Apple is going to have another event on October 30th, and Leo expects a new iPad Pro minus the bezel and hopefully new Macs. There were dozens of different invitations with various Apple logo designs that all said "There's More in the Making." The event will be held in New York City at 10AM Eastern time, 7AM Pacific.
Doctor Mom may be moving cross country and wants to know a safe way to pack her technology, like her computers and her NAS. Leo says that pulling the drives out and wrapping them separately in bubble map is a good idea. Then she can place them together in a box with plenty of shipping material. But the iMac is tougher because she can't take that out. And then there's the huge screen. Ideally, if she still has the box, she can encase it in that with the original packaging. Otherwise, she'll need to just wrap it judiciously in bubble wrap.
Jody has an old iMac with a 2.66GHz dual core processor. Leo says that's still a useful computer, even with its age. Jody says Lightroom stalls on it. Leo says that's more the fault of Lightroom. But a new iMac would also give him a larger screen and far more accurate color depiction. A new iMac will still have its hands full with Lightroom because its just a pig with memory resources. It's poorly written for today's modern platforms. Here's what to try before Jody buys a new iMac: Install a Solid State Drive (SSD). That will speed up the performance dramatically.
Mark wants to know if all-in-one computers are a good deal. Leo says that Apple changed the game with the iMac and now other PC makers offer them to. They're elegant looking, but some are difficult to expand and upgrade. All-in-ones have thermal constraints as well, and some all-in-ones have a throttled processor because of the heat issue. But if he gets one, he should spring for the SSD and at least 8GB of RAM. It'll help his performance dramatically. That's really where performance is needed anyway. Then he should keep his data on a spinning external drive.
LeBaron has a 2010 iMac computer that is getting very slow, and Leo suspects that the culprit is a failing hard drive. The upgrade is non-trivial, but it can be done. Leo recommends going with a solid state drive to make it a heck of a lot faster. Then connect an external drive for the data. What Leo recommends is going to Otherworld Computing and look up the model. You can see what parts are needed, along with tools. Then decide whether to try to DIY or to have it done by a technician.
Adam bought an iMac from a private seller. It still had Apple Care and he had it transferred to his name. He's worried that there was a keylogger on it and his credit card was compromised. Leo says that unless he wiped the computer himself, he won't know if it's compromised or not. Leo says that it's probably not the Mac, but just in case, Adam should wipe the drive himself. It's really easy to wipe an iMac drive and reinstall the OS. It could be that Adam's iCloud account has been compromised.
Amy wants to speed up her 2010 iMac by replacing the SATA drive with an SSD. Can it be done? Leo says it can, but it's not for the faint of heart. She'll have to use a suction cup to pull off the LCD screen. Leo recommends going to Otherworld computing and watching the videos on how to do it. It could be a great project for her teenager.
Bob put his iMac to sleep and then when he went to wake it up, he got a "bong" with a blank screen. Leo says that those tones indicates different things depending on the tone. Here's a list. It's possible the backup battery in the computer is dead and needs to be replaced. But it could also be a failed hard drive. It could also be an EFI ROM update is in progress. If you hold down the D key when booting up, you'll go into diagnostic mode. If that doesn't work, then you have a major hardware failure.
Justin is buying a new 5K iMac. How does he migrate his old data into his new machine? Leo says that there is a migration tool built into the iMac to move it over, but if he doesn't want to move all of it, the migration tool will allow him to move just the apps. He should let it do that because it'll do a better job.
Christina is thinking of buying a new Mac Mini, but she'll also need to get a monitor and keyboard. Should she do that rather than upgrade her iMac? Rich says Christina should just upgrade her iMac. It may cost her more, but she'll be better served by the larger screen size and the all-in-one design. For a few hundred dollars more, it's a better value.
