I received my iMac last Wednesday and upgraded from my 2015 iMac on Friday. The upgrade proceeded smoothly with the migration from an HDD clone of my old boot drive.
There was one surprise improvement. For previous desktops, I have always found the native sound inferior to the sound from the Bose Computer Music Monitors that I had gotten via reward program from my employer about 2008 or so. However, to my (perhaps tin) ears, the native sound from the new iMac sounded just as rich. So I was able to gain a little desktop space and get rid of a mess of cables from my desk.
Alan, I’ve been impressed with my 2019 iMac’s internal speakers too. You might enjoy what Boom 3D can do with them too, really expands the dynamic range of the music played through them.
I’ve been using Glory by David Crosby as a test song, Apple’s speaker design team are quite a force I think.
Interesting! I just tested too (with my canonical album of Dire Straits’ “Brothers in Arms” and while the iMac speakers are decent, they don’t compare well to the Altec Lansing speakers with subwoofer that I’ve been using for a decade or more.
It’s not a soundbar, and it’s not cheap, but I’ve been using a set of Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 speakers on my Mac for many years (originally purchased for use with a 2002-era PowerMac). They sound incredible and I am very pleased to see that they’re still being made 20 years later.
This feels like an easier argument. The screen on the iMac will be so much bigger and better, and the performance so much greater, that everything will feel a lot faster until you become accustomed to it. Then you really won’t like going back to the old laptop.
A much tougher argument is that anyone should upgrade from an older 27-inch Retina iMac to the latest model. There are some performance enhancements, of course, but they may not be noticeable, and there are some connectivity improvements, but overall, I don’t think I’d recommend such an upgrade unless the old Mac was feeling slow or flaky (for me, the latter was true).
Adam this is not related to the Mojave issue but I wanted to get your input to an issue I am experiencing with my new iMac 27in I know you have the same model. I am experiencing regular restarts which I have just started to log 9/29 10/2 10/7. I checked the apple support site and it seems this is a common issue for many users, each time I send the report to Apple they must have thousands by now. The first line always contains the word panic, I wonder if any of our erudite colleagues would like a shot at explaining this phenomenon, I’ll be happy to upload the report if required. Restarting is perfect and I have no other problems.
Sounds like you’re getting kernel panics—sorry! Have you updated to the most recent version of Catalina? I’m not seeing any such issues with mine, but I do see some suggestion that the problem might be related to the Radeon Pro 5700 XT graphics card. Do you have that? I don’t—I stuck with the 5500 XT.
As one who got his iMac in late August (with the Radeon Pro 5700 (not XT) card), I think that I saw one kernel panic. However, I haven’t seen any since doing the latest operating system upgrades.
Thanks Adam I also stuck with the 5500 yes I do have the latest version only difference I can think of is I replaced 8GB of Apple memory with 2 x 32GB of Kingston DDR4 2666 Retina 5K 27inch. KCP 426SD8/32 but I noticed in the about this Mac panel this Your Mac contains 4 memory slots, each of which accepts a 2667 MHz DDR4 memory module. Have I screwed up I was assured the memory was correct.
Mike
I replaced the 2 8GB Apple Memory with 2 16GB OWC Memory. Note that Apple recommends that you should try to equalize memory between channels, which, in practice, means using alternate slots rather than adjacent slots for 2 identically sized memory cards. I directly replaced the Apple cards so that I am in slots 2 and 4. See item 9 in the Installing Memory section of this.
If you look at the memory tab in ‘About This Mac’ the 2 occupied slots should show up as next to each other rather than one above the other.
I’m comforted that you had only one I have had many I am now logging them should be due one in next day or so. Kingston supplier is prepared to replace the memory but suggested I reinstall the Apple memory and see if I have the same problem. Am I right in thinking that this can only be a hardware problem (fingers crossed)? I had Kingston in my previous Mac and no problem for 7 years and still going strong.
Would someone confirm or deny that Office for Mac 2016 (or at least Excel) will run on the new iMac? I have been assured by The One Who Knows Me Best that I will consider Office 365 a significant step on the path of making the user interface more annoying at each new edition of Office. Thanks.
On somewhat different topic, am I correct that Office for Mac 2016 has no chance of running on a new Mac with an Apple M1 chip? Thanks again.
Latest iMac with 3,6 GHz 10‑Core Intel Core i9 or latest Macbook Air with Apple M1? Which one should I take if I have a fixed amount of money? (The Macbook decision would of course include all peripherals like display, hub etc.)
If one of the choices is a ten core Intel, I’d wait (if you are able) to see if Apple releases a more powerful M1 with more cores and more thunderbolt ports next spring. These new computers are replacing Intel machines on the low end of the line.
