Are they with harddisks?
you know⌠Iâve had machines, with HDD, SSD and Fusion all with similar CPU and didnât really ever notice a drastic difference
Huh thats my wifes model
But she has more RAM in hers and it worked wonderfully for running Parallels & Windows for the book she helped publish
But she doesnt use it much any more - 99% of her time is on her iPad
Only one I noticed it on was an older MBP that you could easily open & replaced the HD with an SSD
Yes, they have mechanical drives, which obviously (@DaveSâ comment notwithstanding) makes a HUGE difference. When I replaced the mechanical drive in my previous 2012 MBP with an SSD it was like night and day. From beachballing constantly to almost never.
Yes, itâs the Ladiesâ iMac 
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Replacing the harddisk with SSDs made the single biggest jump in speed I ever encountered - since then I donât run any system from a harddisk or even fusion drive anymore.
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mechanical HD for backups since they are huge and fast enough
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The 4 GB in combination with a harddisk is problematic as you get paging from memory to the harddisk and that slows everything down massively.
8 GB and a large fast SSD (512 GB minimum) are highly recommended.
I had a 2009 2.8 GHz i7 27in iMac with 8 GB and 500 GB Crucial M500 SSD and I never found it slow.
My father had a 2011 2.7 GHz i5 27in iMac with a fusion drive (120 GB SSD / 3 TB HD) that became rather slow but was fine after I upgraded the memory to 16 GB and replaced the 3 TB HD with a 2 TB SSD.
The biggest mistake people make in my book is to use harddisks for anything other than long-term storage. Itâs much better to have most of your data on a Synology DiskStation (available on your network at any time, with redundancy in case of drive failure) and keep only the stuff you need on your work machine.
But beware: you still need proper backups - the Synology makes your data safer, but you should still have a separate backup.
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cheap hdâs that get used for time machine and rotated to the safe deposit box every 2-3 months
it probably should be every month but âŚ
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Yes, I know, thatâs why I said âNewer models with SSD and more RAM are more usable Iâm sureâ.
Well, the base model is suitable for office work, internet, email, but if you want to do serious work then you need the right tool set.
After all you wouldnât want to compete in a car race with a Traktor, but you also wouldnât want to plough a field with a Lamborghini.
Your iMac was available with better specs, but could have been upgraded by yourself or a friendly soul to 32 GB of RAM and an SSD - which I would guess would have made it quite suitable for the task. So I would have bought the base model and upgraded it (sadly the newer models are a pig to upgrade or repair, which is why I bought my 2010 Mac Pro)
The machines I have are not suitable for anything, they are unusably slow, although they seemed snappy enough when I bought them. Iâve owned almost every Mac model made 1983-2004 and beyond, so I know what theyâre supposed to feel like. I donât know if itâs the hardware issue I referred to (disk drive cable noise coupling, for which one of them underwent AppleCare service), hard drive degradation, or an accretion of software slowdowns, but I donât have the time or inclination to work on them, Iâm just disgusted.
I disagree that a slow machine is acceptable for âoffice work, internet, and emailâ. Slow response and beachballing makes the user experience miserable for any task, even just using it as a music server, which is all I do with the one in my living room.
Friends of my father in law had a Mac that the wife used, her husband Gary used a PC. Until his PC died. So he got an account on the Mac and the first thing he did was to install âoptimization softwareâ, namely MacKeeper and a few others. Next I got a help call from his wife that the Mac was very slow, and her husband said he hasnât done anything, but she doesnât quite believe him - he likes to fiddle with things. So I removed the crap he installed and the Mac was back to his usual self.
Now several people with similar and even older machines have said they run fine and plenty fast enough. So it might be time to consider that it isnât the Mac that is the problem, but something you have installed, possibly as part of the migration to the new machine. Which might also explain why it seems to have propagated since.
Btw MacKeeper is known Malware.
I said the base model is fast enough for normal use, if you want to use it for more then you need to give the computer more or better resources. If you do video editing then you need a faster machine, while a faster machine is overkill and a waste of money for normal use.
And quite frankly, an i3 or even a Core2Duo CPU are fast enough for general Office work. Thatâs not where the bottleneck is. The computer spends over 90% of its time waiting for your next keystroke.
So if you think the computer is too slow without even considering where the real problem might be then you sound suspiciously like someone who has made up their mind and just wants to be right.
QED.
Considering that the slowdown is most likely of your own making ⌠oh why do I bother âŚ
Same here - I made a change a few years ago to use a high end Windows laptop with touch screen. What a pile of junk - fans blowing loud as soon as you did anything taxing, slow graphics performance, Windows updates(!), just generally slow at everything. It was bad.
Last year had enough and went back to Apple with a new i7 based MacBook Pro 15". Just fantastic - fast, silent and efficient.
I donât know why you bother either. There is something wrong with these machines. It should not take 5 minutes to launch iTunes. The optical drive should not have stopped working after a couple of years. Apple acknowledged that there was a cable noise issue with them, and I donât believe it was fixed. I donât have time or inclination to fix them. Thatâs my choice. Iâm disappointed with them. Iâve havenât been disappointed with most other Apple computers Iâve owned. I said that more modern Apple machines are probably fine. I know that MacKeeper is malware. These machines have very little software installed beyond the base OS. I know that hard drives are slow. I know that 4GB of RAM is not enough for the new MacOSs. Iâve worked as a professional engineer and with computers for over 40 years. Iâm not interested in âbeing rightâ, only in not being misunderstood. You can stop mansplaining any time.
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Yes, my main machine is a 2018 MBP i7 with 16GB and 1TB SSD. Apart from having to have had the keyboard replaced four times and the trackpad being a bit too sensitive, itâs perfect - an extension of my brain that rarely makes its presence felt.
Seriously. Is MaciOS a âthingâ or is it just a typo or is the new way to say âall apple devicesâ OSâ (MacOS iOS TVOS WatchOS)
I donât think theyâll change the name as theyâre adamant that theyâre not merging the OSes, which theyâve been doing for many years! But the new interface on BS, is clearly mobile first, to make iOS apps fit in more on the desktop (rather than make iOS apps, more Mac like, theyâve made the Mac more Phone/Pad like).
I imagine that theyâll continue to sell an iPad and a Mac, even though theses are identical internally, just a different form factor. After all itâs a great way to improve profit, if you can sell the same product (with a different skin) more than once.