In 2017, my 2006 iMac’s hard disk started making clanky noises. Bad sign, I thought. And it was.
My old 2006 iMac was a “second car computer”. It was useful for basic work that needed a larger screen than my 2012 MacBook Pro. Soon after the iMac’s clankiness began, we started a series of house moves. The iMac went into a storage box. Five house moves, four years, three years in storage, two countries and a global pandemic later, I can finally see my iMac again, in all its chunky glory. And I’ve missed it. But it was obviously still in trouble and I didn’t feel like paying to have someone install an SSD in it. And I love it too much to mess it up myself. So, for fun, I attached an old external hard disk to the iMac, dug an original Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard DVD from another storage box (DVDs are so useful) and installed it on the external hard disk to see if I could boot it that way and save myself the cost of installing an SSD in a fifteen year old computer. It worked and the speed is very acceptable - maybe because it's running on FireWire 400 instead of USB 2.0? Apple still do software updates for Snow Leopard online, so three reboots later, I was fully up to date, so far as 10.6.8 was concerned.
The external drive installation worked so well that I ordered a copy of Lion from Apple a few days later (Apple made Lion a free download a few weeks later - oh well). That rolled on smoothly in about 35 minutes. It doesn't feel quite as sharp as Snow Leopard but it works and it’s a year or two closer to the current version. If I upgraded the ram from 2.5GB to 4GB, things would probably improve (although only 3.3GB of the 4GB would be accessible, but that's another story involving general 32-bittiness). Lion needs 2GB ram, minimum, though so more would definitely be good.
And thus, three years later, I finally have an iMac again.
Rebuilding my 2006 iMac happened while the world was still going berserk about the 2021 M1 iMacs. I must admit, they're very nice looking. But if I got a new iMac, I'd have to get rid of the old iMac. My home office isn't big enough for two iMacs and a working from home pc desk. It's one iMac or the other. And the iMac lives on the floor most of the time anyway.
On one hand, the new iMacs are gorgeous.
But on the other hand, I thought, really, what would I do with the new one that I don't do with the old one? I don't do 4K video editing or music production or other data intensive stuff that the top tech influencers on YouTube do. Most of my computing is done in generic consumer apps: writing, family photos, listening to music (often on CDs), looking at YouTube or Netflix, email. “Faster” doesn’t help thinking or typing or listening to music or watching a DVD. I do run Linux VMs as a hobby but I don’t need to do that on the iMac.
Which led me to thinking...
In Notes, I have a note entitled Rules of Life. One of them is "Use what you have". The idea is not to buy something if you already have something that can be repurposed. I've often ignored this rule, often to my regret, but let's apply it. What would I use the new iMac for that I couldn't do on the old iMac?
Let's make a list. I love lists.
Writing. iMac 2006 has TextEdit, Bean, iWork 09 and I've an old MS Office Mac on DVD somewhere if I really want that.
Spreadsheet? I have Numbers and... that DVD of MS Office somewhere.
Photos. I could use iMac 2006's iPhoto so long as I save all my photos in jpeg format (I tend to use raw a lot).
Video. I don't create videos.
The Web, YouTube, news. There's a browser called Firefox Legacy for Lion that's based on an older Firefox. It's still maintained though. And having a relatively recent browser brings Google Drive and things like SimpleNote into play, adding to other writing tools mentioned above. In reality, I wouldn’t go online for long with a ten year old operating system, though. It’s there for emergencies. Plus, I have other computers. I don’t need the iMac to go online.
Social media. Apart from Youtube and commenting on news sites occasionally, I don't do any social media. And I have the MacBook for it.
Email. I do most of my email on my iPad so a new iMac wouldn't make much of a difference.
Facetime, Zoom, Skype... I can mostly do it on my iPad.
Netflix. I've a third generation AppleTV, so I mostly do Netflix on an iPad in bed or on a tv downstairs.
Printing. My printer is almost as old as the iMac. A new printer would be an issue, probably.
Scanning. See printer above.
DVDs. I have some.The iMac 2021 can't do DVDs unless I buy a Superdrive. iMac 2006s can do DVDs natively. And I've a set of Harman Kardon SoundSticks that add to the sound quality if I really want it.
Backups. TimeMachine!! On Lion! Yes, really. I’m backing up to a second FireWire 400 disk. Or I just use a memory stick.
Am I missing anything? Don't think so. If the iMac dies (graphics card malfunction, maybe?), I would probably replace it with a new one or a Mac mini. Then again, maybe not. A pre-2012 24" or 27" would be fun... Just connect those external disks and I’m off. Or a used Mac mini, as I have a 24” screen for my work pc.
Downsides to a 2006 iMac? Sure.
Software. Finding software can be a problem. The Mac App Store arrived on Snow Leopard 10.6.something. But you won't find anything there for Snow Leopard or Lion now. If you kept a bunch of old DVDs, this is your moment. I have Snow tLeopard, iLife, iWork and MS Office all on DVD, so that’s pretty much everything a non-professional user would probably want.
Security. These machines are old. Vulnerabilities are present. You can reduce risk by doing the following. Don’t stay online any longer than necessary. Don’t do anything requiring authentication (banking, passwords). Avoid dodgy websites - in fact, stick with very well-travelled websites. Switch on the Mac's firewall and use the best browser you can find. Do some research before choosing a browser for your elderly Mac. Switch off Bluetooth as well, if it’s present. The less you network, the safer you are. Basically - stay offline.
Cloud storage. Forget about using OneDrive or Dropbox or probably other services. Their software almost definitely requires a newer operating system than your pre-10.8 example. That’s a real problem when using Office365. But having said that, you can access Google Docs (and maybe Office365) via Firefox Legacy if you have to. Maybe iCloud as well.
If you stay offline, a 2006 iMac can do 80% of what the 2021 iMac can do. And I already own a working one.
"Rule #1. Use what you have."
Postscript
Having said all that above about how everything was blooming in my garden of ancient Macs, I switched on my iMac and found that the backup disk had died. No problem. It was an ancient 80GB Fire wire disk. I'm not really using the iMac for anything serious.
Two weeks later, it wouldn't boot off the main external drive, which is a much newer 500GB Firewire and USB drive. I booted off the DVD (see, they are useful) and the disk looked okay. But it still would not boot. I reinstalled Leopard and Snow Leopard and for various reasons, I've left it on Snow Leopard for the moment.
What caused this? I don't know. What I do know is that the first rule of computing is that All Hard Disks Die. And at inconvenient moments. Like when you're going to take photos for a blog entry.
So if you're not backed up, back up now.
