All of my Macs are technically part of the Mac Museum, but only the Macs that physically reside in it truly meet the criteria (i.e. are relatively old and no longer in active use). Thus it was an exciting/sad day a couple of weeks ago when Sally’s 24″ iMac moved down to the basement to join the museum. Her iMac was my iMac that I bought my senior year of college in 2006. At the time it was the largest-screened iMac ever with a whopping 24″ LCD and 1900 x 1200 pixels of resolution (the same as Apple’s $2,000 23″ Cinema Display), a speedy 64-bit Intel Core 2 Duo processor, a relatively high-end NVIDIA GeForce 7600GT GPU with 256 MB RAM, a FireWire 800 port, and the ability to support the now-commonplace but then-superfast 802.11n wireless standard.
I bought it as an alternative for my 12″ PowerBook G4, then 2.5 years old, so that I could drop my crappy Dell PC and use it for both a powerful desktop Mac and a decent Windows gaming PC. It was my first Intel Mac as well and I was excited to find out just how much faster it was than my G4. In order to get the highest-end graphics card, I had to buy the 24″ model (I know, I had to, you say). Honestly, I would have been just fine with the 20″ model but Apple made me. Oh the terrors of a closed system!
Anyway, it worked out to be a great computer. It was the first Mac for which I took unboxing photos (which I have lying around somewhere and will post some day) and provided me with four years of great service. It started with some version of Mac OS 10.4 Tiger and moved to 10.5 Leopard and 10.6 Snow Leopard before getting left in the dust by 10.7 Lion. The main reasons that I replaced it were that I needed, once again, better gaming performance, as well as a more solid machine for photography. Technology had made some major strides since 2006 and I decided to take advantage of them with the 27″ iMac that I purchased in 2010. In addition to having a gorgeous 27″ screen (with almost the same resolution as Apple’s 20″ display), it also had a solid graphics card, a fast quad-core hyperthreaded Intel Core i7, and support for up to 32 GB RAM. It also has a space for a dedicated SSD and can be used as a display, which made it a fantastic choice for future upgrades.
When I got my 27″ iMac, the 24″ went to Sally to be the larger companion to her 13″ MacBook, which was running a first generation Intel Core Duo processor. She used it for a couple of years because it was faster and bigger than her laptop but its usage has dwindled ever since she got her shiny new 13″ MacBook Pro last year. She began getting frustrated with its performance so we decided to replace it with an LCD monitor to plug into her MacBook instead. We ended up scoring an 24″ Acer LED <cough, hack=””> from Staples for $130. It’s probably not as great as my iMac display, but it looks quite nice and will fit her needs well. It’s also incredibly thin and gives her more space on her desktop, which we all know she needs so she can keep filling it with crap. Love you, honey.
So welcome to the museum 24″ iMac. There are some G3 and G4 iMacs to keep you company.
Relatively Ambitious 