Buy 21.5" iMac now or wait for ARM?

[oldecuriosity]

Hi all,

Would love to hear some opinions on whether it's worth to buy a maxed out 21.5 Intel machine now or wait for the first ARM iMacs to appear in the late fall/early winter. My aging late 2013 21.5" Intel machine is barely chugging along and is due for an upgrade. Normally this would be relatively painless, but with Intel being (eventually) dropped, I'm not sure what to do. My current machine won't last until the 2nd generation ARMs appear.

Any thoughts? I mainly using DP and FCPX, along with a few non-Adobe photo apps. Unfortunately, the 27" or Mac Mini are not viable options for me due to other considerations which is too bad, because the new 27" is a powerhouse and would likely last quite a while.

Many thanks in advance.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

The wait or buy syndrome is a common theme. My rule of thumb is to wait if I can and buy if I must. IOW, if my work requires a new machine (I mean really requires, not just "oh look! A shiny... SQUIRREL!) and I can come up with the coin with reasonable ease, I just go do it.

Playing catchup with tech is a lost cause.

[mikehalloran]

Hmmm... major iMac refresh started shipping two weeks ago. Tim Cook says that the upgrade to ARM will be done by 2022 — others predict 2023. Uh… don't expect an ARM iMac soon.

What he says:

The wait or buy syndrome is a common theme. My rule of thumb is to wait if I can and buy if I must. IOW, if my work requires a new machine (I mean really requires, not just "oh look! A shiny... SQUIRREL!) and I can come up with the coin with reasonable ease, I just go do it.

Playing catchup with tech is a lost cause.

Yep!

The 27" BTO that I ordered for my wife arrived last night. Guess what I'm doing this weekend?

Actually, that will be the easy part. Many of her apps on her 2011 have had major upgrades since then. I bought licenses last year but there will be a learning curve.

Apple's RAM prices are still insane, of course. With the 2020 iMac, there's a new wrinkle. To get the full speed and take advantage of dual-channel memory (like older iMacs and the 2018 Mini), either run a pair of sticks only or all 4 sticks of RAM must be the same size as well as match spec. With older iMacs, as long as you had two matching pairs, dual channel memory was enabled. An iMac Pro or MP 7.1 uses the same RAM in quads for 4-lane memory.

This means that if you order the 2020 with the minimum 8GB and buy a pair of 16GB sticks as I did, you can get the full 40GB at 2667 without dual channel or at 2113 with dual channel — both test the same at Geekbench. 4 matching sticks increase the GB speed by 500–1000 multicore. Of course, the usual hue and cry is going on among the hotheads at MacRumors over this.

For my wife's uses, ain't an issue.

[oldecuriosity]

Thanks MLC and Mike . . . was hoping both of you would reply!

I agree that it's usually buy when you need it and when the specs gets bumped up the following year, oh well. However, a brand new chip gets me a bit nervous - don't want to be the early adopter to sort out the growing pains, though the days of an Intel system are clearly numbered. The timing is unfortunate for me in that if I buy now, it will be obsolete way sooner than normal; on the other hand, my current machine won't make last until 2022 (or 2023) when the ARM transition is complete. Looks like I'll be spending time on Apple's website this week pricing out a new toy.

Mike - good luck with the new 27" iMac. That's quite a machine.

Thanks again!

[mikehalloran]

The timing is unfortunate for me in that if I buy now, it will be obsolete way sooner than normal

Because of California law and international agreements, the soonest an Intel Mac can become obsolete is 2025.

For this purpose, "obsolete" is defined as being no longer being able to run a supported MacOS. Example: 2011 and earlier Macs become obsolete around November 1, 2020 when official support for High Sierra ends i. e. no more security updates. The only exception will be those 5.1 MPs with GPUs that have been upgraded to Mojave (EOL 2021) or Catalina (EOL 2022)

[oldecuriosity]

Thanks, Mike. I always appreciate your advice. And since you're the resident Mac expert around here, one more (speculative) question - do you think this transition is going to be like PowerPC to Intel causing huge headaches from what I remember, or more like 32 to 64 bit where updating software (the annoyance and cost) was mostly the biggest hurdle? It's not like Apple is trying something brand new, as the iPhone and iPad are relatively mature technologies. Still, getting Apple to play nicely with other companies' software and hardware . . . .

[mikehalloran]

We will likely know in October. I'm guessing a Mini or portable (or both) with an ARM chip.

Qualified Developers were given the opportunity to rent A12Z (same chip in the current iPad Pro) equipped Minis to develop Big Sur after paying $500. Apple's goal is the simultaneous porting of OS and Apps to both Intel and ARM for at least five years. It has to be for reasons I've already posted.

Will there be hiccups and stumbles along the way? It's Apple—of course there will.

We've known for 5 years this was coming. Intel announced it in their company report—they had to since it could impact stock prices. In 2017, there were lots of posts from The Disappointeds that the 2017 iMacs weren't ARM.

Anyone on MacRumors and Apple support boards knows The Disappointeds. After every product launch, they're the regulars who begin their posts with, "I'm so disappointed that Apple _______…" It seems that they never buy anything since Apple didn't do ______ Yea, right.

[bayswater]

Another reason to buy at a particular time is what you know about the next generation. I bought a Mini I didn't really need at the time because it looked like it would be the last one to have a DVD drive, a SD slot, FW, etc. With all this old stuff it will still run Catalina if I ever had reason to do that. It was part of the plan to make sure I had something that would work with a lot of old things I had that I might want to use again.

So maybe the current Intel iMac will keep working for a long time, and support all the old stuff you want to keep using. Even if you don't really need it right now.

[mikehalloran]

Another reason to buy at a particular time is what you know about the next generation. I bought a Mini I didn't really need at the time because it looked like it would be the last one to have a DVD drive, a SD slot, FW, etc. With all this old stuff it will still run Catalina if I ever had reason to do that. It was part of the plan to make sure I had something that would work with a lot of old things I had that I might want to use again.

So maybe the current Intel iMac will keep working for a long time, and support all the old stuff you want to keep using. Even if you don't really need it right now.

Exactly.

I've been holding the hand of a friend using Performer Lite on his Win10 laptop. Yikes! There are just enough differences between Mac/Win and PL/DP to make it frustrating at times. This is not helped by the PL manual being a horrible copy-paste job from DP 4 — yes, really — it refers to pages and functions that don't exist and mentions DP 4 fifty-three times (searchable pdf).

Anyway, his wife was going through stuff and asked me if I could use this "box with an Apple logo on it" — uh… ok… I guess… ya never know, right? Well she drops it on my porch last week and it turns out to be a perfectly good, entry level 2014 Mini.

Yea, I've got a perfect use for it. Her husband is getting it back this weekend with a used SSD installed and a Time Capsule I'm no longer using. I've installed Catalina and Performer Lite already. His needs are simple and this won't be his work computer so I hope that the 4GB (soldered RAM) onboard is alright for Performer Lite — I suspect he'll be good for awhile. If not he can buy something beefier.

[bayswater]

I hope that the 4GB (soldered RAM) onboard is alright for Performer Lite

Yes, that was the other reason I got that particular Mini -- drive and RAM user upgradable. I've recently put in 16G RAM and a 500G SSD. It might even make a decent Windows computer one day.