iMac suddenly powered off, then blew out a cloud of dust on power-up; UPDATE: now it bit the dust

Well, I still haven't done anything yet, and now it appears that Apple is rumored to announce new Macs on October 27, so I'm thinking of waiting another few days to see what they have on deck, though presumably any new model will cost even more, but then perhaps the price of the current models will go down.

http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/mac/new-imac-2016-release-date-rumours-price-specs-new-features-how-to-watch-3511338/

Hmm, at the recommendation of an Apple support person I spoke with today, I decided to look into "refurbished" machines, which he said are Apple certified, carry the same warranty as a new machine, and are visually indistinguishable from a new one.

OWC has this one, with upgraded RAM (16 GB total) and the old 1 TB Fusion drive that still has the 128 GB of flash storage (instead of the new ones that have only 24 GB flash) for $1565 (no tax and free shipping). Two differences between this and a new machine with the same processor are an older video card (AMD Radeon R9 M290X vs. AMD Radeon R9 M380) and the Magic Mouse vs. the Magic Mouse 2, the latter of which has the built-in rechargeable lithium battery. I don't know that I'd observe a difference in the video card, and could call to see if they would upgrade the mouse. It seems like a pretty good deal, though I'm thinking I should still wait for the Apple announcement this week before deciding.

Anyone have any experience with buying refurbished Apple products?

I bought a refurbished Mac, and it served me well, and I got my money's worth, but since they are usually older, they go obsolete correspondingly sooner. You save money initially, but you don't save (or lose) in the long run.

Good point, Tom. I'm hanging on to see if Apple does actually announce new Macs this week, and then I'll have to bite the bullet and make a decision already.

I'd say waiting is worthwhile. They won't raise prices. They'll just offer better computers for the same old price.

I bought a refurbished Mac laptop a few months ago. I found that comparing apples to apples, a refurbished machine was less expensive through the Mac refurbished store than through OWC, plus OWC had a lot of very old equipment. I spent WEEKS agonizing over this decision, including creating an elaborate spreadsheet so I could rank by memory, disk space, etc. I probably spent $500 worth of time to save $100 on the laptop!

kthnry, I have that same tendency. I do it every year with the stupid open enrollment for health insurance, which, sadly, is here again. I'm going to try to stop torturing myself over this decision as soon as I see whether any new iMacs are announced on Thursday, though part of me wonders how long I can hold out without a computer as long as I have my work laptop to fill in the gap.

I will second (or third or fourth...?) the refurb recommendation. The last two laptops I purchased were Apple certified MacBook Airs --an 11" for myself and, a couple years later a 13" for my wife-- and I could not be happier with them. As I've said previously in other threads, I don't have any particular need for the shiniest, newest, best video card or processor chips, so recent refurbs serve me just fine. Also, rather than spending less money on the refurnbs, in both cases I bought refurbs that cost essentially the same as the entry-level new models, but with beefier RAM and bigger hard drives.

Of course I understand the impetus for buying new, but I unless my needs change drastically for some unforeseen reason, I will probably never do so again.

This probably got lost in the shuffle because it's a little off-topic for the thread, but for what it's worth:

You need to locate your iTunes music library. Depending on what version of iTunes you're running, it might be labeled iTunes, iTunes Media, Music, or something similar. It will be a folder with tons of other folders in it, each labeled with a different artist's name. (And inside those folders will be the song files for each artist.)

In most cases, you can just simply drag and drop that entire Music folder to another drive. Then when you get your new computer, you can import it into iTunes on the new computer.

There are other methods, not least of which is to simply let Apple's Migration Assistant do all the work for you. But this method has the advantage of creating a backup copy of your iTunes library on the intermediary drive as part of the process.

Gincod said:

I have a 2008 Macbook Pro that I know is on its last leg. How can I transfer my thousands of itunes songs onto another device so I do not loose them? Do I need another Apple device or can it be transferred onto s Surface tablet?

@BrickPig, how long have those Macbook Airs lasted so far?

Tom_Reingold said:

@BrickPig, how long have those Macbook Airs lasted so far?

Both are mid-2011 models. I bought the 11" in, probably, 2nd quarter 2012 and the 13" in November 2015. Both are currently running Sierra with absolutely zero issues. Both have 256GB SSD. Every I time upgrade the OS I expect to see some sluggishness, but so far I don't notice any at all. I'm kind of amazed.

EDIT: Sorry, the 11" has a 128GB SSD, not 256.

Five years, that is impressive. The Apple computers prove to be a good value, not really luxury-priced when you look at what you get from them.

Perhaps not surprisingly, I'm still procrastinating about what to buy, but B&H now has discounted pricing on new machines so I'd like to just bite the bullet and be done with this. I'm debating between these two options:

• 27" iMac with 3.2GHz i5, AMD Radeon R9 M380, and 512 GB SSD for $2199
• 27" iMac with 3.3GHz i5, AMD Radeon R9 M395, and 2TB/128GB flash Fusion drive for $2049 (which would cost $2449 if I upgraded to the 512GB SSD)

Is having an all-SSD drive (in the first option) worth the extra $150 even if it means a slightly slower processor and graphics card and less overall storage? My current dead drive is 320GB and it was probably only 2/3 full, so I don't really need 2TB, but wanted at least the 128GB of flash storage if I was going to go with the second choice.

Which would you choose?

Thanks for any final input on this.

Yes, go with the faster storage over the faster processor. Apple's fast storage is amazing, and I push it to the limit every day.

I second what Tom says.

EDIT: To clarify, I'm seconding the SSD itself. Unlike Tom, I rarely push my computers to the limit. Even so, I find the difference between the SSD and the regular mechanical HD is very noticeable and well worth the investment.

Thanks, Tom and BP. I placed the order for the lesser processor/graphics in favor of the internal SSD. I can't tell you how I sweated the details on this, and I appreciate your input in helping me decide. I hope that I'll be more than satisfied with this machine, and that it lasts me another 8 years or more.

The next hurdle is going to be recovering from Time machine - hopefully it goes without a hitch.

You're welcome. Glad to help.

They used to make these machines very well, and in my experience, they do even better than before. They build a lot of reliability and durability in, unlike a lot of other makers. I used to see a lot of their equipment fail soon after the warranty expired. Not so much any more.

Time Machine is another example of great engineering. I'm nervous about it, because, of course, it's my data, but also because I can't see much of what's going on under the hood with Time Machine. Compounding that is the fact that restores take a long time. I do know about backup and restore software, and it is expected that restores are slow, but it's also nerve-wracking. But I expect it will go very well for you. It works very well.

So, I have my new machine set up, and so far, it's been dandy.

But I still have my old machine sitting around like a boat anchor. Per Apple Support's instructions, I tried booting it from the original installation disc so that I could run the disk utility and erase the internal hard drive, but when I tried doing that, or even just "repairing" the disk, I got the message "the disk Macintosh HD could not be unmounted", even though I hadn't booted from it. I then tried booting from a bootable backup drive instead, and when I went into the disk utility, it didn't even see the internal drive, so there was nothing I could do.

I called Apple Support again, and the guy recommended that I take it to Ricciardi Business Systems in Chatham. Has anyone used them and found them to be good? Is there anyone else I could call to get help with wiping out the old drive and selling/recycling the old machine? The thing that kills me is that when you boot from the bootable backup drive, the machine works perfectly fine, which means that if someone had the wherewithal to change out the bad hard drive, this machine could keep going for some time unless something else failed.

I called Ricciardi, and they would charge $95 just to remove the old drive, saying I could smash it with a hammer to destroy it. Pass.

Looks like I'll just send it to Sims Recycling Solutions, where they claim to responsibly destroy the hard drive and shred the machine for recycling. Seems a waste, but it's too much cost or work to do anything else. According to some of the Mac sales websites, the machine is worth only $24, and the memory alone maybe $8. It just doesn't seem worth the trouble.

If you trust Sims to wipe the hard drive, then have them do it.

Well, I've shipped it out, so hopefully they're as trustworthy as they claim to be. I have to think that someone would figure out if there was systematic data thieving going on from their operation.

Good point.

I own Macs and PCs and I don't see the value of paying 3x as much for a Mac

Thanks, jeff, though for this round at least, that ship has sailed. Believe me, I would love to have spent about 1/3rd of what I did on a computer, but it was going to be too difficult to make the switch given that my hard drive had failed and I needed to restore from a Time Machine backup. I'm sure there would have been some way to do it, but this was the easiest route.

I will say that this new screen is pretty amazing, and the SSD is zippy and quiet.

So zippy, in fact, it posted the same thing twice!

jeffl said:
I own Macs and PCs and I don't see the value of paying 3x as much for a Mac

jasper said:
Thanks, jeff, though for this round at least, that ship has sailed.

That's also purely a matter personal choice. People have preferences. I spend between 2/3 and 3/4 of my computing time any given week using a PC, yet I still find the premium I pay for my Macs (and other Apple products) to be money well spent. Doesn't mean JeffL is wrong, doesn't mean I'm right. Just means we're different.

I totally get why folks love them. They just don't do it for me. That being said, I own 4 of them!

BrickPig said:

jeffl said:
I own Macs and PCs and I don't see the value of paying 3x as much for a Mac

jasper said:
Thanks, jeff, though for this round at least, that ship has sailed.

That's also purely a matter personal choice. People have preferences. I spend between 2/3 and 3/4 of my computing time any given week using a PC, yet I still find the premium I pay for my Macs (and other Apple products) to be money well spent. Doesn't mean JeffL is wrong, doesn't mean I'm right. Just means we're different.

It's not 3 times as much.

Tom_Reingold said:

It's not 3 times as much.

True