Anyone Know when the Apple Silicon desktops are coming out?

[penguin1]

Title sais it all. 

 

My Grandmother wants to replace her 2013 21.5 imac, and she asked me what she should get. The HDD is starting to go out and I am just wondering when the new macs are coming out.

 

Thanks

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Apple knows.

I would just get a curreent gen intel imac. Or build her a pc.

[whm1974]

If you can you might be able to get the HDD replaced with an SSD.

[Fasauceome]

3 minutes ago, penguin1 said:

The HDD is starting to go out and I am just wondering when the new macs are coming out.

I would recommend a new drive instead of a whole new PC. What does your grandmother do? does she need cutting edge CPU performance?

[Coolmaster]

Nothing definite, but they said all Macs will be ARM based by 2022. You could get a Mac Mini as a desktop. For the short term you can get a SSD for the iMac that should make it much snappier, an easy way to do this is to plug an external SSD and boot off of that.

[WhitetailAni]

Or you could try and open it up and do a drive swap.

[BiotechBen]

Yeah, a system image over to an SSD would be a much better and much much less expensive option. If she is happy with how it is performing now, then "why change it if it ain't broke"

[whm1974]

14 minutes ago, Coolmaster said:

Nothing definite, but they said all Macs will be ARM based by 2022. You could get a Mac Mini as a desktop. For the short term you can get a SSD for the iMac that should make it much snappier, an easy way to do this is to plug an external SSD and boot off of that.

Macs allow this? I wish Windows did this but I discovered the hard way it doesn't. Linux does as long as you are using FOSS Drivers.

[Coolmaster]

6 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

Macs allow this? I wish Windows did this but I discovered the hard way it doesn't. Linux does as long as you are using FOSS Drivers.

Yeah I have a 2013 iMac that the drive was dying, so I used an external SSD which is way easier to set up.

[penguin1]

33 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

I would recommend a new drive instead of a whole new PC. What does your grandmother do? does she need cutting edge CPU performance?

Normal Grandma things, like email, facebook, and document viewing/editing. She complains about the boot time and it being slow as well as some apps being slow. My younger cousins do use it for some games like minecraft, CIV6, etc. I think she also just wants a new computer.

[Fasauceome]

Just now, penguin1 said:

Normal Grandma things, like email, facebook, and document viewing/editing. She complains about the boot time and it being slow as well as some apps being slow. My younger cousins do use it for some games like minecraft, CIV6, etc. I think she also just wants a new computer.

I wouldn't think the M1 silicon is too big a priority for something like that, the cheapest imac you can get your hands on as of now would serve equally well.

 

I HIGHLY recommend a model with an SSD though, not a hard drive. The age shows quite a lot more on a spinning disk.

[Coolmaster]

1 minute ago, penguin1 said:

Normal Grandma things, like email, facebook, and document viewing/editing. She complains about the boot time and it being slow as well as some apps being slow. My younger cousins do use it for some games like minecraft, CIV6, etc. I think she also just wants a new computer.

Getting a new SSD definitely made my iMac a lot snappier. If it doesn't already I'd upgrade it to at least 8GB too. And if has a quad core CPU it should be fine for that.

[saltycaramel]

First half of 2021 but I’m afraid the first iMac we’ll see will be overkill for her. MiniLED display, discrete GPU, FaceID, bells and whistles, it will not come cheap I think.

 

The already available M1 Mac Mini (plus a monitor) sounds like the right choice. 

 

 

Even for those grandma-things, old regular Intel Macs cannot compare...to the sheer speed of everything and low power silent operation (4W idle and 31W top, the whole Mac Mini at the plug)...I would not buy another Intel iMac, even at bargain price..

[kpluck]

If you think you want to take a shot at replacing the HD, preferably with an SSD, here is the iFixit page for that iMac. You probably want to double-check and make sure that is the right iMac.  Of course you could also go with an external SSD and not use the internal HD anymore.

 

Has she said anything about wanting a larger monitor? How is her eyesight? A Mac Mini with a monitor might be a better option.

 

-kp

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to Laptops and Pre-Built Systems

[Commodus]

On 11/23/2020 at 12:52 PM, penguin1 said:

Title sais it all. 

 

My Grandmother wants to replace her 2013 21.5 imac, and she asked me what she should get. The HDD is starting to go out and I am just wondering when the new macs are coming out.

 

Thanks

Nothing official. Maybe Q1 2021, but I wouldn't plan my buying schedule around unofficial timetables that could change even if they're accurate.

 

Like others suggested, if your grandmother needs a Mac desktop the easiest answer would be to get the latest Mac mini and a good-enough monitor (she might even get to reuse her keyboard and mouse from the iMac, if she likes). It'll be incredibly fast for everything she does, and going with a 'headless' Mac means she can easily swap out the computer.

 

I would ignore the calls to simply replace the storage. A 2013 iMac is right on the edge of supported systems, and your grandma might have to get a new computer anyway to run newer versions of macOS. The Mac mini ensures she's supported for several more years.

[whm1974]

@penguin1 How Wedded is your grandmother to MacOS?