M6 iMac

[Greyland]

I ordered my M6 iMac this morning (upgrading from a very old intel iMac) maxed out (memory & SSD).

Apple says it will arrive on Nov 6.

Anyone getting a later delivery date?

Or the same?

 

[kagharaht]

Congratulations! I upgraded from a Late 2013 iMac to an full configured M3 and wow...like night and day. Enjoy!

 

[wayne905]

I ordered mine as well. Funny thing is if I have it delivered to my condo, it'll deliver Nov 6. But for in store pickup it pushes to Nov 17. I guess this might be since so many products are hitting the store on Nov 6. I can imagine how chaotic the stores will be on Nov 6.

 

[Greyland]

I ordered mine as well. Funny thing is if I have it delivered to my condo, it'll deliver Nov 6. But for in store pickup it pushes to Nov 17. I guess this might be since so many products are hitting the store on Nov 6. I can imagine how chaotic the stores will be on Nov 6.

There aren’t any Apple stores within 100 miles of where we live. So we get everything delivered. 😎

This is going to be the first NEW Mac we’ve purchased since I got a Mac SE, and traded that in for a SE/30 a few weeks later. 4 megabytes of RAM (maxed) and an 80 megabyte HD.

Everything in between has been from eBay.

 

[Greyland]

Congratulations! I upgraded from a Late 2013 iMac to an full configured M3 and wow...like night and day. Enjoy!

I was going to get an earlier M# iMac, however my wife kept saying nope nope nope.

And I kept agreeing because we are used to the 27” iMacs.

I finally convinced her, now is the time to upgrade. I wanted green to match the HomePod mini’s we ordered. She said green & yellow go together. 🧐

 

[M4th]

This is going to be the first NEW Mac we’ve purchased since I got a Mac SE, and traded that in for a SE/30 a few weeks later. 4 megabytes of RAM (maxed) and an 80 megabyte HD.

I bought a similarly specced Performa 575 in 1994 for $1700, and with inflation...

Not sure what a maxed out M6 iMac is now, but sort of interesting to compare.

 

[Greyland]

I bought a similarly specced Performa 575 in 1994 for $1700, and with inflation...

View attachment 2687402

Not sure what a maxxed out M6 iMac is now, but sort of interesting to compare.

My wife corrected me.

The last new iMac we bought was the white basketball With the tilt monitor.

I was in a local “Mac store” job hunting when a couple came in & thought I worked there. Apple was transitioning for the IIci to the performa line. In my opinion while the performa was new, the IIci was the better machine. The IIci could be expanded many ways, whereas the performa couldn’t be.

They wanted to buy the IIci, and a monitor from me. I had to tell them I didn’t work there. The manager was standing next to me through the whole thing, so I asked him if I had the job since I made a sale. (I whispered that I could help him get ride of his old inventory). That didn’t matter. I never did get the job.

 

[wayne905]

What did everyone order? I ordered Silver, 24GB RAM, 1TB Hard Drive with the upgraded 4 ports and regular screen (not nano texture)

 

[svish]

Have not pre-ordered yet. Planning on getting one soon.

 

[Greyland]

What did everyone order? I ordered Silver, 24GB RAM, 1TB Hard Drive with the upgraded 4 ports and regular screen (not nano texture)

I ordered the Yellow (will name it “Mellow Yellow) because my wife wanted that color. Maxed the memory to 32GB because you can never have too much memory, and the 2TB SSD. If Apple offered more storage, I would have taken it.

We got the regular screen and stand.

I wanted to order green so I could name it “Solent Green”. 🥳

 

[TSE]

I ordered the Yellow (will name it “Mellow Yellow) because my wife wanted that color. Maxed the memory to 32GB because you can never have too much memory, and the 2TB SSD. If Apple offered more storage, I would have taken it.

We got the regular screen and stand.

I wanted to order green so I could name it “Solent Green”. 🥳

I got the yellow M4 when it first came out and I absolutely love it.

 

[BillyBurke]

I HAVE A YELLOW M3. I don't think the yellow m6 comes with the 4 TB4 ports or the 2.5 ethernet. Bummer.

 

[Gloomy]

I got my M4 iMac (Silver, 4x Thunderbolt 4 Ports, Ethernet etc) earlier this year to replace my dead 2013 27" Intel. As much as I would love to upgrade to a similarly specced M6 in Orange, I think I'll just keep the M4 until the next upgrade comes along.

M8 in 2028 perhaps? 😀

 

[Greyland]

I HAVE A YELLOW M3. I don't think the yellow m6 comes with the 4 TB4 ports or the 2.5 ethernet. Bummer.

There are two starting options. The higher option comes with four thunderbolt ports and 2.5 Gig Ethernet. Which is the one I’ve pre-ordered.

 

[Gloomy]

There are two starting options. The higher option comes with four thunderbolt ports and 2.5 Gig Ethernet. Which is the one I’ve pre-ordered.

You also get 2 extra CPU and 2 extra GPU cores with second tier so it's well worth the extra 200 in my opinion. 😀

 

[Greyland]

You also get 2 extra CPU and 2 extra GPU cores with second tier so it's well worth the extra 200 in my opinion. 😀

I used to do Mac consulting. A few of my business customers would always tell me they had to upgrade their software. I always told them to pay for as much hardware as they could. Software can come later, over time.

This is especially true now since we can no longer upgrade the hardware we buy. I used to buy systems with the minimum of RAM, then buy and install third party RAM.

So, my pre-ordered M6 iMac is coming as maxed out as I can get it from Apple. 🧐🥳

I will attach my 5 external HD’s to a hub that I bought from Amazon once I’ve transferred my account from my 2015 iMac.

 

[BSDnostalgia]

There are two starting options. The higher option comes with four thunderbolt ports and 2.5 Gig Ethernet. Which is the one I’ve pre-ordered.

I really prefer separate monitor, but, I do like this iMac. One question that I have:

If the M6 can support 4 TB4 ports, why can't it support 2 ports with 1 of them being
TB4 and one being TB5?

 

[wayne905]

I'm staring to second guess myself (which is what I tend to do after the fact). I ordered my machine wth 24GB of RAM (and 1 TB SSD). Do you think 24GB of RAM is sufficient to last 5-7 years from now? I am not a power user by any means. Other than just basic browsing, emails, I use Zoom, Teams, Quicken, Microsoft Office programs, some occasional light photo editing. My machine hasn't shipped yet and if I put in a new order it'll push out delivery to Nov 18th. Chat GPT tells me I'll be more than fine for the next 5-7 years with 24GB of RAM and not to worry but wanted to ask the group for their opinions if they agree (since we know how accurate Chat GPT can be).

 

[Greyland]

I'm staring to second guess myself (which is what I tend to do after the fact). I ordered my machine wth 24GB of RAM (and 1 TB SSD). Do you think 24GB of RAM is sufficient to last 5-7 years from now? I am not a power user by any means. Other than just basic browsing, emails, I use Zoom, Teams, Quicken, Microsoft Office programs, some occasional light photo editing. My machine hasn't shipped yet and if I put in a new order it'll push out delivery to Nov 18th. Chat GPT tells me I'll be more than fine for the next 5-7 years with 24GB of RAM and not to worry but wanted to ask the group for their opinions if they agree (since we know how accurate Chat GPT can be).

Speaking for myself… I’ve always found that when I limit the amount of RAM I have installed things start getting wonky.

With my ‘15 27” iMac I have 24G of ram. Now maybe it’s the age, or maybe not. But when I’m on Amazon trying to see what I have saved for later, I run out of memory, and Safari crashes. Or if it doesn’t, I can’t scroll up to check something again - the area is blank.

This also happens on Facebook. 🤬

To be sure I’m not running the highest intel processor that was available at the time, I’m 2 or 3 steps down from that.

I also moved all of my “iTunes” content to an external drive decades ago (music, movies, TV shows) because Apple has never shipped a Mac with enough internal storage for everything without going with a “pro” model. Which I don’t need, nor could ever justify to my wife.

Next Friday, I’ll have my new machine, and after transferring my data from the old to the new (which might take all night), I’ll finally be “up to date again”.

Next year we plan on getting the 20th anniversary edition iPhones and new Apple Watches.

 

[macryan1]

Moving up from M3 to M6 with 24GB RAM and 2TSSD, 4 port. I have the docking exteranl storage that the iMac stand sits in with a variety of connectivity. I use that for my Time Machine backup. Very handy.Wife gets the M3 up from a 2017 Intel...while she likes that machine...it's challenged in meeting her needs. Delivery 11/16.

 

[wayne905]

Speaking for myself… I’ve always found that when I limit the amount of RAM I have installed things start getting wonky.

With my ‘15 27” iMac I have 24G of ram. Now maybe it’s the age, or maybe not. But when I’m on Amazon trying to see what I have saved for later, I run out of memory, and Safari crashes. Or if it doesn’t, I can’t scroll up to check something again - the area is blank.

This also happens on Facebook. 🤬

To be sure I’m not running the highest intel processor that was available at the time, I’m 2 or 3 steps down from that.

I also moved all of my “iTunes” content to an external drive decades ago (music, movies, TV shows) because Apple has never shipped a Mac with enough internal storage for everything without going with a “pro” model. Which I don’t need, nor could ever justify to my wife.

Next Friday, I’ll have my new machine, and after transferring my data from the old to the new (which might take all night), I’ll finally be “up to date again”.

Next year we plan on getting the 20th anniversary edition iPhones and new Apple Watches.

did you end up going with 24GB or 32GB on your new iMac?

 

[Gloomy]

I'm staring to second guess myself (which is what I tend to do after the fact). I ordered my machine wth 24GB of RAM (and 1 TB SSD). Do you think 24GB of RAM is sufficient to last 5-7 years from now? I am not a power user by any means. Other than just basic browsing, emails, I use Zoom, Teams, Quicken, Microsoft Office programs, some occasional light photo editing. My machine hasn't shipped yet and if I put in a new order it'll push out delivery to Nov 18th. Chat GPT tells me I'll be more than fine for the next 5-7 years with 24GB of RAM and not to worry but wanted to ask the group for their opinions if they agree (since we know how accurate Chat GPT can be).

For what its worth, my M4 iMac is 16GB and I have never had any issues with slowdown or memory compression. I am running macOS Golden Gate and this iMac is my main home computer. Media consumption, light gaming and plenty of browsing with the odd photo touch ups.

I use Safari with a handful of tabs and have Mail, Discord, Messages, Music, MS Office and Photos running at all times. I often have 4K video playing in QuickTime or VLC as well. This usually results in ~10GB in active memory, zero swap needed.

The choice to get 24GB provides a great overhead in your case. This is just my opinion of course, but ultimately I think you've made a good choice going for the middle ground with 24GB and yes, you will definitely be fine for 5 years. 😀

 

[Greyland]

did you end up going with 24GB or 32GB on your new iMac?

I went with the 12 core CPU, etcetera. 32GB of RAM, and the 2Tb SSD.

 

[OneSon]

I'm staring to second guess myself (which is what I tend to do after the fact). I ordered my machine wth 24GB of RAM (and 1 TB SSD). Do you think 24GB of RAM is sufficient to last 5-7 years from now? I am not a power user by any means. Other than just basic browsing, emails, I use Zoom, Teams, Quicken, Microsoft Office programs, some occasional light photo editing. My machine hasn't shipped yet and if I put in a new order it'll push out delivery to Nov 18th. Chat GPT tells me I'll be more than fine for the next 5-7 years with 24GB of RAM and not to worry but wanted to ask the group for their opinions if they agree (since we know how accurate Chat GPT can be).

I’m no expert but I wouldn’t stress. My M1 iMac has 8gb RAM and based on everything you read on here you’d think the computer would be grinding to a halt. It performs fine 99% of the time. If I open too many tabs (i.e 15+) or start pausing 3+ YouTube videos or have two browsers open it goes in the orange but nothing really happens. If anything it makes me a bit more disciplined about staying focused. On my next Mac I’m going to go with 24gb RAM.

 

[leifp]

For those worried about longevity and the impact of RAM, let me attempt to reassure you.

Tl;dr - if the Mac you buy today works great for you today, if you don’t change your workload you will be more than fine for 5-7 years.

Apple started shipping all Macs with a minimum of 8GB RAM in 2016 (that means no Macs with less than 8GB RAM were sold) and switched that to 16GB in 2024. That’s about 8 years, and all of those are capable of functioning just fine more or less as they did on release (Apple Silicon is so much superior in RAM allocation than Intel era machines that the difference seems infinite so that inflection point is very real indeed).

If you still have and use a Mac from the Intel era your time is coming to an end (for macOS support, which doesn’t exist in macOS 27, and security update support in two years). For the vast majority of computer users on earth, 8GB remains sufficient and won’t negatively impact much. However, if you are a serial tab abuser keeping YouTube and AppleTV and Netflix and etc etc etc tabs open all the time, and/or you do semi serious work/play (video editing, gaming, and so on) you will notice RAM choking your system. My wife is one of those abusers of browser tabs and windows and browsers even…

If you notice that your computer is “too slow” are you aware whether RAM is the culprit? Perhaps it’s the CPU or the GPU. Everyone is quick to blame RAM…

I will leave the “AI” elephant in the corner unless someone else brooks the subject.