So perhaps you are thinking of buying a new Mac or the one you ordered last week has just arrived.
Then, as is always the way, you hear something new and better is coming. And coming soon.
Have you just wasted your money? Is the Intel Mac going the way of the Dodo or Fidget Spinners. Have you just wasted 3K plus on something that will be dead in two years?
This could be the shortest article of all time by simply writing; No.
But I will expand.
Your Intel Mac (iMac, Mac Mini, Macbook) is as good a buy today as it was last month before we all knew about Apple switching their chips away from Intel. For starters, Apple will still be making Intel Macs for a long while yet and years after they have stopped producing them they will still be supported with software updates and repairs.
In fact, for the foreseeable future you might the only ones that can run Windows via BootCamp or VMWare.
Yes, the new Macs are coming out. Yes, they will likely look amazing and yes they will be (or promise to be) insanely fast. But they will also have, out of the box, limited native software support so titles won’t take full advantage of the new chips for sometime. Old software will still run (mostly) thanks to Rosetta 2 but they won’t run at optimum speed.
There will be some bumps and scraps along the way as software and hardware manufacturers fight to use this new architecture. Your favourite scanner will no longer work. That old Family Tree software will die and that card game that has been on the family Mac since… forever, will no longer run – maybe. These are the sacrifices that earlier adopters make so don’t worry… you need not be one of these poor sods because you can continue to live in the Intel world as a first class citizen for years to come.
Or, if you were thinking of buying a new Mac, should you wait?
Well that’s OK as well as long as you take into consideration the rant above.
If it is safe, secure and predictable you crave then go ahead and buy one of the current Macs right now or don’t be down about the one you just unpacked. Hell, even upgrade your old one… it still has at least another three years of software updates left in it. (provided it is a 2012 – 2014 model)
Rest assured, whatever you’ve done or are going to do, you’ve done the right thing.
3 comments
Sadly my 20+ year old iMac can’t be updated. It is a fab machine and l hate to join the environment vandals by putting more hardware in the tip. My son gave me a new iPad. Not a patch on older iMac or MacBook Pro 2013. Can’t afford anything else now. Need to keep zooming stranded families.
Cheer up. Who knows what the future will bring. Macs made in Australia? H
Thanks for this. I’m tossing up but will probably wait a while. The letter “p” on my keyboard is starting to stick so I’m getting issed off instead of what I should be doing!
Yes agree. You really have to know WHY you are upgrading to the latest these days else have a few (older) Mac’s that can do different (selections of dedicated & specialised) tasks. This is because, given that the world of software updates and the trouble we having finding true compatible Drivers for so many software brands (even the obvious well known) programs brands today… it is more becoming (a ‘catch 22’ type) nightmare, for many of us. The result means ongoing user-cost? There is little Backward Capability in the latest computer IT environments.
For me the only reason I am thinking of the new 3.8 Ghz iMac is because it has 16DRAM on the Random 5700 graphics. As a Davinci Resolve Studio user, this extra DRAM will help render and run graphics/FXs faster and, hopefully make video scrubbing (back & forth) in the Edit Timeline, more so fluid.
What I don’t like about buying the newest iMac is that you cant down-grade the Mac system to anything below the Catalina. This means ‘I expect’ that much of my (recent but) older software will not be working on this computer w/out some serious help tweeking. After many decades now, buying expensive software for my Mac’s and due to the stress surrounding constant system update issues, conflicts with third-party software Drivers not working, I have decided enough is enough.
This means, I wont be getting rid of my much older iMac nor 2015 Powerbook as I have working software across both these computers that I know will have installation issues with the new 2020 iMac computers. However, I am thinking seriously of buying a new iMac computer for it’s said capacity in rendering graphics with programs like Davinci Resolve Studio. As you may guess, it will be used for this purpose alone.