home CPU conundrum, need some advice

smokehouse

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Here's the long story short, I have a very aged 2011 iMac that honestly does not see much use. We have used it for mostly our pictures/home movies and music as well as syncing devices like our iPhones, iPad, and Garmin devices.

The thing is seriously old, I did put a new HDD in it last year and max'd out the RAM.

At this point, I have a ton of photos/movies that I really care about archiving and sync'ing the phones is getting to be a serious chore figuring how old the iMac is.

Moving forward, I really have no clue what to do. I plan on getting an external HDD and ripping the raw photos/movies from the current machine for long term storage. I really need a new computer but I really do not want a shitty Apple product. Fuck a Mac mini and it's bullshit tiny SSD storage (and relatively high price), I really do not want to drop over $1K on another iMac, but we'll continue to have apple phones/iPads.

Any suggestions? Would a MS OS box work well for my needs?
 

Neo Alec

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Just get a complete new desktop system from a reliable looking seller who does a lot of these on ebay.

Intel systems come in i3, i5 and i7. The i7 is the best, but it's the generation the system is from (how old it is) that really matters. Get and i5 or i7. Check that and obviously the memory and storage. Make sure the graphics have HDMI, preferably some graphic acceleration, but doesn't need to be gamer level high end. Anything i5 or above from the last couple years with decent memory should be better than adequate.
 

fake

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I don't get what is wrong with the iMac. I have the bottom tier iMac from 2011 as well and it still works great, granted I've kept it on an old version of OS X. What are the specific problems you're having with it? Have you cleaned it up using utilities like Onyx? Honestly, I'd say you don't actually need a new computer unless you actually want one for the heck of it.
 

HDRchampion

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I don't get what is wrong with the iMac. I have the bottom tier iMac from 2011 as well and it still works great, granted I've kept it on an old version of OS X. What are the specific problems you're having with it? Have you cleaned it up using utilities like Onyx? Honestly, I'd say you don't actually need a new computer unless you actually want one for the heck of it.

what are the best software to cleanup macs. my wife mac is slow and sluggish. she wants to buy a new one, I rather try another option.
 

NeoSneth

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you need a home NAS more than a home computer.
 

fake

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what are the best software to cleanup macs. my wife mac is slow and sluggish. she wants to buy a new one, I rather try another option.

Start with the First Aid feature in Disk Utility (it's in the Utilities folder). Onyx is really great - just make sure to read each setting before you check it off - don't want to delete anything you may need. (https://www.titanium-software.fr/en/onyx.html) There are a lot of folders you can clean out manually, and obviously empty the trash. I sometimes see machines with thousands of files in the trash can.

you need a home NAS more than a home computer.

Yeah, that could work. I have a WD My Cloud or something - pretty easy to set up and it makes switching between my work machine and my home machine easy. And keep all my media in one place and accessible to tablets and whatnot.
 

smokehouse

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I don't get what is wrong with the iMac. I have the bottom tier iMac from 2011 as well and it still works great, granted I've kept it on an old version of OS X. What are the specific problems you're having with it? Have you cleaned it up using utilities like Onyx? Honestly, I'd say you don't actually need a new computer unless you actually want one for the heck of it.

The issue I'm primarily having is the tie to their mobile phones. Sync phone to iMac...iTunes out of date, go to update iTunes, need OS update...new OS update crunches old iMac.
 

Dochartaigh

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Here's the long story short, I have a very aged 2011 iMac that honestly does not see much use. We have used it for mostly our pictures/home movies and music as well as syncing devices like our iPhones, iPad, and Garmin devices.

The thing is seriously old, I did put a new HDD in it last year and max'd out the RAM.

Did you put in a Solid State hard Drive, or a regular optical 7200rpm or whatever HDD? That makes an absolutely HUGE difference in performance.

I have a Late 2012 Mac Mini, I did go for the higher end one at the time (and installed SSD later on) but I have no problem having nearly every Adobe program at once and not have it bog down. Yes, certain Photoshop filters take a little longer than my Mac Pro at work, but it's still just fine.

For more simple things like web browsing, watching movies, iTunes, syncing phones, etc. -- you should have zero problems doing all that, especially if it has a SSD in it, and it should be zippy as hell. For more space all's that needed is an external HDD plugged into it.

*EDIT* just saw your post while I was typing. I'm running Sierra OS on my 2012 mini, iTunes syncs to my phone fine (either plugged in or wifi). Reinstall the OS from scratch (i.e. boot from USB stick you have the new OS install files on, completely format entire SSD, reinstall OS).




what are the best software to cleanup macs. my wife mac is slow and sluggish. she wants to buy a new one, I rather try another option.

Don't clean, if it's that bad make sure it has a SSD (they're like $60 now) and reinstall the OS, preferably a couple versions back if it's a really old system. Most of them from 2010 or newer can even reinstall the OS over the internet, but it's a lot faster if you put it on a quality USB stick (I can wipe mine, and get the OS installed in about a half hour. 1-2 hours after that and all my programs are back on it too and I'm back to normal).

I do use a program called Cocktail by Maintain you can try though. That's the only program we've ever used at work where I maintain all the Mac computers, and the raid server we work off.
 
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jeffkun34

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Any photos/movies created on your iOS devices should already be saved to your icloud as long as you have backup turned on and enough storage capacity. I pay 99 cents a month for the 50Gb plan. If you are making movies or taking photos from other devices then you would need to save those manually. Don't bother syncing the phones to itunes when you can just set the phones to backup every evening to icloud via wi-fi. It only keeps the most recent backup so it only ever takes up whatever space is used on your phone as of last night.

Because your Mac is so old syncing the files to the cloud from there may be an issue as it generally stops backing up to icloud automatically after the OS is so old and you can no longer update it. It is the trick to Apple, they generally think anything older than 5 years is vintage.
 

fake

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The issue I'm primarily having is the tie to their mobile phones. Sync phone to iMac...iTunes out of date, go to update iTunes, need OS update...new OS update crunches old iMac.

What specifically are you trying to sync? Photos? Music? Calendar?
 

jeffkun34

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What specifically are you trying to sync? Photos? Music? Calendar?

If this is all he is trying to get, photos/videos/calendar should automatically backup to icloud as long as you have those backups turned on with whichever apple ID you are using. You still would need to backup your itunes library to an external device.
 

mr_b

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Unless you're absolutely against cloud storage. You should pay the $36 bucks a year for the icloud family 200gb storage plan. If you can make it work with just 1 icloud account even better from a cost perspective. That would eliminate the needs for updating devices thru itunes. You could do it all over the air/ wifi.

Itunes works just fine on pc and mac. Itunes eventually drops windows OS's at certain points once they go EOL but probably not as quickly as OSX versions.

Amazon Glacier Cloud storage is dirt cheap for your home movies, etc. if you don't need to access the files frequently and just want to store them up in the cloud for preventative measures.
 

smokehouse

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I know I sound like a douche bag old fuck when I say this...but I will. I refuse to use "cloud" services. If that means I go back to using an actual camera vs my phone, so be it.

I will not pay $$ for not only storage, but also for bandwidth to have some place store my stuff for me...stuff that I'm guessing they won't guarantee on the long term anyway.
 

Neodogg

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I know I sound like a douche bag old fuck when I say this...but I will. I refuse to use "cloud" services. If that means I go back to using an actual camera vs my phone, so be it.

I will not pay $$ for not only storage, but also for bandwidth to have some place store my stuff for me...stuff that I'm guessing they won't guarantee on the long term anyway.

I agree with this. If the photos and stuff are going to disappear it’ll be by my dumbassness.

You. An also just DL your photos from you phone to your computer then to an external HD, ‘tis what I do...
 

fake

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I know I sound like a douche bag old fuck when I say this...but I will. I refuse to use "cloud" services. If that means I go back to using an actual camera vs my phone, so be it.

I will not pay $$ for not only storage, but also for bandwidth to have some place store my stuff for me...stuff that I'm guessing they won't guarantee on the long term anyway.

Either way, there should be a manual workaround for getting photos off the phones.
 

smokehouse

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Either way, there should be a manual workaround for getting photos off the phones.

With iPhones? I'm really not sure. I know Apple has them pretty locked down. I can always sync them then drag the photos from wherever they store them...but then we're back to always needing to have the current iWahtever desktop software to do it. And then they do this shit:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210200

I know I'm a grumpy old bastard bitching about this but I'll say it again, the more things move to micro subscriptions, the less I want services. I get it, the entire gimmick is to have us all renting everything we have, movies, music, games, television shows, our own photos or home movies...all on "streaming" and all pay to play. I'll say that as it gets worse, I just do less of it. The other side of this coin are ISP's crunching bandwidth use and cranking fees. You have software providers on one side wanting you to stream more and more and ISPs on the other charging you more and more for that bandwidth. You're taking it in the mouth and the butt at the same time.
 
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fake

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Yeah. I’ll check when I get home but I remember it’s easy.
 

Neodogg

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I just plug my iPhone into my computer via usb and transfer pics, it couldn’t
be simpler.
 

RAZO

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I still own Mac Devices like Ipads, Macbooks and use them casually but I don't mess with them when it comes to storing pictures/music/videos, and whatever steam gaming or emulation I mess with.

I also hate the shit out of Iphones and all there security bullshit. I love just taking my Sd Card out of my Samsung Note and copying and pasting to my pc hard drive. Also transferring Via Usb cable is easy. Just takes a little longer. My wife was a long time Iphone user and switched to Android like 5 years ago and she loves it.
 

bulbousbeard

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I'd wait to see how the new AMD CPUs pan out. AMD might have won this round.
 

fake

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Smokehouse, just plug in an iPhone, open up Image Capture, and select which photos you want to transfer.
 

Heinz

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This entire thread.

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