New Toy

My main computer was a 15" MacBook Pro I bought in March 2008. At five years old it's getting a little long in the tooth. Before that I had a PowerBook that I got shortly after retiring so that only lasted 3 years. I was very happy with a laptop as a single machine. I could travel with it, I could use it at a desk or on the couch, and I didn't need to sync files with another machine. One thing I didn't like was trying to use it while referencing a book. When trying to use it to learn to code on a mac, I kept the laptop connected to a 23" monitor, mouse and external keyboard in a tray under the desk. A book fit nicely on the desk just above the keyboard. And I loved all the screen real estate.

My MacBook Pro has stayed connected to the monitor for a couple of years. I really liked the screen real estate. And now that I have an iPad, I have something to use on the couch or to bring while traveling and sync'ing isn't a problem. The iPad can't do everything the mac can do, but I don't need it to.

So, time for a new machine, and I've been debating what to get for a long time. I decided on a desktop machine (and yes it was only going to be a mac). I don't need the portability and I liked a big monitor (mine was getting a little wonky and the laptop couldn't drive the monitor unless it was plugged in). I also wanted a better graphic card to play the occasional game (I had Diablo III in mind, but tried StarCraft II when it came out and I could only run it on the lowest graphics settings). So a Mac Mini was a little under powered for games and a Mac Pro is both more than I need and at this point a little under powered (new models are expected soon). So that leaves an iMac.

New models were announced in November and were available in January. They're nice. I still had doubts about getting an all-in-one machine. I expect the computer to last 3-5 years but I think a monitor should last longer than that. Why replace the monitor with the computer? But then, that's what you do with a laptop (though there's a big difference between a 15" laptop screen and a 27" monitor). I'd really wish Apple would come out with a desktop machine with about the same guts as an iMac but with an external display. That hasn't been in the cards but there are rumors now that the Mac Pro is getting a remodel.

The iMac has a couple of knocks against it. It's really thin but that kind of has no point and just removes the internal optical drive that would otherwise fit. I don't use mine much, but I do occasionally to rip a CD or install something (like StarCraft II). Also they are notoriously difficult to open and repair. To replace a hard drive you need to have a professional do it. You need a pro to upgrade memory in the 21" model but in the 27" model there's a user accessible panel. But I realized, that's about the same for the laptops. I've gotten all too good at replacing a hard disk in my TiVo but I wouldn't attempt it on a mac laptop.

So after much debate yesterday I bought a 27" iMac. I roughly maxed it out getting a model available in the local Apple Store. 3.4GHz quad-core i7, 8GB RAM, 1TB Fusion Drive, 2GB GTX 680MX, Trackpad, and Wireless Keyboard. The fusion drive is a nice compromise between the speeds of an SSD and the capacity of HDD. Apple is really expensive for RAM, so 8GB is what I wanted. It's twice what I had in the laptop and I can buy 16GB at Crucial for $125. I had a wired keyboard and magic mouse so I opted for the trackpad and wireless keyboard. The keyboard I figured I might use with the iPad. I already love the trackpad and OS X has incorporated useful gestures into many apps.

I also got a thunderbolt to firewire adaptor. Apple has a migration assistant that copies over all the data from an old machine to a new one. Thunderbolt is the new fast connector and to move 200GB I wanted as fast as I could get. But the best the 5 year old laptop could do was a FireWire 800 port. I use that to backup the machine to an external drive. Researching online I could migrate with Gigabit Ethernet but that process was a little more involved. I couldn't just connect the two machines directly and a router wasn't nearby. So the adaptor looked fine though there were some reports that it was slow with an unpowered drive. So I migrated from the mac while it was plugged in. Holding down the T button on the laptop while booting puts it in Target mode so the iMac will see the drive on the laptop as just a drive.

I got it home and opened it up. It's a big box but not that heavy. It's a little awkward to unpack but overall pretty easy. There's no documentation in the box. The trackpad, keyboard, and a thunderbolt to firewire adaptor all came with (pointless) documentation, the iMac, none. I connected the laptop and put it in Target Disk mode. I plugged in the keyboard and booted the iMac. It came on with a background and one window that switched between drawings of a trackpad and a mouse each with an arrow pointing to their power buttons. I pushed the button on the trackpad and saw it's green light come on and occasionally blink. The iMac however didn't change. I knew it was trying to pair the bluetooth connection but it wasn't happening. I turned the trackpad on and off several times but no luck. I tried the same with my magic mouse but again no luck. I thought maybe the bluetooth in the iMac was defective. I'm not sure why it occurred to me but I held down the button on the trackpad and then it eventually connected. The mac needs a better diagram on this screen or maybe some words (horrors, they would need to be translated) that explain hold down the freaking button.

But after that everything went well. It connected to the wifi and asked for permission to enable location services and figured out timezone. It got to the Setup Assistant and I knew to select to read from a drive rather than a mac, it found the laptop drive and started the migration. The progress bar started at about 6 hours but that came down quickly to 3. It made good progress and then it's estimates jumped as high as 20 hours and as low as 2. It settled down and made steady progress and finished in about two hours. I have to say the migration was perfect. Everything came up and it was exactly like my old machine. All the passwords were remembered, the printer was found and configured, etc. It just freaking worked.

The new machine is really fast. Everything just happens immediately. Spotlight indexed in just about 15 minutes. I didn't' realize it was so slow on my laptop, now it's instantaneous. The slowest thing seems to be Numbers when accessing the large spreadsheet of movies I've seen which is stored in iCloud and has a thousand row table tons of graphs. Other spreadsheets are zippy. All the screen real estate feels luxurious. It's silent, no fan and the speakers are good (though I have some cheap Cambridge Soundworks speakers connected, they have more bass).

I ordered this drive for backups. I had had issues with Time Machine and the laptop (wirelessly to a Time Capsule), with incremental backups taking over an hour which meant they were always running. The wireless configuration is convenient for a laptop that moves around the house but they aren't as reliable as a wired connection. With a desktop machine I'll just connect a drive. I had wanted to try Thunderbolt (I'm using my USB slots for keyboard, iPad and iPhone and have nothing else to do with these two fast connections) and had settled on this drive (it allowed daisy chaining and was quiet) but as a friend pointed out it's really expensive. USB 3.0 is in practice just as fast, particularly for backups. If Time Machine doesn't work out, I'll go back to using Carbon Copy Cloner.

So far, I'm really happy.