How Old Is Your iMac?

[apedance]

iMac late 2009 (1 TB HDD)

Works fine. But the harddrive does make some strange noise. Louder than normal. Guess it is about to die.
When I shutdown the Mac you can clearly hear the drive spinning down, but it takes longer than usual and does some "knocking" noises.

Anybody else with such behavior?

iMac late 2012 (1TB Fusion)

Boom! What a beast. You can hardly hear this machine.

 

[cjmillsnun]

Late '09 C2D 27" for me. Will be keeping it going as it's ideal for my needs (iTunes server & TV). The Mini Displayport in is very useful and it's not something I can get from any of the later iMacs.

When it eventually dies, I'll get a Mac mini and the best screen of a similar size that I can afford.

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iMac late 2009 (1 TB HDD)

Works fine. But the harddrive does make some strange noise. Louder than normal. Guess it is about to die.
When I shutdown the Mac you can clearly hear the drive spinning down, but it takes longer than usual and does some "knocking" noises.

Anybody else with such behavior?

iMac late 2012 (1TB Fusion)

Boom! What a beast. You can hardly hear this machine.

There is a recall on Late '09 iMacs with 1TB HDDs http://www.apple.com/uk/support/imac-harddrive/

 

[apedance]

There is a recall on Late '09 iMacs with 1TB HDDs http://www.apple.com/uk/support/imac-harddrive/

Yes, I read this before.

Unfortunately mine does not use a Seagate drive.

It is a Western Digital WD1001FALS

 

[Macsonic]

Mine is a 2008 21" 2.4ghz iMac with 2G ram. It still runs fine but I have not been using it as I most of my work are done in the Mac Pro.

 

[adb1973]

This is the last week i own my: 27" Mid 2010 i7 2.93 GHz iMac

A new 2012 CTO is comming my way..yeah!

The current iMac is the 5th in line, started with a white 20 inch-er
All were sold for a good price after 2/3 years.

What i do like about the current (2010) one:
- fast, big, SuperDrive, SD-Slot, FW800

What i don't like:
- smudging/mura/brown spots in LCD (really a design/LCD problem)
- no native Airplay mirroring, update wile sleeping
- get's very very hot

 

[SkyBell]

Pshhh.

 

[cjmillsnun]

Pshhh.

Image

Oh you didn't refer to vintage iMacs....

I have a Bondai Blue

 

[SkyBell]

Oh you didn't refer to vintage iMacs....

I have a Bondai Blue

Another Bondi owner! Well, my Rev. A has been dead for... quite some time now. But my Rev. C Lime is chugging along just fine.

 

[HeatherA]

I've had my iMac for just shy of two weeks

 

[Bear]

I received my iMac in February 2010, it's the late 2009 model i7 2.8Ghz 27". My AppleCare expired in February of this year, but I still have until Feb 2014 coverage under my American Express.
...

Have you double checked that American Express will actually give you that extra year? Credit Cards usually extend the base warranty of the system (if it is not refurbished) but will generally not extend any extended warranty you have purchased.

 

[Fishrrman]

I bought one of the last "white" Intel iMacs in mid-2007.

It's still running fine. I generally use either 10.6.8 (internal drive) or 10.7.5 (external drive).

 

[kurzz]

Mine is going on 4 years and it still does what I need so I'm not looking to upgrade anytime soon. It was top of the line in 2009, core i7 2.8ghz, 8gb ram 27". Have not had a single problem!

My next desktop though will likely be a Mac Mini so the screen doesn't have to go everytime I buy a new computer.

 

[gsusser]

I'm wondering if it pays to sell while the unit still has value and before apple care expires. Then again, I don't look forward to selling it on eBay or some other similar place since shipping seems like it would be a nightmare and expensive.

 

[Bear]

I'm wondering if it pays to sell while the unit still has value and before apple care expires. Then again, I don't look forward to selling it on eBay or some other similar place since shipping seems like it would be a nightmare and expensive.

Does the system still fulfill your needs? Is it fast enough for you? In general if you have no real reason to upgrade, you may be better off sticking with what you have and not worry about it's value. Also if you keep your system 7 more months (figuring a year end update) divide the value loss on your current system by 7 and that's how much a month it cost you. Odds are it won't be very much.

 

[OldCorpse]

Have you double checked that American Express will actually give you that extra year? Credit Cards usually extend the base warranty of the system (if it is not refurbished) but will generally not extend any extended warranty you have purchased.

Yep. I had this discussion re: AmEx warranty extension on MacRumors before, and I double-checked with a two separate reps. The year extension I get on top of the AppleCare 3 years is the basic Apple (manufacturers) warranty type coverage, i.e. the same coverage you get from Apple for the first year after you buy your Apple product, which of course is not the same coverage as AppleCare (f.ex. AC has phone support for 3 years, whereas you lose that in the basic warranty etc.).

Anyhow, I have not tested it yet, so I guess the proof is in the pudding. Only when I have the opportunity to test will we know the final truth.

But I did have work done under the AC. I had the hard drive replaced twice - once because it failed, and once under the Seagate recall. I also had the optical drive replaced twice. Every time, they came out to my place (because my iMac is on an arm, it's a hassle for me to take down), but obviously, if I have to have it fixed under the AmEx warranty, I'll have to bring it to be fixed, won't have the AC home visit perk.

We'll see. I've had it a little over 3 years now. I have 8-9 months of the AmEx warranty left, and by Feb 2014 it'll be 4 years old. Still happy with it overall, though it has its quirks - I don't know if everybody has this experience, but for me the biggest drawback is how it works with external hard drives hooked up; when my external drives go to sleep, any action on my iMac, even having nothing to do with external drives, such as firing up a random app is liable to give me multiple bounces - like 30 or so - until the external drives come back online... it's as if in order to do anything, the stupid iMac must fire up the external drives in case there are files there I might want to use (even if that's not the case because the app has no files there).

 

[iSayuSay]

I've had my first personal iMac since May 2011. The first one was the one with 6970M and it brought nothing but problems to me.

Now Apple replaced it with the new late 2012 iMac and this machine infinitely better than the first one. No optical, yes, but at least it doesn't give me headaches. It has USB 3 at last, makes it a perfect machine with perfect ports. It also runs faster, cooler, quieter, takes less electricity and better looking too (from the side )

I also agree to the OP, I couldn't care less about Thunderbolt, Apple should stick with USB 3 from the first time. I would safely think it would be better for a computer to have USB 3 and not Thunderbolt rather than the other way around. Although 2012 iMac gives you all of them!

USB 3 give you a reasonably fast connection and cheap too, yes it's half as fast as Thunderbolt could but availability is much much higher, peripherals are twice or thrice cheaper and it's a nice boost for everybody from USB 2.0. At least it would be much more useful for common people than fancy Thunderbolt. It's too niche to be available on consumer machine.

Being the best is not enough, it has to be good enough and cheap enough to implement for everyone to jump in. Who's more popular? Audio CD and FLAC OR MP3 and M4A? Who's better and take less space to keep? Which one sells more music?

So yeah, screw Thunderbolt..

 

[aixporter]

Pshhh.

Image

That is PURE sexyness.

 

[flynz4]

So yeah, screw Thunderbolt..

IMHO... this is extremely narrow thinking. I agree that USB3 is wonderful, but TB opens the machine to new uses that are untouchable with USB3. The combination of the two (in almost every type of Mac now) is a fantastic combination.

/Jim

 

[AppleDeviceUser]

A few months, I bought it in November 2012.

 

[i4Collin]

Almost exactly 2 years, 6 months.

 

[iSayuSay]

IMHO... this is extremely narrow thinking. I agree that USB3 is wonderful, but TB opens the machine to new uses that are untouchable with USB3. The combination of the two (in almost every type of Mac now) is a fantastic combination.

/Jim

Such as what? No doubt Thunderbolt is faster just like FLAC is better than any MP3s. But does it a $1000 better?

When I need to pay a peripheral for two or three times the market price just because it has Thunderbot, it becomes really hard to justify.
At the same time, a cheap USB 3 can saturate the real-world speed and performance of Thunderbolt most of the time.

Not to mention TB cable costs $50 each. So even if I could daisy-chain my devices, it's one hell expensive chain over old-school multiple connections of USB 3.0.

Then again, yes, most of 2012 Mac already has both USB3 and TB, so it wouldn't hurt

 

[Serban]

My first mac was the macbook air 13" bought in august 2012.
Now i have an iMac too bought in mid April 2013: 21.5" i5, 2.9ghz, 650M, Fusion drive.

 

[flynz4]

Such as what? No doubt Thunderbolt is faster just like FLAC is better than any MP3s. But does it a $1000 better?

When I need to pay a peripheral for two or three times the market price just because it has Thunderbot, it becomes really hard to justify.
At the same time, a cheap USB 3 can saturate the real-world speed and performance of Thunderbolt most of the time.

Not to mention TB cable costs $50 each. So even if I could daisy-chain my devices, it's one hell expensive chain over old-school multiple connections of USB 3.0.

Then again, yes, most of 2012 Mac already has both USB3 and TB, so it wouldn't hurt

• Video monitor connection
• Docking Station (ex: ATD, Bekin, etc)
• SSD interface
• High Performance DAS (ex: Pegasus RAID)
• Production video processing (ex: Blackmagic)
• Professional audio processing (ex: Apoge Symphony)
• Etc

These are impossible with any flavor of USB. The performance of my (~$2K) Pegasus array was previously only available on Macs with FiberChannel... at astronomical prices. Products like Blackmagic are pushing iMacs into high performance video editing... and TB was the rage at NAB. SATA drive interfaces are in the process of being redesigned into direct PCIe (particularly for next gen SSDs)... which are an obvious use for TB.

Of course... if you want to attach a crappy single spindle HDD to a Mac, then USB is adequate. However... TB opens the Mac to do things that have been otherwise unavailable until now... and at greatly reduced price points.

Those who need TB... they realize that it is an absolute bargain... and Apple is smart by driving the platform that supports it.

/Jim

 

[IlikeMacsSoMuch]

iMac late 2009 (1 TB HDD)

Works fine. But the harddrive does make some strange noise. Louder than normal. Guess it is about to die.
When I shutdown the Mac you can clearly hear the drive spinning down, but it takes longer than usual and does some "knocking" noises.

Anybody else with such behavior?

iMac late 2012 (1TB Fusion)

Boom! What a beast. You can hardly hear this machine.

I have the same iMac ( late 2009), last year Apple changed the HDD for free. I didn't have any trouble with it, Apple told a lot of iMac owners to take theirs to the Genius bar. Didn't they contact you? If you call Apple, maybe they will change yours for free if you tell them that they didn't contact you, if they didn't of course.

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Pshhh.

Image

It still looks good!

 

[apedance]

I have the same iMac ( late 2009), last year Apple changed the HDD for free. I didn't have any trouble with it, Apple told a lot of iMac owners to take theirs to the Genius bar. Didn't they contact you? If you call Apple, maybe they will change yours for free if you tell them that they didn't contact you, if they didn't of course.

Also with Western Digital Harddrive?