Did My Old Mac Pro Die of a Broken Heart Before Its Replacement Arrived?

[jtbell]

TL;DR Summary

Farewell 2008 Mac Pro, hello 2019 iMac.

A few weeks ago I ordered a new 27" iMac with a 2TB SSD instead of the standard hybrid drive. Then the old Mac Pro died a few days before its replacement arrived. Broken heart, maybe?

Now I've jumped ahead several versions of MacOS to 10.15 a.k.a. Catalina, and have to get new versions of all my software. At least I have lots of free time to do it, between being retired and mostly stuck at home because of the pandemic.

The old Mac Pro's CPU (minus the internal HDDs which I've extracted for salvaging my files) will go to an e-waste collection point eventually. The monitor will go to a thrift store.

 

[phinds]

You sure that screen's big enough ?

 

[jedishrfu]

I think you got your moneys worth For home use, expect five years between upgrades. For business optimal upgrade is three years.

 

[Halc]

A few weeks ago I ordered a new 27" iMac with a 2TB SSD instead of the standard hybrid drive. Then the old Mac Pro died a few days before its replacement arrived. Broken heart, maybe?

My Lenovo laptop did something freaky about 18 months ago, rendering the screen almost unreadably dim and unable to drive the remote monitor. Ordered a new laptop. When it arrived, the old one 'cured' itself, and I'm still using it now. It remains the device docked and attached to the big screen and keyboard, and the new one got pressed into service as a travel and zoom device.

So instead of getting a broken heart, it buckled down and swore to be better from now on. Some spouses respond to loyalty, and others to competition.

 

[Janus]

If only my old computer would die. Then I could upgrade it to one that could handle the latest Blender release and the new Microsft flight sim being released next month.

 

[Vanadium 50]

If only my old computer would die.

I know a guy who knows a guy...

Farewell 2008 Mac Pro,

Is that the last of the PPCs or the first of the Intels?

 

[jedishrfu]

So instead of getting a broken heart, it buckled down and swore to be better from now on. Some spouses respond to loyalty, and others to competition.

There was a story of an experienced rose gardener who would place his spade near a sick plant and miraculously it got better.

 

[Janus]

I know a guy who knows a guy...

While I have been known to hit a computer before (I once used an old Mac that would hang up on start up from time to time, and the only way to get it going was to give it a good whack on the side), I've never considered putting a hit out on a computer.

 

[jtbell]

You sure that screen's big enough ?

No need for virtual reality goggles!

The old 23" Apple Cinema display was pretty good for its day, and I wasn't dissatisfied with it at the end, but the Retina display is definitely nice.

Is that the last of the PPCs or the first of the Intels?

I had to look that up, it's been so long. The first Intel-based Macs were in 2006. The iMac, MacBook, and Mac Mini came first, then the Mac Pro which replaced the PowerMac G5 (PPC) tower. My 2008 machine was the third version of that first-generation Mac Pro.

I had Parallels Desktop on it, running both Windows 7 and Ubuntu Linux. After I get settled in with my new MacOS stuff, I'll add some more memory to the iMac and install updated versions of the other stuff on it.

One reason I chose the 27" iMac is that (unlike the smaller models) you can easily upgrade the memory yourself. It has a hatch in the back that reveals the memory slots, whereas with the smaller iMacs you have to pry open the case and void your warranty. And Apple charges an arm and a leg to install more memory as a custom configuration.

I think you got your moneys worth For home use, expect five years between upgrades.

Before the Mac Pro, in fact I usually went 5-6 years between upgrades, going all the way back to my original Macintosh SE in 1987 or '88. No hard disk, two floppy disk drives, and a whopping 1 MB of memory!

 

[OCR]

I know a guy who knows a guy...

But. . . .

Does he own, you know, a studio. . . on 16th Avenue ?

.