Before anything else, a “THIS GIRL CAN” sign is what I needed in my life 30 years ago. 😭
(Also, am I seriously seeing an
SU terminal background there? And lastly, that one sticker is
everything.)
I have an 27” Late 2009 11,1 iMac with the Core i5 750 CPU working as a video archival/encoding machine and then I have a 21.5” 2014 iMac running as an Emby media server.
Oh wow. You have the gutted, mid-2014 education-only model. I kind of wonder how many of those are still kicking about in school computer labs these days.
Also, the Emby brand always makes me think, “Uh, y’all misspelt that…”
Initially I thought the hard drive was dead on the 2009 and picked up the 2014 to replace it but I got it running again and since it’s got beefier CPU cores than the 2014 (which is the cheap 1.4Ghz dual core variety) I’m using it to encode discs and things, but as it only reliably seems to run Monterey or lower (it didn’t like OCLP Sonoma one bit) I’ve moved server duty (which requires an open external port and IP) to the newer machine that can run Sonoma for security reasons.
Hurrah on reviving the 2009!
I really began loving the iMac form factor once again with the 2009 redesign, whose basic idea carried over into the 2013 redesign (minus, alas, the SuperDrive and FW800). The main downside is getting inside them for upgrades and repairs. That’s where the 2007–2009 models, with their magnet-attached glass, had them beat.
I’m guessing yours still runs with a spinner and not an SSD. Regardless, the CPU in that 2009 model, despite being five years older, benchmarks 31 per cent faster than your 2014 does and can use up to four times as much RAM. It’s a relative beast and also runs Snow Leopard, when it’s needed, like a dream.
The 2014 wasn’t able to do encoding work in Handbrake while serving transcoded video over Emby. Just asking too much of that lil dual-core.
Yah. That poor thing is running at speeds similar to the low/mid-range 2010 iMacs. By this point in time, Apple really went all-out with hobbling basic performance for education-only models. If one went back by just a few years, edu-only models were also barebones, but at least made it possible to upgrade some of the internals. 2014 was when Apple, more or less, went all-in with their soldered-earth strategy across the entire Mac product line, the carried-over 2013 Mac Pro excepted.
On the upside, the key things going for it are the 802.11ac/AirDrop capability, USB3, and Thunderbolt ports.
Only downside to this setup is the hardware on the 2009 isn’t able to handle Universal Control so the two keyboards/mice are kinda awkward. But otherwise this setup performs day in and day out, and both machines can rack up months of uptime between reboots. Apple really built stuff to last.
If omitting the several GPU failures in several models between 2006 and 2011, or the post-2015 butterfly keyboard mess, for the most part, yah. Their structural design, especially once they started going with unibody construction, made them — especially the desktops — very durable goods.
I use a late 2013 iMac i5 2.9 21.5-inch as a media player and SDR receiver these days, and the only thing which seems to force a reboot on it is when power blip in the neighbourhood takes it down.
Lastly: I know it’s not Universal Control, per se, but you may have some success with
Synergy instead.
It’s been many years since I last used Synergy (ca. 2009 or so), but it worked flawlessly for when I wanted to use Macs which lived on my desk, yet preferred to only use the keyboard and trackpad on my daily driver MacBook Pro to control them all. Synergy was, basically,
the Universal Control before Universal Control.
