I might have inherited an iMac… a brand new 27″ one.

Say I don’t want to sell it. What can I do with it? I’ve never owned an Apple computer (just iPhones and iPad). My perception is that they’re mainly for visual computing e.g. photo editing, video editing, website building, etc.

Our home computing at the moment is mainly web surfing but I have two young children who I would hope could use it.

Should I bootcamp it? As we’re familiar with Microsoft.

Can I use it as a TV? Either for streaming or live TV – can I hook it up to my Virgin box?

Can I use it for games? Kids games mainly, plus a bit of FPS / racing games, nothing too heavy.

Do what you do with the pc. They are the same thing just differnt.

Leave os x on it. You might like it.

Give it the kids grandad…

🤣

Do exactly the same as on your Windows PC but with more style

Delight in the quality of the hardware and enjoy a superior OS.

It’s just another type of PC.

Gaming will depend on the spec, some come with a GPU, I’m not if you need Apple spec games for it or if windows games will run on it.

iOS isn’t terrible, ‘just works’ or ‘restrictive’ really depends on how much you like getting into the guts of it, there’s a learning curve like anything else.

Hardware is generally very good, it’s perceived “quality” will depend on what you’re used to. They’re a complete pig to fix if you have a hardware fault.

Their USP is really the display, usually very high spec screens with lovely displays. It will stream anything well.

seems to be few lifestyle choice marketing BS style over substance views…. 🙂

Do what you do with the pc. They are the same thing just differnt.

seems a waste to have a £1,700 computer just for doing Sainsbury’s orders and watching Netflix.

Thanks p-jay. I guess I need to get it and have a play, replicate what I use a PC for and see what else it can do.

If you don’t want it, I’ll take it off your hands.

At the end of the day its a fairly powerful PC with a great display and easy-to-use OS, although if you’ve been using Windows for 30 years then there’s a few “why does it do that?!” moments before you realise that macOS is no more ‘wrong’ than Windows is ‘right’.  We use an old Macbook Air from work as the family computer, the kids have semi-locked down accounts as they’re 8 and 10 and apart from just browsing the web they’re always making Information Sheets in Pages.

I do know people who use a iMac as a TV replacement but you have to be happy using the web sites for everything, you can’t just plug an aerial in.  That said a few models did have HDMI in I believe, so if you’re really lucky you can plug a virgin box in…

Oh and that perception is just what people commonly use them for: yes, in the design field macs way outnumber Windows machines (mainly historical from the early apps being Mac-only).  But it’s just a different fully-featured operating system that can do anything Windows can do.

I know you started that post with ‘Say I don’t want to sell it’, but the reality is that you could easily sell it and then either buy a single, higher-spec PC or put the money into a tech fund of sorts to buy multiple lower-spec machines that better fit your actual real-world usage. That sort of machine might be ace for high-spec video editing etc, but if you’re not doing that I’d say you’re better releasing the funds to spend on something that works better for you without the associated learning curve.

Just use ours as a normal home computer. Just because its an iMac no need to treat it any differently. I am bi-lingual/ambidextrous/bi-curious with iOS and Windows as we have Windows at work, iOS at home. iOS is definitely lower maintenance and a simpler interface once you’re used to it. The keyboard is the hardest thing to get used to, some buttons missing that you’re used to on a PC keyboard, but I took to the multi-gesture mouse like a duck to water, it’s great. But ultimately both operating systems do exactly the same thing for us ‘normal’ users equally as efficiently.

I bought my daughter a mid-spec Windows laptop for school a year ago. I’m already into the weekly cycle of running the usual suite of softwares and applications to clean up and tidy up the Windows operating system to keep it chugging along at a sensible and acceptable performance level after it getting to a point it took 3 minutes for the start menu to come up after pressing the button. In 9 years of MacBook ownership and 1 year of iMac ownership I’ve not had to do any maintenance on my iOS….absolutely sweet FA, with no performance deterioration at all. After about 5 years and various iOS updates my MacBook started to slow down a bit…taking a bit over 1 minute to boot up instead of about 15 seconds, but £30 worth of RAM sorted that out and a few years later a Hybrid HDD so I still had the move to SSD to go too to keep her going if needed. Finally the battery basically burst open and killed my MacBook pushing me into iMac ownership. The absolute lack of maintenance and simplicity of use is what I like about iOS and worth the premium in my view. I got 9 years out of a basic MacBook, my dad has had his iMac for at least as long and that is still going strong for normal home use, my brother runs a mini-mac from a similar vintage, with maxed out RAM and an SSD upgrade and he runs Lightroom and does some pretty heavy duty photo and video editing on it no problems, so I’m expecting a long life from my iMac, easily justifying the Apple premium.

I’d say give it a go, persevere with the differences…some things are different, but pretty quickly it it will be just as intuitive as Windows feels to you.

seems a waste to have a £1,700 computer just for doing Sainsbury’s orders and watching Netflix.

but it presumably hasn’t cost you anything so its pretty good value for money 🙂 Macs hold value for a surprisingly long time so unless you already have a PC that you’re happy using or have something else you’d really rather spend the money on then just use if for a bit – if it upsets you then you can still sell it, easily,  for a fair old wedge months / years from now

My perception is that they’re mainly for visual computing e.g. photo editing, video editing, website building, etc.

A lot of that perception is really a throw back to the early days of Mac and Windows operating systems – there was a fundamental difference in the way the two handled and rendered text on the screen* and Macs gave designers a better representation of how text would look on the final printed page – that meant in turn that often third party design software was Mac only too. So designers of a certain age cut their teeth on Macs and still use them out of habit but theres little you couldn’t do on another platform.

Nowadays thought, with the excption of the super-dooper pro model desktops they are just well put together consumer computers, usually with a very good screen. If you’re also using other apple products you also get very good integration.

Beyond that its just a question really of whether you like one OS more than the other.

*pretty much only because Steve Jobs had done a calligraphy course once – and Bill Gates hadn’t.

If you don’t want to use it for traditional computer stuff, you could consider using it as a media centre – the screen is great and can it be used for most of the streaming services – BT, NowTV, Prime, iPlayer etc. You could also use it for streaming audio, or push the boat out a bit more and hook it up to a dedicated DAC and use software like Audirvana or HQ Player for high end audio. With a dongle you could also watch/record digital TV broadcasts through your aerial (I still use a decade old Elegato system plus EyeTV software on my 2007 MacBook Pro for streaming and recording TV). Lots of options 🙂

Thanks all, some good advice and food for thought there. I don’t really want to sell it out of respect for the person I inherited it from…. long overly sentimental story but it would be nice to use it on their behalf.

I think I’ll just get it, enjoy playing around with it and explore what it can do. Use it as a way to kick-start the kid’s interest and interaction with computers.

If you already use iPhones and iPads then the iMac will integrate with them really well.

explore what it can do

It does what computers do, nothing more, nothing less.

Drink the Kool-aid

Its just a bloody computer! Switch it on, use the thing. If you’re scared of it, give it to me.

Take out the insides, make a really thin fishtank.

update: I like it, it’s just a computer.
kids have so far used it for maths games, asking Siri daft questions and watching baby shark do do do do do do.
mrs has used it for shopping.
I’ve used it for music, youtube, guitar tuning and tutorials, browsing and Fortnite (!).

Its your slave not your master. Just use it as you would a normal computer. I wouldn’t bother with boot camp….you can get Office for Mac if you want or need that, and the Apple equivalents (Pages, KeyNote and Numbers) are just as good for normal home use (or even more advanced use too after a bit of familiarisation).

Though is does take some adjustment to get used to Mac OS, its pretty intuitive once you get your mind aligned to it and in alot of cases is slicker than Windows. The biggest challenge I found was getting used to the simpler controls…fewer keys on the keyboard and less buttons on the mouse. Though you can get full Windows keyboards and configure the mouse to be a standard 3-button mouse I wanted to learn the Apple way and once you’re used to it its easy. The gesture mouse is very good. The keyboard does require you to memorise some ‘Command +’ functions, but only a few.

I bought my daughter a mid-spec Windows laptop for school a year ago. I’m already into the weekly cycle of running the usual suite of softwares and applications to clean up and tidy up the Windows operating system to keep it chugging along at a sensible and acceptable performance level

For balance, I never have to do this!

Nope, neither have i. Ever!!

For balance, I never have to do this!

I bought a refurbish Dell laptop with a clean copy of Windows 10 on it. I’ve Installed Zwift and Adobe Acrobat.

Its starting to grind to a half after 18 months of use of Zwift, nothing else.

A clean copy of what Dell supplied?

I rebuilt my now 10 year old HP laptop for my daughter about 4 years ago, not touched it since. Still works very well. It does have an SSD though.

I have no idea what you lot are doing with your computers.

I use mine for serious work, actually typing on a laptop currently but I have had a few iMacs over the years. First got into them when I was in Japan and their multilingual ability was streets ahead of windows – don’t know if that is still the case (and it doesn’t matter any more) but they still work and last better than most windows machines IMO. Plus, elegant and well-designed.

“Work” for me is mostly programming and statistical analyses using R, maybe a bit of fortran (yes really), writing documents in LaTeX though I also have a terrible collaboration involving google docs which is grim (the writing part, I mean. The actual research is fun). Wife does company accounts and financial stuff with some software or spreadsheets, seems ok for that. Also yes they are great for photos and the like.

Interesting thread as I have just been given a wizz bang top line iMac that’s a few years old from my bil. Not really had a good play yet.

Me again… trying to plug my work laptop (Dell running Windows) into my iMac to use it as a display. Apparently target display mode doesn’t work on late model iMacs. I have mini Display and HDMI outputs on the laptop and the iMac has Thunderbolt I/O on the back but from what I can gather that won’t work as the laptop isn’t Thunderbolt compatible.
Anyone know any other ways? There must be a way! I don’t want to spend a fortune on cables if it’s not going to work.

if its newer that 2014 I don’t think you can do it. If its older than that then without a suitable/compatable lead/sockets I think theres a bit of software called ‘Air Display’ that might allow you to connect wirelessly

Yeah, thanks – might try that, but normally any casting on my wireless is too laggy to be practical.

Anyone know any other ways?

Place the laptop near the iMac, turn the laptop off, do thing you were going to do on your laptop on the Mac instead 🙂