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The Surprisingly Versatile old iMacPost 00050 | May 21st 2024
I definitely love browsing the classifieds for a good deal, and by jingo, did I score this time. For the low price of €120, I was able to score this beast of a computer: Apple's flagship 27" iMac from 2011! I bought it from an elderly gentleman who had been using it in his music studio before replacing it with a newer model. After this, it became an email machine, although even this banal task had become a bit much for the mechanical hard drive the computer came with. Let's face it, who wants to wait for two minutes just to check if you have new mail? He for one didn't, which is why he felt it was time to get rid of it. He was a bit apprehensive about handing over a machine he'd been using for email to a complete stranger, which I totally understand, so we sat down together and wiped the drive. It is a bit of a shame, as there were a bunch of pretty cool looking icons in his dock; Apps I had never even heard off, presumably used for music production. He seemed pretty decent though so I guess it's better to let him have peace of mind than it is for me to have my curiosity settled. Setup is easy as one, two… geezAfter I got it home and plugged it in I realised to my horror that the built in recovery partition didn't want to work. No matter how hard I tried the thing refused to download the OS installer. The iMac came with its original box and a jewel case-sized box, but sadly there were not recovery discs to be found inside. No worries, I thought, I'll just find an .iso online, flash it to a USB drive, and install it that way. As if. While Mac OS supports iso files just fine, it is the .dmg that is the de facto standard on the platform. That's all well and good, but where does that leave me and my arsenal of PCs that have no idea about what to do with an .dmg file? I found some recovery discs on archive.org but sadly I couldn't get them to work. I tried using dmg2iso to convert an ISO which I first flashed to a USB drive. No dice. I then tried burning it to a DVD (I even had to go buy some dual layer discs). Still no luck. I also tried converting the .dmg with PowerISO. Maybe the iMac's SuperDrive is bad? I even tried flashing the image to an old iPod, just so I could try booting it using FireWire. It was so annoying to troubleshoot as I wasn't able to verify if anything was working, meaning there could be multiple points of failure. I also tried other disk images of course; Apple hosts installers for older Mac OS versions on their the website but these appear to be .dmgs within .dmgs with the actual bootable install image being nested inside another installer like a Russian doll, so that wouldn't work when I didn't have a Mac available to extract it from. I then went on eBay to get the original recovery discs. I found a EU seller who sold them for a decent price. I purchased them and waited for two weeks when I finally received... a copy of Logic Express 7? Turns out the seller mixed up two of his orders. He was quite nice about it, and gave me a full refund without expecting the discs returned. I only lost a fortnight of waiting before ending back at square one. At this point I was getting desperate. Maybe I knew somebody with a Mac I would be able to borrow? Thankfully I remembered that my brother had my old 2006 MacBook which I had gifted him as a hand-me-down. He was the type of person who would always click "Your PC has a virus!!!" banner ads and install the accompanying malware, which always became my problem to fix. In the end I got so fed up with recovering his files that I got him a computer that wasn't able to open .exe files natively. He still had MacBook, and was happy to get rid of it as it was just gathering dust. It doesn't support anything newer than Mac OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard, which is perfect, as my iMac came with 10.6.6. The MacBook also has a FireWire port, so I was able to boot the iMac from the MacBook's internal drive while it was still inside the MacBook by using the FireWire Target Mode (If you hold down T during when booting a FireWire-equipped Mac, it essentially becomes an external harddisk). After the computer(s) booted, I cloned the Snow Leopard partition onto the iMac HDD, letting me boot the iMac untethered. After this, I could use the aforementioned disk images from Apple's website to upgrade to Lion and then to Sierra. Sierra's App Store was still open, which allowed me download and install High Sierra, the newest Mac OS version officially supported. Upgrades!There's no denying that the iMac is an old computer. After a decade of use, the machine deserves some TLC. The 2011 model was the last of the iMacs that weren't glued together; Instead the front glass is being held on with magnets. You can use a couple of suction cups to pull the glass from the chassis, revealing a set of torx screws. While it is somewhat straight-forward to take apart, you'll definitely want to use the iFixit guide to make sure you don't accidentally overlook disconnecting anything. Also, do be careful not to touch the exposed power supply - Those capacitors mean business! I ended up completely disassembling the machine. iFixit doesn't have a complete teardown guide, but the Dual Drive Kit guide takes you most of the way. After following the guide to its end, I removed the logic board from the chassis, unscrewed the heatsinks and applied new thermal paste to both the CPU and GPU. While putting everything back together, I plugged in a SATA cable into a second, unutilised SATA port on the back of the logic board. I'm not sure if Apple ever sold this model with more than one storage drive, but in any case, it was cool of them to include the port. I replaced the original harddisk with two SSDs using this 3D-printed bracket, although some double-sided tape would undoubtedly have been able to do the job. One quirk of this model of iMac is how it monitors the temperature of the original harddisk as reported by its firmware. However, after I removed this hard drive, the iMac can't get a readout from its firmware, which makes the computer fear the worst, assume the drive is overheating, and turn its fans up to eleven in a panic. The free way of fixing this would be to use something like Macs Fan Control to override the stock fan curve. This only works when Mac or Windows is running which isn't ideal, so instead I invested in a thermal sensor cable that generates the missing temperature signal from a thermal probe to the iMac, letting you use any drive with the iMac without it sounding like a vacuum cleaner. This was pretty much all I had to upgrade. RAM is fairly easy to upgrade from a trap door on the bottom of the screen, but it was already maxed out. As for the CPU, it also had the best Apple offered: The good old i7-2600. In PC Land, Intel's 3000 series processors usually works in 2000 series motherboards but I doubt Apple has updated the EFI with the microcode to support this. I decided it wasn't worth testing as the CPU socket is at the end of a long and tedious iFixit guide rated "difficult" by its author. After reassembling the computer, one question remains: What can I actually do with it? Aren't Macs after all just underpowered one-trick ponies that refuses run any line of of code that hasn't been personally approved by Tim Apple himself? Actually, I can think of quite a few different use cases: Use it as a (somewhat) modern Mac.High Sierra is the final version of Mac OS X available for this iMac. It looks like OpenCore Legacy Patcher would be able to make it run Sonoma which is the current version of Mac OS. I haven't tried this yet. I'm always wary of using patched operating systems. Even if the patch doesn't get wiped out during an upgrade, there's usually a reason for the computer not being supported. In this case it appears to be due to Apple's Metal graphics API which my iMac's Radeon HD 6970M doesn't support. The card is is upgradable, but it seems like a lot of effort to get a little extra mileage out of the computer. That said, High Sierra is still a plenty capable OS. While a lot of the latest versions of apps refuse to launch, you can usually find older versions available that work just fine with little to no loss in functionality. I was able to install Firefox ESR to browse the web and I could download previous versions of iLife and iWork apps from the App Store as well. Steam was available for High Sierra when I started testing it, but it has since been discontinued much it happened with Windows 7 as I wrote about in post 00047. It looks like High Sierra is on its way out. but it works, and for the price I paid, I really don't feel like I can complain. It is still plenty powerful for daily tasks like browsing the web and such. Use Rosetta with Snow Leopard.Okay, if you can't run the newest of the newest, you can always embrace the old. The 2011 model was the last iMac to ship with Snow Leopard. To me, Snow Leopard always felt like the swan song of the original OS X. It was the last version before the introduction of iCloud and the App Store and it was the last version to support Rosetta, the compatibility layer that lets you to run PowerPC apps on Intel hardware. This opens up for running apps and games going all the way back to the first OS X from the early 00's. Of course I wanted to test how well this worked. While not a demanding game, I tried playing Age of Empires II which ran perfectly. For something a little more challenging I launched Battlefield 1942 which was also playable if with all settings at default with only a few frame drops in the most explosive encounters. It seems a bit laughable that a 2011 high-end computer is struggling with a game from 2004, but it is still a pretty impressive feat, rendering a (for the time) heavy-duty 3D game in real time by reading code written for a completely different processor architecture. For casual gaming and applications in general, Rosetta is a pretty neat tool. As for finding apps, as I alluded to earlier, Snow Leopard predates the App Store so you'll have to find software elsewhere. Here the Macintosh Garden and the Macintosh Repository are two of the primary sources for abandonware. Especially the former is incredibly well-stocked and was an absolute godsend. It even works without SSL, meaning you can connect to it with old browsers. There is no denying however that while High Sierra felt modern, Snow Leopard feels old. Speaking of SSL, certificates for its most popular browsers have expired a long time ago. SpiderWeb is one of the few browsers still available that plays nicely with the modern web even though looks and feels kind of rough. It is however invaluable for a operating system to have a modern browser and considering the amount of work that goes into maintaining such a project, one can hardly complain. Run Windows!With its Intel architecture The iMac is little more than a fancy PC, meaning you can easily run operating systems other than OS X. Apple even provides an application called Boot Camp Assistant to aid you in the setup. The iMac comes with a Intel i7-2600 and a Radeon HD 6970M GPU, which are both compatible with Windows XP. Boot Camp doesn't seem to know this however, instead listing only Windows 7 and 8 as supported. Even more annoying, the Boot Camp Assistant that came with High Sierra will check for a valid Windows install media before it lets you install, so if you want to install XP, I would recommend using Snow Leopard's Boot Camp instead. The application will help you create a Windows partition on a disk that already has one - but only one - partition. That ruled out my dual-booting primary SSD, so it was a good thing I installed that second SSD. After rebooting, the iMac booted straight into the Windows XP install disc. Other than needing to do a quick format during the install, the install went without a hitch. Apart from partitioning, Boot Camp Assistant also used to provide a burnable disc image with drivers. This driver disc also had a few extras to make switching OS a bit more seamless. The download link for this disc doesn't work anymore, but luckily Archive.org hosts something compatible. It doesn't install the drivers for everything though, which is to be expected as Apple didn't list this iMac as being XP compatible. Instead, I used Snappy Driver Installer to download the rest of the drivers. I decided to once again install Battlefield 1942 after everything was set up as I wanted to see how much better it runs. To the surprise of no one, it was miles ahead running with higher resolution and a smoother framerate. It's been a ages since Steam abandoned XP and now that the last of workarounds appears to have stopped working, it now seems like Steam on XP is a lost cause. Instead I went on GOG to find more demanding games. Both Bioshock and Far Cry ran without issue so I got cocky and downloaded the pinnacle of high spec games of the era: Crysis. So in before the memes: Does it run Crysis? Aye, it does! A few stutters here and there, but completely playable. Other than that, I don't think there's much to say about this one. It's Windows XP. If you are a more sensible person, you might want to pick a newer version of Windows. While the Boot Camp Assistant in High Sierra only allows for official Windows 7 or 8 ISOs, you'll have to first install one of these versions before updating to Windows 10 or 11. Bear in mind that the 2011 Mac predates Secure Boot and TPM wgich Windows 11 requires, but if you create your install media using Rufus, you have the option to bypass these checks during install. It's a lot of fuss to install an operating system that will bring the Mac out of its comfort zone, but if you need Windows, the option is there for you. I don't so I won't. Run Linux!Like with Windows 10/11, at the moment I don't have a use case for this, but seeing how everything I installed ranged from discontinued to obsolete, I thought I should try something actively supported. I picked Linux Mint because it's lovely and because I knew its install media starts up in a live environment, as if the thing was already installed. This is perfect as this lets you check that everything works before you install to a more permanent home. I launched Firefox, headed to Youtube and played a video. Audio was working, video was smooth and of course, I was connected to the Internet. I can't help but smile when I think of how seamless it was compared getting the commercial operating systems up and running. Considering how much of a hassle those installs were in comparison, I wasn't going to mess with the partition layout on either of the SSDs, but I made sure to check that the installer could see both drives. I can't guarantee that it will install successfully, but I no reason to suspect it won't. rEFInd appears to be a popular open source boot loader for repurposed Macs, so if you are having problems booting Linux (or want your machine to be as libre as possible), this might be worth checking out. One thing that surprised me was how Mint didn't feel sluggish even though it was running via an USB 2.0 on an old thumb drive - Like, translucent plastic old. Despite this, Firefox launched in a timely manner and the Youtube video started right away. I can only assume that it would become even snappier if installed to an SSD. I would have no complaints using this as an everyday computer. Gaming will however be hampered by the lack of Vulkan support, as this rules out DXVK. The current version of Linux Mint is supported until 2027, which means the iMac would be sixteen years old before you'd have to look for a replacement. This is about the same length of time there was between the Commodore 64 and the Nintendo 64! EmulationAnother use case for the iMac is as an emulation machine. Once again, this is a task it is suprisingly well suited for. While low-power carts and high resolution screens are usually a bad combo for gaming, it works a lot better for emulating old games. The iMac's 1440p screen is great for retro resolutions, as 1440 is divisible by 240, 480 and 720, three of the most common vertical resolutions, meaning you can turn on integer scaling and still fill the screen. The dedicated graphics predates Vulkan but it can still help with rendering shaders if you want that CRT look. It's plenty powerful to play pretty much anything from the last century as well as most titles on the GameCube and the PlayStation 2. Besides, it's hard to think of a cleaner retro game setup than this - Plug in a couple of USB controllers and you're away! To do this, I made an install media of Batocera (which I have been posted about before). If you only plan to use the Mac for emulation, I would suggest installing Batocera to an internal disk which can be done from within Batocera when you launch it from an external drive. It will format the entire disk to install though, and as I already have filled my Mac of with other operating systems, I instead decided to keep it external. ConclusionAll in all, considering how little I paid for the device, this 2011 iMac offers excellent value. It's powerful enough for ordinary desktop use, but old enough for being able to run lots of legacy apps and games. On the OS X side it has PowerPC support for Rosetta while also supporting Windows XP, opening up for a world of retro goodness - All while not taking up more space than a normal monitor. I should probably point out that all of this isn't exclusive to the 2011 lineup; Even the earliest Intel Macs will run PowerPC apps and Windows XP. The reason I went with a 2011 Mac is because it appears to be the last models that can boast this. You might be able to squeeze XP onto a 2012 model, but as Rosetta was removed from Lion, no Mac released after 2011 can run PowerPC apps (except for emulation, I guess but that's a whole different can of worms).
PostScript (It's desktop publishing pun which will not be pardoned): |