrant]

I meant the price is way out of my league.

There are plenty available for less than $2000.

 

[ClaraStahlbaum]

RIP Intel Macs. You had a good run, but the race is over.

The Mac Pro (2019) will always have a special place in my heart because it was the one machine I could never get but always wanted.

Always, always wanted a Mac Pro, however these days it would just be impractical.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

It’s a bummer for sure. I’m still getting good use from my 2020 iMac 5700XT. Running on Sequoia / Win10 Edu version and don’t see that changing in the future. Not my main machine today, but still quite useful and that display(!).

 

[Andy5Kimac]

Honestly highly spec’d intel Mac’s are far from being obsolete. It’s the companies that release modern software that makes these older computers obsolete. The hardware itself is still highly capable. I did the math in today’s computer hardware inflation and Apple’s recent price hikes it makes absolute no financial sense to upgrade to a modern machine. Just for a powerhouse pc build I priced one out for an all white premium build was $5000+ CAD to build one. The ridiculous Ram and SSD prices are insane today. Even buying a spec’d out Mac Studio will run u thousands… I also just heard a CPU shortage is coming too 🤦‍♂️ the computer hardware market is so messed up today... Anyways it’s a shame Apple is ending intel support...

What I did with my 2020 i9 iMac is I bought two used EGPU enclosures for $150 CAD each and the RX 6900XT reference card used for $500 CAD. It was much cheaper than upgrading to a modern powerhouse. I slapped dual EGPU’s one with 6900XT and other 9070XT to my iMac and it’s still a beast. 6900XT for Mac OS productivity, it handles my Complex Canon R6ii video edits without a struggle & 9070XT for Windows Bootcamp gaming. This way I get the best of both worlds. I bought the RX 9070XT cause I was planning to build a modern pc. Until I did the math lol. Both EGPU’s have an external 4k monitor connected to it. I play games in 4k so it’s mostly GPU bound so no bottlenecks with the older 10th gen i9. Even in 1440p gameplay it’s mostly GPU bound. It’s mostly playing in 1080p there be a bottleneck. I get great FPS even in modern titles. By offloading the graphics my i9 iMac doesn’t thermal throttle either. Hovers in the 70 degrees range while sustaining 4.7ghz under heavy loads. It handles everything I throw at it for what I do with it. Spending thousands upgrading to a modern powerhouse would just yield diminishing returns.

Now surely upgrading to a modern powerhouse pc build would yield me more FPS. About 15-20% and especially in the 1% low, or upgrading to a spec’d out Mac Studio would save me minutes on an export. However is it worth spending thousands for it and lose the native dual boot feature? IMO no… 😂

 

[pshufd]

My daily driver is an iMac Pro running Sequoia and it runs great. I expect security updates to end this fall or fall 2027. I'll look into running Windows or Linux. My understanding is that there is work going on to get this to work reasonably well.

 

[magbarn]

I'm actually thinking about returning M4 iMac with 24/512gb that we just bought for $1700. There's plenty of 2020 27's for sale in Southern California in the $500 range. I have about 64gb of DDR4 2666 Sodimms lying around and I can add a TB enclosure to increase the SSD storage. The 24" screen is just driving me bananas and missing my prior iMac's 27" screen....

 

[pshufd]

I'm actually thinking about returning M4 iMac with 24/512gb that we just bought for $1700. There's plenty of 2020 27's for sale in Southern California in the $500 range. I have about 64gb of DDR4 2666 Sodimms lying around and I can add a TB enclosure to increase the SSD storage. The 24" screen is just driving me bananas and missing my prior iMac's 27" screen....

The price of RAM and SSDs has changed the equation of new vs used.

 

[cjsuk]

Good night, 8088. Good morning, ARM. The first 45 years were "interesting".

Hey I had an ARM desktop in 1988!

 

[tornado99]

Hey I had an ARM desktop in 1988!

Acorn Computers! Apple nearly bought them.

 

[cjsuk]

Acorn Computers! Apple nearly bought them.

Yep! Still one of the best computers I ever owned.

 

[Pjrufus]

I have an intel MBP 2018 that runs well. Hope to keep it going as a secondary device.

I have a 2012 MBP that still works fine. I have one of the last standalone Autocad programs on it, before it became subscription. Not giving that up. I don’t work in Architecture anymore, but still pull it out for my own projects.