Sell my 2015 27” iMac and get a 2020?

[Grubster]

I have a 2020 27" iMac with the internal 256gb Apple SSD (blade, permanent). I picked up an external OWC Thunderbolt 3 enclosure with a 1 Tb Samsung 970 EVO+ nvme SSD and couldn't be happier. The Thunderbolt 3 enclosure/ssd boots faster than the Apple 256gb blade.

That’s interesting that an external drive is faster than the internal ssd! That’s something to think about. I have a 1TB usb-c drive I use for photos and such, but my main problem with the internal 256 is iPhone backups won’t fit very soon, and Apple doesnt let you specify an external drive to backup to. I feel better using the internal drive as a boot drive, but a true thunderbolt enclosure might be better?

I never reboot unless I need to for updates, so boot times I don’t care to much about, but this machine is not slow to boot by any means.

 

[PBG4 Dude]

Set a hardlink in Terminal to point your iPhone backup folder to an external drive folder. You just need to have the drive mounted whenever you want to back up an iDevice.

 

[Grubster]

Set a hardlink in Terminal to point your iPhone backup folder to an external drive folder. You just need to have the drive mounted whenever you want to back up an iDevice.

Do you have instructions you could share in how to do that?

 

[PBG4 Dude]

Do you have instructions you could share in how to do that?

Here’s an article.

Free Up Your Mac: Unleash iPhone Backups onto External Drives

Learn how to free up Mac space by moving iPhone backups to an external drive. Follow our simple guide to ensure your data is safely stored.

www.lifewire.com

 

[okkibs]

it's hard for me to stomach paying that much for a display when I can buy a complete 2020 iMac still for less with the same panel and a fully functional computer! Maybe I'm missing something...

The iMac display is only usable with that iMac's hardware, so for the lower price you get a display that lasts a shorter time before the hardware is too slow and you gotta replace the entire thing. Not like you can throw in a M2 chip into an Intel iMac. I buy the best display I can find and then keep it for about 10 years - over such a long time the initial cost difference becomes irrelevant. My expensive and soon-to-be-replaced 4k monitor already saw 3 Macbooks come and go and still works like it did on day one, with my current M1 Max.

If we believe the Studio Display is a high quality product and will last for nearly a decade, then the price is really not high at all. The 5k Ultrafine for example is much cheaper and I have recommended it over the Studio Display until I realized these Ultrafines seem to become unreliable fast and end up dying way too early. Unless the Studio Display suffers a similar fate, it might just be the better deal despite the outrageous upgrade prices to have any ergonomics at all.

 

[rpmurray]

If we believe the Studio Display is a high quality product and will last for nearly a decade, then the price is really not high at all. The 5k Ultrafine for example is much cheaper and I have recommended it over the Studio Display until I realized these Ultrafines seem to become unreliable fast and end up dying way too early. Unless the Studio Display suffers a similar fate, it might just be the better deal despite the outrageous upgrade prices to have any ergonomics at all.

I'm holding out for the new Samsung ViewFinity S9 and Dell UltraSharp 32 6K displays. Either one would be leaps and bounds over the Studio Display, so just need to see what the pricing will be.

 

[okkibs]

I'm holding out for the new Samsung ViewFinity S9 and Dell UltraSharp 32 6K displays.

My main issue right now is that there aren't even any 5k panels I'd consider buying. At the very least I want miniLED (microLED still too far out unfortunately) that can do 1k nits sustained and 1.4k+ peak with zones in the thousands. The only monitor currently on the market that almost ticks all the boxes is the ASUS ProArt PA32UCG. But it's 4k. And it only does 120Hz, so there's still a couple drawbacks despite the lower resolution panel.

We know of the new 6k Dell that it will be limited to 60Hz, and that it won't even have the brightness capabilities of the Pro Display XDR. So that brand new display will be worse than a 3 year old one.

I appreciate 5k monitors for working with 4k footage, 5k has a tangible benefit for me. I don't want to give up one feature for another, such as trading proper HDR support for 6k. There will be a very limited set of workloads where you'll really benefit from the extra pixels. And if you really want 6k, Apple did a great job with their display and for a reasonable price as well. I am merely wary about Windows compatibility, though it's reported to support the panel with all its main features including HDR.

 

[Grubster]

The iMac display is only usable with that iMac's hardware, so for the lower price you get a display that lasts a shorter time before the hardware is too slow and you gotta replace the entire thing. Not like you can throw in a M2 chip into an Intel iMac. I buy the best display I can find and then keep it for about 10 years - over such a long time the initial cost difference becomes irrelevant. My expensive and soon-to-be-replaced 4k monitor already saw 3 Macbooks come and go and still works like it did on day one, with my current M1 Max.

If we believe the Studio Display is a high quality product and will last for nearly a decade, then the price is really not high at all. The 5k Ultrafine for example is much cheaper and I have recommended it over the Studio Display until I realized these Ultrafines seem to become unreliable fast and end up dying way too early. Unless the Studio Display suffers a similar fate, it might just be the better deal despite the outrageous upgrade prices to have any ergonomics at all.

I see your point, but you guys are probably graphics
professionals. I manage app dev teams and we work in windows and cloud environment. So really I just need a machine that can run cloud apps and remote virtual machines. A 2015 or newer Mac can do that fine. The 2020 iMac I’m sure will last me 5 years. Also, I rarely buy new, I buy and sell macs for a hobby, and have made enough that they are now all free. the 5k display is so crisp, it’s hard to lose it, but not critical. I have a 43 Dell 4k and next to my iMac, the difference does stand out, but I love the screen real estate With the two together, it’s like having 5 displays. Would be better if that 43 was like a 5k or 6k.