[vcf-midatlantic] OT: WTB: 27" iMac

[David Riley]

On Dec 6, 2023, at 9:59 PM, Jonathan Chapman via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
> 
>> IIRC, the only 27” ones (only Intel, ARM has only come in 24” so far) that can run the latest without trickery are the 2019 one and the iMac Pro. Others you can run with varying degrees of success with OpenCore, but expect potential trouble (anecdotally, though, not much).
> 
> Thanks for the information! I haven't stayed up to date on what will run this-and-that w.r.t. the iMacs, this one is for my parents, their mid-2011 is really past end of serviceable life.

You're telling me!  I'm actually typing this on my late 2011 one that's on its third GPU and has had a faulty backlight on the left hand side for many years.  It wants to die, but I just won't let it (but I'm inheriting my wife's 2017 one now that she's upgraded to a new one, partly so I can still use my FireWire audio box for which the manufacturer never ported drivers to ARM...).  I'd offer that one, but it's also VESA mount, which is less likely to be useful for parents.

Though for what it's worth, unless they're looking for specific features, I'm not sure I'd recommend going for the absolute latest (Sonoma, macOS 14) anyway.  Apple typically (though they do not guarantee it) maintain security updates for two revisions back, so Ventura (13) and Monterey (12) should still be getting security updates until the next one comes out, at which point Monterey drops.  A few of the newer features from Ventura onward didn't get ported to Intel macs, either.

It's a bit disappointing that they haven't come out with a larger ARM iMac than 24", I know a lot of people who have been waiting for that and are getting frustrated.


- Dave