OK, New M3 iMac Ordered

[wecoguy]

Gave in, pulled the trigger on a new (Silver) 24-inch iMac…
(Apple M3 chip with 8‑core CPU with 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores, 10‑core GPU, and 16‑core Neural Engine)

Bumped it to 16 Gb integrated RAM, and 1 Tb storage, Extended Keyboard, and AppleCare+ (3 Year),

Our elder Late 2015 27" (Monterey) is a tad slow, maybe could be perked up, but there are so many improvements, it;s time… Will see if its worth anything on the secondary market after everything is transferred… (SellYourMac offered $103, so hardly worth messing with it}

It was time…

[g0177325]

My AAPL stock thanks you for your service. Have you ever had to use AppleCare on any of your past purchases? Aren’t Macs already the most reliable of all PCs, or has their hardware quality lessened over the years?

[wecoguy]

@g0177325

Have you ever had to use AppleCare on any of your past purchases? Aren’t Macs already the most reliable of all PCs, or has their hardware quality lessened over the years?

In the past decades, I have generally added AppleCare to extend the warranty, generally a ‘just in case’ action, but mostly so if I do have a question, I can hop on the phone, chase it down… And with the iMacs in particular, but now with their even more complexity, I’d like to know I still have that option, or in this case, if something happened to me, that my DW would also have the ability to deal with any issues.

Past issues, one was a crazy ‘wake from sleep’ problem on an earlier iMac, chased it pretty deep, to even talking, connecting with an Apple engineer, monitoring software, and eventually it was fixed by OS updates… Another issue was a DOA iMac, immediately replaced, later it’s HD was replaced in a recall… Another was a bad GPU card long after warranty… The current late 2015 iMac hasn’t had any issue AFAIK, just aging out, and slowness because of its fusion HD…

If I wanted to keep it, an SSD would likely perk it up, but there are many other updates in the new M3, and DW’s Birthday, so here it comes!!

I used to buy AppleCare at a discount from B&H, but just went with Apple this time… One less thing to fiddle with…

On my other Macs, MacBooks, I’m not seeing any problems, just age, blocked from newest OS updates, but their usage has dropped to nearly zero… Their value, like the 27" iMac has also dropped to pretty low amounts, kept them maybe as a memory of days past, GD gave me her MacBook Pro the took her through college, I cleaned off all the stickers, data, it needs a battery, maybe an SSD, but why, too it;s on the shelf in case anyone needs it… I had replaced its HD ages ago… My old MacPro is acting as a support shelf with a chunk of plexiglass on top at the end of my desk, haven’t booted it since I replaced it with the M2 Mini, the OWC 4 HD case sets on it as the backup TM & clones for the mini…

The garage hold other older Apple bits an Apple //e, old white iBooks, HDs, stuff… What to do with it all is yet another question… Now the 27" will have to go somewhere, SellYourMac will take it for all of $103… Might be worth it to save the storage space here! No rush…

No, I don’t see hardware quality lessening, improving if anything… I admin our old MUG group on FB, very few problems, the need for User Groups has pretty much faded away…

weco

[wecoguy]

The iMac has Shipped, from Shanghai, because of the custom order, I guess, had to be built… Due for delivery on the 24th…
Migration assistant will deal with the move wirelessly, only hitch might be Office 365…

Updated Sunday, “Arrived at DHL Sort Facility CINCINNATI HUB - USA”… Must head out West next, soon. hopefully…

Updated Wednesday that it had cleared Customs in Sincinatti, went on to Los Angeles DHL hub, and today has moved on to San Francisco hub, so delivery tomorrow is in the bag…
(Maybe not, (Friday) the only movement today was to Delivery Facility, but no further updates since)

[As I typed the above, a message came that the shipment is scheduled for delivery… Somewhere the truck is near?]

{DHL blew it, missed the Friday Delivery, no text, no email, nada…}

Saturday’s update, on my Apple Order page it says that I requested a later Tuesday delivery… No notes from DHL, just the note on the Apple page… Called Apple support, she saw it had changed, apologized, felt it was DHL’s overload problem, apologized again, offered me any Apple accessory for my trouble… All I could think of was a USBc to USB adapter, no idea what else I might need yet, so she sent in the freebie… Tuesday it is… Hard to imagine they (DHL) are that backed up in the SF Bay Area… they deliver 7 days a week… Generally Orders come through earlier than promised…

11/27 - Monday Update: A note from DHL: " Shipment is out with courier for delivery" So somehow they managed to sort it out, sooner than tomorrow… I’ve ordered a Hub, won’t be here until tomorrow, but I’ll at least be able to get started…

Delivered, no signature needed, Driver said as long as he saw me, it was good to go… DHL note said 1-4 PM, it was here at 1:03…

Packing of the iMac was nearly as heavy as the iMac itself, flip this, that, then that, and plug it in! Saw the mouse, keyboard immediately, had to dig int the old iMac to find the Migration Assistant, now it is doing its thing… I’ll have to wait on the adapter & dock until tomorrow or Wednesday but a bit to do without them…

11/27 - Success! Migrated, Updated to Sonoma, Activated (Office 365), and even found the Ethernet port on the power block, sees the Printer, all set, except for the Hub, adapters to connect the backup HD & TM, Memory stick, etc… But Word, Excel, Outlook pop right up as they should have on the old iMac… Powered it down, will move it into my office for playtime, see if the fusion HD is salvageable…An SSD would perk it up, but…

Still haven’t found the “Accessory Kit” listed, or the customary stickers… That box was a work of art…

[wecoguy]

New iMac seems to be happy, then SuperDuper tried to run a backup, couldn’t find the new HD, but also insisted on updating to the latest version, then wanted $37 or so! Hmmm, I don’t use it on my own, but use Carbon Copy Cloner, aka CCC…

Looked into buying another copy, but in the FAQ’a spotted this, so I’m good for the household…

https://bombich.com/kb/ccc6/how-do-i-use-one-license-ccc-on-multiple-macs-in-my-household

More better! Tomorrow…

Done, simply downloaded, then activated/registered via an email to my DW, one click, then another to allow full disk access… Done, Set it to clone weekly to the spinner backup drive, it’s partitioned, so TM uses half, CCC the other,… Whew…

Still awaiting another adapter to complete the various USB connections… Ran Disk Utility on the old iMac, no troubles found… Still slow…

[wecoguy]

Had a bit of fun, wanted to be sure I had a reliable backup & Time Machine volume se up.

Old 2015 iMac had a WD MyBook, 3 tb USB drive, partitioned, 2 & 1 Tb for this, but running Disk Utility, it had unrepairable errors, could not unmount the volume, so I was faced with looking for a replacement. In the meantime I formatted, used a 1 Tb USB drive for at least a clone…

Taking the 3Tb to my Mac Mini, I couldn’t get it to format as it insisted the TM partition was in use. In the end, by changing the partition sizes it finally gave up and let me reformat the drive, then I could partition it in two 1.5 Tb drives, all tests pass, both are APFS now, and CCC is happily doing scheduled backups on the new iMac, so far once a week, and TM is also happy again… I also have vital work saved to a Tb thumb drive, so DW is settling in nicely…

Surprised me how stubborn it was to prevent me from formatting the MyBook, no real hard command tool to override the ‘in use’ info…

The old iMac is still setting here in my office, not sure what to do with it… Hesitate to wipe it yet… Family has all moved on to later models…

[wecoguy]

One glitch came along I had trouble dealing with, my wife couldn’t text to friends with android phones, from either her iPhone 11 or the new iMac. I looked at settings on my own iPhone, didn’t see a difference, fiddled a bit, seemed to go away, but again this morning she was getting message failures…

Found this link, and amongst it was a note about Call Forwarding… Hmmm, looked at mine and it listed several macs, including my new mac Mini… Don’t remember adding it, but it was toggled On… When she came home,I looked at her Settings-Messages-Call Forwarding, and the old iMac was On, but the new iMac was not! Toggled it, and I think we have it fixed… Hidden gems… Not sure why it wasn’t on, but it was a new device…

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254535469?sortBy=best

[ImAGolfer]

@wecoguy

Not sure why it wasn’t on, but it was a new device…

Bet you $5 you recently went through an IOS update. Every time we get one you can be assured Apple will rearrange things and turn things on and off. It’s kind’a like the programmer user his phone to do all the changes and you get stuck with his settings instead of your own. Just a thought but what do I know? I’m just a dumb kid from Galveston.

[wecoguy]

Well, yes, both of us, actually, but only my wife replaced her iMac with a new one, so the Message Forwarding missed the change is all that happened… If it mattered, the old one was named “iMac (2)”, the new one “iMac”, but beneath there is likely a more specific device ID… No matter, all worked in the end, I don’t remember having the same problem when I updated to my Mac Mini, so there may have been either OS or iOS change in between then and now…

It did catch me off guard, I’d looked at her other settings, compared to mine, but hadn’t dug quite as deep… Keeps us on our toes! Thought of going to the local Verizon store, talk to their techs, but since it was also on her iMac, I began looking elsewhere… Google, in the end found the Apple discussion thread… Tah Dah!