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New 27" iMac for Graphic Designer, help please.
- Thread starter candyman
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Once I get settled in with it, I'll give it a couple weeks and let you know what I think. I'm hoping the machine arrives by this weekend! Then comes the lengthy migration process.
I went from a 2006 iMac to a Late 2013 the migration was painless
just a few applications which I hadn't used for some time were not supported
I took it with the stock 8GB of RAM and upgraded via Crucial to 32GB
4 GB Graphic and !TB Fusion with 3.4 GHz i5 processor
It flys in Photoshop
I just stitched 7 Hi Res Photos, flattened and cropped in a few minuets
So, I finally have everything transferred over to my new machine and here are a few of my initial thoughts.
1. Love the size of the footprint. I was worried it might not quite fit in the place I had my old 24". The thinner stand base and narrower bezel along the bottom of the screen keep it at the same height as the old 24" only adding more width. Just a beautiful machine, especially with the glass to the edges along the sides and top. No more thin aluminum frame showing on the front face.
2.Fusion drive is awesome. Incredibly fast. Boot up and restarts are near instantaneous and loading my apps (Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver) are also darn near immediate. A much noticeable difference so far compared to my 27" iMac at work with the standard HDD.
3. Memory swap was super simple AFTER I nearly had to break the back door panel off! The little button above the power supply connector would push down but the door would not pop up or out at all. Had to take a razor blade and with some very heavy pressure was finally able to get it to snap open. I was kind of fearful or breaking or scratching the frame up pretty badly. Not sure if all the new machines are this way. I loved the old tiny screw method before. No worry about hinges or parts popping/cracking/breaking off. This seems more gimmicky. I know they are trying to minimalise everything, just didn't work as indicated for me.
4. Apple Migration Assistant SUCKS! I had so many problems trying to get it to work. Both machines had the latest matching Mavericks OS. Tried using the home wi-fi. Tried using the Ethernet cable. It kept crashing the old iMac every time after I choose the contents I wanted to copy over. Read hours on end for work arounds online. In the end, had to use a FW800 to Thunderbolt cable with Target Disk Mode and bring everything over manually and just reinstall all my apps on the new machine. This was also pretty tricky not having an optical disc drive any longer. In the end, this process should have not been nearly as complicated as it was. Thankfully I am tech savvy enough to understand the last resort options.
I plan on trying to give one more review in the future as a followup on the performance of the machine as I tackle many other print projects.
1. Love the size of the footprint. I was worried it might not quite fit in the place I had my old 24". The thinner stand base and narrower bezel along the bottom of the screen keep it at the same height as the old 24" only adding more width. Just a beautiful machine, especially with the glass to the edges along the sides and top. No more thin aluminum frame showing on the front face.
2.Fusion drive is awesome. Incredibly fast. Boot up and restarts are near instantaneous and loading my apps (Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver) are also darn near immediate. A much noticeable difference so far compared to my 27" iMac at work with the standard HDD.
3. Memory swap was super simple AFTER I nearly had to break the back door panel off! The little button above the power supply connector would push down but the door would not pop up or out at all. Had to take a razor blade and with some very heavy pressure was finally able to get it to snap open. I was kind of fearful or breaking or scratching the frame up pretty badly. Not sure if all the new machines are this way. I loved the old tiny screw method before. No worry about hinges or parts popping/cracking/breaking off. This seems more gimmicky. I know they are trying to minimalise everything, just didn't work as indicated for me.
4. Apple Migration Assistant SUCKS! I had so many problems trying to get it to work. Both machines had the latest matching Mavericks OS. Tried using the home wi-fi. Tried using the Ethernet cable. It kept crashing the old iMac every time after I choose the contents I wanted to copy over. Read hours on end for work arounds online. In the end, had to use a FW800 to Thunderbolt cable with Target Disk Mode and bring everything over manually and just reinstall all my apps on the new machine. This was also pretty tricky not having an optical disc drive any longer. In the end, this process should have not been nearly as complicated as it was. Thankfully I am tech savvy enough to understand the last resort options.
I plan on trying to give one more review in the future as a followup on the performance of the machine as I tackle many other print projects.
The easiest way to set up a new machine by far is simply to make a time machine backup to an external drive, then simply take the option to restore from a backup when going through the first startup of the new machine.
Hit ok, go off and watch some TV for an hour and when it's finished you have a perfect clone of your old machine but on your new machine.
No stress, no hassle and it means that if you need to sell your old machine to finance the new one you don't have any overlap.
Still you got there eventually and good to hear you like your new Mac...
Hit ok, go off and watch some TV for an hour and when it's finished you have a perfect clone of your old machine but on your new machine.
No stress, no hassle and it means that if you need to sell your old machine to finance the new one you don't have any overlap.
Still you got there eventually and good to hear you like your new Mac...
Agreed. Unfortunately my Time Machine was a 500GB and when I had to replace the internal drive that died in my iMac, I put a 1TB in and could not fully back it up. It just became a secondary storage drive and I relied my backups to an online server. Hopefully I won't have that issue the next time I upgrade.
I was wondering, is it better to start fresh rather than copy everything from the previous computer? I have old adobe abs I'm no longer using etc. it would be nice to have a fresh computer because I assume that over 5 years a computer builds up a bunch of unnecessary stuff. Am I wrong?
So can you share how your new mac is working on design projects. I'm still trying to decide on the fusion vs. SSD.
Hi Susan,
I am still completely sold on the Fusion Drive. Restart and boot up times are near instantaneous. I have the same 27" iMac model as my work machine at my employer with the standard 1TB HDD and my applications do not open nearly as fast as they do with the Fusion drive on my home machine. Also, speeds up the process of opening my files as well. I would not hesitate to go with the Fusion drive. Of course SSD would be the fastest available but the cost just don't balance out right now, at least in my situation. I feel like I have the best of both worlds getting the most bang for my buck. I was able to put the savings elsewhere in RAM and other hardware.
As for starting with fresh apps, that would be the best way to go for a clean start. Of course, if you have a lot of preferences saved in your apps, you'll want to make sure to save those and bring them over so you don't lose window layouts, custom brushes, etc.
I hope this helps you in some way. Feel free to ask any other questions!
I am still completely sold on the Fusion Drive. Restart and boot up times are near instantaneous. I have the same 27" iMac model as my work machine at my employer with the standard 1TB HDD and my applications do not open nearly as fast as they do with the Fusion drive on my home machine. Also, speeds up the process of opening my files as well. I would not hesitate to go with the Fusion drive. Of course SSD would be the fastest available but the cost just don't balance out right now, at least in my situation. I feel like I have the best of both worlds getting the most bang for my buck. I was able to put the savings elsewhere in RAM and other hardware.
As for starting with fresh apps, that would be the best way to go for a clean start. Of course, if you have a lot of preferences saved in your apps, you'll want to make sure to save those and bring them over so you don't lose window layouts, custom brushes, etc.
I hope this helps you in some way. Feel free to ask any other questions!
Ok, I am fearful of the Migration assistance, so you would recommend getting a FireWire cable? How is this done? How much do they cost? I may not be as tech savvy as you, can you tell me what you did? Do I launch the new mac and go through set up, or hold off? I would like to download all my apps from Adobe, but I want to migrate my iPhoto, iTunes, safari bookmarks and files.
Best thing to do is have a full Time Machine backup of your old Mac. Set up the new Mac as a brand new and clean version of OS X. Then spend a week or so bringing over your files from the Time Machine backup. You can replace the iPhoto Library file with your old one and do the same for your iTunes Music folder. Safari bookmarks are saved in iCloud so those should sync automatically.
Mac App Store apps can be reinstalled from there, but any other apps you have that require a DVD drive would be problematic unless you have another Mac in the house with one than you can use Remote Disc to reinstall. After you're done with all of that, you now have all of the stuff you need on a fresh copy of OS X and start new rather than trudge through the pile of old plist files and accumulated clutter.