Is the 2017 5k iMac good for daily use?

[65301361]

Nothing like it was under OS X El Capitan and macOS Sierra. If I have 15+ app windows open, occasionally Mission Control animations can stutter for a split second when the animation sequence begins. I'm not trying to point out flaws to seed fear and uncertainty into your buying decision, but you asked the question so this is the truth. But you should know Mission Control animates app windows live. We're not talking a static preview of the app window as it was before Mission Control started animating. It will show you any changes that happen to any app window before, during and after the animation sequence and also while Mission Control is open. As a software engineer myself, I would argue animating 14.7 million pixels at once – knowing fair well the app windows might change during and after the animation sequence – and to do that all perfectly 9 times out of 10 – is a pretty remarkable engineering achievement. These iMacs always run at 5120 x 2880, no matter what scaled resolution you choose. The only time it doesn't run at 5K is when you select a low resolution mode, which isn't possible unless you enable the hidden setting in Display preferences.

No, I have not yet upgraded to macOS Mojave. But again, the Window Server now uses Apple's Metal 2 graphics stack and is the single reason system animations are so smooth now. It's like night and day compared to OS X El Capitan and macOS Sierra.

Wow thanks to your professional reply. Yes, the windows are live which shows whatever changes made to them. Good point!! I feel no fear to buy it now

 

[65301361]

Nothing like it was under OS X El Capitan and macOS Sierra. If I have 15+ app windows open, occasionally Mission Control animations can stutter for a split second when the animation sequence begins. I'm not trying to point out flaws to seed fear and uncertainty into your buying decision, but you asked the question so this is the truth. But you should know Mission Control animates app windows live. We're not talking a static preview of the app window as it was before Mission Control started animating. It will show you any changes that happen to any app window before, during and after the animation sequence and also while Mission Control is open. As a software engineer myself, I would argue animating 14.7 million pixels at once – knowing fair well the app windows might change during and after the animation sequence – and to do that all perfectly 9 times out of 10 – is a pretty remarkable engineering achievement. These iMacs always run at 5120 x 2880, no matter what scaled resolution you choose. The only time it doesn't run at 5K is when you select a low resolution mode, which isn't possible unless you enable the hidden setting in Display preferences.

No, I have not yet upgraded to macOS Mojave. But again, the Window Server now uses Apple's Metal 2 graphics stack and is the single reason system animations are so smooth now. It's like night and day compared to OS X El Capitan and macOS Sierra.

ANd btw do you know what’s the reason when I use Trackpad gesture to go back to the previous page in safari it will take a “long” time before it’s usable. During that time I can’t do anything the page just stuck there. But if I click the go back button the left top it will active faster. Is that because my specs are too low or the Mac os’s problem? I’m using the 2013 late iMac 27. I5 32g ram and gtx775m. And another annoying thing is if I use pinch guesture in the safari to have a bird view of all the open tabs it doesn’t work very smoothly.

 

[SkiHound2]

The current iMacs were released in June, 2017. No one with any definitive information is posting but there's a lot of speculation that a revised iMac will be released on October. The 8th generation Intel cpus are mostly 6 core and seem to offer a meaningful performance boost, especially for tasks that make use of multiple cores, over their 7th generation counterparts. What else (good or bad) a new iMac may bring is pretty much anyone's guess. The current iMacs are very nice computers for but unless you need a computer now I'd probably try to wait. If a revised iMac brings features you want at a price you are willing to pay, then you'll get the newest version. If not, you should be able to get a current generation iMac at a lower price, perhaps through Apple's refurbished store. If you need a computer now, then you should buy now. I would at least try to upgrade to the 2TB fusion drive since it has a 128gb ssd versus a 32gb ssd on the 1 TB Fusion.

 

[65301361]

The current iMacs were released in June, 2017. No one with any definitive information is posting but there's a lot of speculation that a revised iMac will be released on October. The 8th generation Intel cpus are mostly 6 core and seem to offer a meaningful performance boost, especially for tasks that make use of multiple cores, over their 7th generation counterparts. What else (good or bad) a new iMac may bring is pretty much anyone's guess. The current iMacs are very nice computers for but unless you need a computer now I'd probably try to wait. If a revised iMac brings features you want at a price you are willing to pay, then you'll get the newest version. If not, you should be able to get a current generation iMac at a lower price, perhaps through Apple's refurbished store. If you need a computer now, then you should buy now. I would at least try to upgrade to the 2TB fusion drive since it has a 128gb ssd versus a 32gb ssd on the 1 TB Fusion.

Tnx I have considered the new iMac to come. But my plan is to buy a second hand one. So I might go for the 2017 version.

 

[294307]

ANd btw do you know what’s the reason when I use Trackpad gesture to go back to the previous page in safari it will take a “long” time before it’s usable. During that time I can’t do anything the page just stuck there. But if I click the go back button the left top it will active faster. Is that because my specs are too low or the Mac os’s problem? I’m using the 2013 late iMac 27. I5 32g ram and gtx775m. And another annoying thing is if I use pinch guesture in the safari to have a bird view of all the open tabs it doesn’t work very smoothly.

If you press the back button, you might be seeing a cached version of the previous page versus a complete page reload. Or the swipe animation might need to complete itself before you can start interacting with the rendered page. Any number of reasons; but this has nothing to do with your older iMac or the GPU or some underlying flaw in the operating system – WebKit is very efficient. On my iPhone 5s, apps on iOS 11 lag when I try scrolling in them. The only exception is Safari which is always smooth and that's because of WebKit.

 

[65301361]

If you press the back button, you might be seeing a cached version of the previous page versus a complete page reload. Or the swipe animation might need to complete itself before you can start interacting with the rendered page. Any number of reasons; but this has nothing to do with your older iMac or the GPU or some underlying flaw in the operating system – WebKit is very efficient. On my iPhone 5s, apps on iOS 11 lag when I try scrolling in them. The only exception is Safari which is always smooth and that's because of WebKit.

Can you test if the animation stutters when you open the "other" folder in launchpad? it has been stuttered every time I opened it from high Sierra. on Sierra it was very smoothly. thank you !

 

[joema2]

If you press the back button, you might be seeing a cached version of the previous page...this has nothing to do with your older iMac or the GPU or some underlying flaw in the operating system – WebKit is very efficient....

This happens on all my Macs -- including my 10-core Vega 64 iMac pro -- IF using Safari and IF using a swipe gesture on the trackpad or magic mouse to go to the previous web page.

It does not happen if using the swipe gesture with Mac FireFox 62.0.2 or Chrome 69.0.3497.100.

The behavior is swipe backward to a previous web page sometimes causes Safari to essentially lock up for accepting new vertical scrolling commands for several seconds.

As you said I don't think it's an issue with hardware performance or machine resources. It might be some code on certain web pages is stealing focus, thereby briefly blocking processing of subsequent scrolling commands until some Safari logic overcomes that. Pressing the "previous page" button might bypass this somehow, but the reverse swipe gesture should resolve to the same thing. Either way, the swipe command on either Chrome or Firefox don't have that laggy behavior.

 

[65301361]

This happens on all my Macs -- including my 10-core Vega 64 iMac pro -- IF using Safari and IF using a swipe gesture on the trackpad or magic mouse to go to the previous web page.

It does not happen if using the swipe gesture with Mac FireFox 62.0.2 or Chrome 69.0.3497.100.

The behavior is swipe backward to a previous web page sometimes causes Safari to essentially lock up for accepting new vertical scrolling commands for several seconds.

As you said I don't think it's an issue with hardware performance or machine resources. It might be some code on certain web pages is stealing focus, thereby briefly blocking processing of subsequent scrolling commands until some Safari logic overcomes that. Pressing the "previous page" button might bypass this somehow, but the reverse swipe gesture should resolve to the same thing. Either way, the swipe command on either Chrome or Firefox don't have that laggy behavior.

Yes yes! Ur so right! Firefox and chrome work very well with gesture. Hope Apple will fix it soon coz I only use Safari basically

 

[294307]

Can you test if the animation stutters when you open the "other" folder in launchpad? it has been stuttered every time I opened it from high Sierra. on Sierra it was very smoothly. thank you !

You are never going to be happy if you keep analysing everything like that. Creating software isn't an exact science and there is always something to improve or make better no matter how obsessive Apple engineers are about perfecting their work. There are plenty of bugs in macOS that irritate me – and one in particular with the Finder – but **** happens and that's why bug reports need to be filed so Apple engineers can try to reproduce the problem and fix it.

The Other folder opens without any problems for me. As to why it doesn't for you... well, I don't know. I will only repeat what I've said before: High Sierra brought significant performance improvements to macOS and from everyone's feedback on Mojave so far, macOS 10.14 seems to be another release focusing on maintaining stability over bleeding edge features.

You've received largely positive feedback in this thread about macOS High Sierra and Mojave, so this should tell you everything you need to know. If you need a new iMac, just buy one. Or do this... use Windows for a month to remind yourself how much better macOS is ;-).

 

[ginhb]

I just bought a 2017 27" 5k iMac from the Apple refurbished website. Moving from a Windows machine. My configuration is the 3.4 GHz i5 processor, 16 GB of Ram, 4 MB video Ram, 512 GB SSD. Added a 1 TB external SSD for extra storage. This machine is plenty adequate for daily use in my opinion. Very smooth, very fast. I haven't loaded it up with lots & lots of software, but I don't plan to.

Just using the included applications I've been doing video capture and exporting, viewing 4k videos from my drone, photo editing, lots of internet usage of course, things like that. It seems great. Copy speeds are plenty fast.

Yes there will be new iMacs coming, but at what cost? And how much power do you really need? Those were the questions I asked. My goal was to keep the cost as close to $2,000 as possible or lower. The external SSD pushed it a bit over but that's ok. I added the Magic Trackpad as well. It seems a little costly but it's super nice to use. No issues at all with gestures going back in Safari or anything else. It works great. I had a trackpad for my Windows machine also which I liked, but this one is so much nicer.

 

[65301361]

I just bought a 2017 27" 5k iMac from the Apple refurbished website. Moving from a Windows machine. My configuration is the 3.4 GHz i5 processor, 16 GB of Ram, 4 MB video Ram, 512 GB SSD. Added a 1 TB external SSD for extra storage. This machine is plenty adequate for daily use in my opinion. Very smooth, very fast. I haven't loaded it up with lots & lots of software, but I don't plan to.

Just using the included applications I've been doing video capture and exporting, viewing 4k videos from my drone, photo editing, lots of internet usage of course, things like that. It seems great. Copy speeds are plenty fast.

Yes there will be new iMacs coming, but at what cost? And how much power do you really need? Those were the questions I asked. My goal was to keep the cost as close to $2,000 as possible or lower. The external SSD pushed it a bit over but that's ok. I added the Magic Trackpad as well. It seems a little costly but it's super nice to use. No issues at all with gestures going back in Safari or anything else. It works great. I had a trackpad for my Windows machine also which I liked, but this one is so much nicer.

thanks for your reply. I highly recommend you use windows mouse with trackpad together. mouse on the right with trackpad on the left and keyboard in the middle which is the best set for inputting devices on a Mac as my experience.

 

[ginhb]

thanks for your reply. I highly recommend you use windows mouse with trackpad together. mouse on the right with trackpad on the left and keyboard in the middle which is the best set for inputting devices on a Mac as my experience.

Yes that's what I'm doing. I worked that way for years on the Windows machines. Trackpad with the left hand, mouse with the right. So I duplicated that setup on the iMac. This machine seems like it will keep me happy for quite a while. The MacOS is different, I'm having to relearn all my keyboard shortcuts, but I'm getting there. It's a nice design.

 

[Alx9876]

Bidets are good for daily use: https://www.amazon.com/Serenelife-B...e=UTF8&qid=1538150840&sr=8-10&keywords=bidets

And it wont' cost you as much as a 2017 iMac.