What is your dev machine?

Fair point, that could work. But I admit I don’t want to invest in Apple for much longer. I’ll buy the next iPhone and one Macbook and that’s going to be it and I’ll migrate away over the course of the next several years.

Or maybe I am just procrastinating some really important other things now and am hand-waving hard.

Yeah, it’s definitely pretty far back on the desk

Back when I got it, ultra-wides with high resolution weren’t that common at a reasonable price point, so I looked around a bit and found this one. The way I arrange my windows when developing really benefits from having a bit of extra height rather that width, so I’ve always been a bit particular towards “tall” monitors, rather than the extra wide ones.

I’m sure that’s just a matter of habit though. I’d probably come up with some nice way to arrange my stuff if I was using an ultra-wide too.

Nice monitor Erik - do you seat it further back on the desk? Do you do video editing as well? What made you opt for a 43" display?

I felt the same way about my MBP which was heavily spec’d, however it just became unusable to the point I just got the Mini out of frustration to see if it was as good as people were saying it was - it was. It can do pretty much everything I used the MBP for, and quicker and smoother. So for all intents and purposes it is a better machine based on what my MBP had become (useless).

Now would I say the same if I was comparing the Mac Mini to when my MBP was brand new (before all of Apple’s introduced obsolescence) absolutely not! The MBP on day one (and for the first year) was a beast. Apps opened instantly, it unzipped files very quickly, copied files to external drives super fast, could handle large graphical files, could play 4K videos without the fans coming on etc.

I also suspect we may have been mislead about Apple Silicon - I need to do tests for this but I am fairly sure when I first got my MBP I could transfer around 1.5TB in just over an hour, but doing the same with Apple Silicon (using the same external drive) takes significantly longer. It also has problems with Spotlight where it keeps forgetting files or they aren’t getting indexed. However I accept this is atm just a hunch, and unfortunately we don’t really have a choice - we can only buy Apple Silicon devices now and Intel Macs are just too painful to use.

If you can get $2K for your iMac you could buy a Mini and a nice ultra wide Del monitor for that

It’s still a $8000 machine and it’s still my main one. And it’s an all-in-one PC, pretty tightly packed inside too. It is a risky endeavor and I will not event attempt it.

I suspect not many around will even dare opening it up if I mention how much it costs and that I’d like a compensation if they bust it. And mind you, here on the Balkans we have some mighty fine repairmen. They just open stuff up and help, they are not impressed by brands or anything else really.

But Apple’s craftsmanship makes repairing their stuff difficult.

We’ll see. I want to do it but I am pretty afraid and I am absolutely not ready to just move everything to my Linux laptop just yet. So it would be a folly to just risk blindly.

Thanks for this. I’ll research it and similar ones.

Extremely difficult here in Bulgaria. I have to drop the price from $8000 to like $2000 and people will still send me snark messages asking me if the machine can dig gold and cook food (yes, this happens). The second-hand market here is brutal, if it’s above 500 EUR usually nobody will buy it. People see second-hand tech as a way to get cheap deals and nothing else. So yeah, not happening unless I get super lucky.

I’ll still list it when the time comes though.

I don’t. That would be another sizeable expense. iMac Pro’s display is amazing and I suspect I’ll never truly replace it fully but oh well. [sighs]

This is not a thing in Eastern Europe. You buy it, it’s yours, no returns. It’s not legally expressed of course but I knew people who took shop owners to court over a return… and lost.

As Eminem famously sang: “You got one shot”.

Primary

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7900 (12 cores/24 threads)
• GPU: NVidia RTX 3090
• RAM: 32GB
• Display: 43" Dell u4320q P4317q
• Input: Logitech ERGO k860 (en-UK layout)
• OS: Manjoro with KDE

Secondary

Asus Zenbook 13.3", 4 core, 16GB.

Used for developing when I’m out and about, like sitting at a cafe. Obviously noticably slower than my main system, but works remarkably well for most tasks.

Software

I’m just listing the “non-obvious” stuff that I find a bit extra interesting, that not everyone might be using.

• TMuxinator - Great shell session manager. I always create a config for each project I work on so I can simply do mux ls (as an example), to bring up exactly the editor panes I want, start the apps I require etc etc.
• Taskfile - Simple but increadibly useful task runner. I can’t be bothered to remember a lot of shell commands, so I collect them all in my Taskfile.yml. I can then for example do things simply by typing t psql to connect to my Postgres server running in Docker (just as an example). It might sounds like a small thing, but I’m extremely happy that I have it. A bonus is that just typing t gives me a list of all my defined tasks, and a little description of what they do.
• Lokalize - Localization software for handling my .po files.
• rkvm - A virtual KVM that works well with Wayland (it actually doesn’t care about display server). I sometimes prop up my laptop next to my main screen if I need more screen real estate. This happens very rarely, but when it does, I love using rkvm.

Room for improvement

Everything is really fast and enjoyable except one thing - I’m using CLDR for my l10n, and it’s slooooow. Every time I use gettext to extract strings to .po files I’m greeted by “Generating Ls.Cldr for 3 locales…”, and it takes like 5 seconds on my primary, and up to 30 seconds on my secondary system(!). This makes l10n a bit of a drag.

If anyone has any tips here I’d be most grateful

Edit: I got the monitor model wrong, fixed that.

I would try cleaning the fans first - dirt build up can slow them down. But yeah, I suspect Apple intentionally put old intel mac fans into overdrive as my MBP started doing the same and for things that it never needed a fan on for previously.

I did end up buying one of these:

https://uk.camelcamelcamel.com/product/B01DZYUSEA

They are relatively quiet. But honestly, I would just think about selling the iMac and getting a base model Mac Mini if you have a decent monitor (or able to convert the iMac) - the base model Minis are better than our throttled intel Macs imo, at least in terms of QoL/general use.

If Apple offer 14 day money-back then why not give one a go…

Speaking of which, do you have a recommendation for an external fan that can be used to f.ex. blow on the backside of an all-in-one PC during the summer? My iMac Pro is whizzing hard most of the summer and it absolutely destroyed my desire to work on it (we’re talking that both of its fans almost never drop below 2200 RPM ) . Sure I can close the door and turn on the AC and it calms down in 5-10 minutes but… you know, summer? Fresh air, ability to see the greenery outside etc.?

I’ve been trying to find an actually silent (or minimally noisy, say maximum 25-30 dB) external fan for a while and give up every time. Maybe I am not doing something right.

Good option if you want RAID Nic, tho I’d probably stick to time machine for backups, and possibly prefer separate enclosures to prevent overheating if I need more than a single drive.

You invalidate the warranty if you do that Dav and also lose many of the benefits of using an external drive (physical security, resale value, resale risk, etc)

BTW it does seem like upgrading the onboard storage is not a very complex procedure (for those that can microsolder), if you can get hold of the storage NANDs that are compatible. Even more so for minis it seems that the chips are not soldered on the mainboard but use a proprietary M.2-like board, so if you can get a hold of one with higher capacity, replacing it is very trivial.

Have you looked perhaps at local repair shops offering such services in UK? I will have to upgrade mine in a few years as 128GB storage NANDs that have a maximum of 150 TBW paired with not enough RAM will kill those chips fast.