My 2008 iMac is back in my possession after ten years of living at my sister-in-law’s house. I gave it to her in 2016 to use as a family computer where it lived in the living room and used for light web browsing. But for most of the last five years, it’s been in the basement. I was over at their house the other day and I spotted it. I asked if they were still using it (they very obviously were not, but it’s polite to ask anyway) and now I have it back.
Right now it doesn’t boot at all. That’s kind of a good place to be for me. I can tear into it in a way that I’d be too scared to otherwise. As my dad says, “It’s no love lost” if something goes wrong. I’ve already yanked off the glass front panel, which I’ve known is the way to get into these iMacs, but always seemed risky and dangerous.
If I can get this iMac working again, and that’s a big if, I’ll have to figure out what it’s still good for. My top pick is a computer for my kid. That’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while and, while I’m considering using a Surface Pro that I have sitting around, I think a desktop computer is a healthy option for a child. I’d like a computer with a fixed location rather than something that can be carried around the house, at least while early habits around computers are still forming.
Another option is to turn it into a TV or entertainment center. Half the reason I got the iMac instead of an upgraded Mac mini (what I had at the time) or a MacBook (what everybody else had) is that the screen and built-in speakers made it great for watching movies and listening to music. Also Macs at the time had an infrared remote (which I’ve lost) that controlled Front Row, a 10-foot user interface in Mac OS X for viewing on the couch (or, God help, futon). It was a perfect machine when I had a big MP3 library and Netflix’s 3-disc-at-a-time plan. I could re-create some of that by installing Kodi/LibreELEC.
It’s too underpowered to be competitive as a generic Linux/Debian environment for me. There’s no reason I’d ever choose it over another device for that purpose. But maybe I could use it as a terminal-only writer deck. Foregoing any graphic user interface is the best way to breathe life into old hardware. Most of the RAM and CPU usage comes from just displaying things on screen. Without a graphical interface, entire categories of resource-hungry applications just aren’t viable like web browsing or watching videos. And multi-tasking becomes a less intuitive, if not completely impractical, thing to do. Going terminal-only is always an option, though it’s a change that comes with very steep trade-offs. I don’t look forward to explaining to my spouse that this bulky computer taking up precious space can’t do any of the things that we understand a computer to do.
Anyway, I’ll need to get this thing cleaned up and diagnose the boot issue before I can do anything. If nothing else, it’s interesting to think about uses for older Intel-based Apple computers.
My 2008 iMac is back in my possession after ten years of living at my sister-in-law’s house. I gave it to her in 2016 to use as a family computer where it lived in the living room and used for light web browsing. But for most of the last five years, it’s been in the basement. I was over at their house the other day and I spotted it. I asked if they were still using it (they very obviously were not, but it’s polite to ask anyway) and now I have it back.
Right now it doesn’t boot at all. That’s kind of a good place to be for me. I can tear into it in a way that I’d be too scared to otherwise. As my dad says, “It’s no love lost” if something goes wrong. I’ve already yanked off the glass front panel, which I’ve known is the way to get into these iMacs, but always seemed risky and dangerous.
If I can get this iMac working again, and that’s a big if, I’ll have to figure out what it’s still good for. My top pick is a computer for my kid. That’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while and, while I’m considering using a Surface Pro that I have sitting around, I think a desktop computer is a healthy option for a child. I’d like a computer with a fixed location rather than something that can be carried around the house, at least while early habits around computers are still forming.
Another option is to turn it into a TV or entertainment center. Half the reason I got the iMac instead of an upgraded Mac mini (what I had at the time) or a MacBook (what everybody else had) is that the screen and built-in speakers made it great for watching movies and listening to music. Also Macs at the time had an infrared remote (which I’ve lost) that controlled Front Row, a 10-foot user interface in Mac OS X for viewing on the couch (or, God help, futon). It was a perfect machine when I had a big MP3 library and Netflix’s 3-disc-at-a-time plan. I could re-create some of that by installing Kodi/LibreELEC.
It’s too underpowered to be competitive as a generic Linux/Debian environment for me. There’s no reason I’d ever choose it over another device for that purpose. But maybe I could use it as a terminal-only writer deck. Foregoing any graphic user interface is the best way to breathe life into old hardware. Most of the RAM and CPU usage comes from just displaying things on screen. Without a graphical interface, entire categories of resource-hungry applications just aren’t viable like web browsing or watching videos. And multi-tasking becomes a less intuitive, if not completely impractical, thing to do. Going terminal-only is always an option, though it’s a change that comes with very steep trade-offs. I don’t look forward to explaining to my spouse that this bulky computer taking up precious space can’t do any of the things that we understand a computer to do.
Anyway, I’ll need to get this thing cleaned up and diagnose the boot issue before I can do anything. If nothing else, it’s interesting to think about uses for older Intel-based Apple computers.