Help with my wife's 2019 iMac

roccles

roccles

roccles

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I am a windows users and know very little abouts Macs but she is a designer so "needs" as Mac! ;)

Anyway! The system is running very slow, even opening this information windows took a couple of seconds.

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She has nearly 300gb spare on the hard drive so not issue with storage.

She mainly uses the Adobe cloud suite of software InDesign and Photoshop in particular and if a heavy user of Adobe cloud storage for work, these take an ages to open and sometimes never open, and when open they are quite slow and sluggish. But the problem is not limited to the Adobe software even opening Safari is quite slow.

Other than a re-install of the OS is there anything that we could try first? She does only have 8Gb of RAM and as a Windows users I might put it down to this but from what I have read this should be plenty on a Mac?

Many Thanks
 
Cheers @JollyJamma and @Feek I will check what the harddrive is and those pieces of software.

As a sidenoet I notice on eBay that the 2nd hand prices for these machines is quite high and you could get a new Mac Mini M2 with 16Gb RAM for a similar price to what these are selling for. Do these hold a premium as they no longer sell a 27inch iMac?
 
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roccles said:
Cheers @JollyJamma and @Feek I will check what the harddrive is and those pieces of software.

As a sidenoet I notice on eBay that the 2nd hand prices for these machines is quite high and you could get a new Mac Mini M2 with 16Gb RAM for a similar price to what these are selling for. Do these hold a premium as they no longer sell a 27inch iMac?
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Don't take eBay pricing as a given - some eBay pricing is stupidly high and can be ignored.

Typically, an iMac goes for less second hand because they are very difficult to upgrade or repair. You need suction cups to pull the screen out of the chassis to upgrade the parts inside and you can end up dropping the screen or cracking it (unlikely but possible).

If I was you, I'd just go get a Mac Mini M2 as it's well priced and you can pair it with a good screen and a good Mac format keyboard (Keychron keyboards are geared towards Mac compatibility and come with keyboard caps for Mac and Windows) and use your current mouse (or just use your current keyboard if it's not too worn out).

The new M2 chip from Apple is much faster than any Intel CPU based Mac and far more efficient. I will post a review of it here when I am not at work.

I would upgrade the Mac Mini M2 to 16gigs of RAM (you can't upgrade it later on) and leave the SSD as is but have an external drive for backups, storage. 8gigs of RAM isn't enough and I think a poor decision on Apples behalf to leave it as the baseline spec.
 
The Mac Mini M2 with 16gb RAM for £850 does seems quite reasonable in comparison to what she has paid in the past. She has the mouse and keyboard already so would only need to sort out a screen.

Is there anyway you can use the 27 inch 5K retina screen on her existing iMac with the Mac Mini? Although she has commented a few times on my ultra wide monitor so I think she may like something like that eventually.
 
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Is there anyway you can use the 27 inch 5K retina screen on her existing iMac with the Mac Mini?
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I don't think so. It's an issue with the iMac range because you are literally, essentially, getting rid of a computer AND screen when you do upgrade.

Mac address on Youtube did an episode dedicated to pairing a good screen with the Mac Mini, I'll find it and post it here.
 
Second @Feek with Onyx and to see if there's a fault with your drive.
But i would personally backup and reinstall (don't restore from a backup) first and see if it's any better. And then look at the easiest options which are to upgrade the RAM, 16/32GB wouldn't be a shout if doing graphics work, and if the iMac is using a Fusion drive, use a decent external Thunderbolt SSD as the boot drive.

roccles said:
... I will check what the harddrive is and those pieces of software.
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Unless you optioned an SSD (256/512/1TB were the options), it'll mostly likely be a 1TB Fusion drive which is essentially two drives, a 32GB SSD and a 1TB mechanical, cobbled together - there were a bit pants.
You can upgrade both of these, and ifixit has decent guides, but it requires cutting the screen out so it's not a quick job.

roccles said:
As a sidenote I notice on eBay that the 2nd hand prices for these machines is quite high and you could get a new Mac Mini M2 with 16Gb RAM for a similar price to what these are selling for.
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Worth looking at Cex as eBay pricing on Mac's is a bit of a minefield and i've always found Cex a bit more realistic in terms of what you're more likely to get when selling.

As for the M2 Mini's, do factor in a few options and a decent enough display (a comparable 5K will blow that similar-price budget unfortunately) when pricing.

Also there are rumours of new M2 iMac's, possibly a 27", at some point this year so it might be worth waiting if you can.
 
Zeebedy said:
I saw on YouTube (Luke Miani I believe) and he managed to port a used iMac into an external display somehow.
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There was Target Display Mode with <=2014 iMac's but, iirc, it stopped being supported on 2015+ iMac's.
Otherwise you can repurpose the LCD with controller boards (look on AliExpress and the likes) but it's a load of work -
 
visibleman said:
There was Target Display Mode with <=2014 iMac's but, iirc, it stopped being supported on 2015+ iMac's.
Otherwise you can repurpose the LCD with controller boards (look on AliExpress and the likes) but it's a load of work -
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yes, I think thats how he did it, now i remember, it was different controller boards.

And your right, probably more effort and risk than its worth.
 
roccles said:
Thanks for the reminder, she has not mentioned it for a while so completely forgot about it so its either working better or she's not been working! :cry:

I will run that software you mentioned though. Cheers
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Maybe it was just a slow computer day?

If she does mention it again, maybe just take her to the Apple Store and let her pick a replacement?

It’s an easy birthday present that’ll make her happy.

Just don’t do what my step dad did and get her a blender. He has never ever lived that down.
 
jrwagh333 said:
So why is that still the base spec for M2
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Because it's still actually enough. I said it's not a lot, I didn't say it wasn't enough. On older machines with mechanical or fusion drives, they'd benefit from a bit more. It's less of an issue with newer computers with fast SSDs where if they need to swap, the place they're swapping to is very quick.

Of course, the answer you want me to say is that it's Apple forcing you to buy more.
 
Feek said:
Because it's still actually enough. I said it's not a lot, I didn't say it wasn't enough. On older machines with mechanical or fusion drives, they'd benefit from a bit more. It's less of an issue with newer computers with fast SSDs where if they need to swap, the place they're swapping to is very quick.

Of course, the answer you want me to say is that it's Apple forcing you to buy more.
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Yeah, this is pretty much the answer.

8gigs is a bit low and you will end up paging websites if you open 15 tabs in Chrome.

That being said, Mac Minis hold their value very well and you can easily sell it later on for most of its original price.


I’ve got my old core 2 duo based Mac mini running 16gigs of RAM on a 500gig SSD and it works (it struggles with more demanding apps) for streaming. I wouldn’t mind a quad core but hey, I might just get an M1 Mac in the future.

I would suggest that a Mac M1 with 16gigs of RAM and 256gigs of storage is perfect for most people and will last a good long time.

If you can buy it via the student offers, you can save quite a bit too.
 
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