I had been debating doing this for some time as the performance of the Intel iMac was perfectly adequate for my needs but the pull of the future was there, and frankly, the outlook for future price increases has become grim this past week. So I’ll be downsizing to the 24" iMac, not new to this because my wife has the M1 and I’ve played with it.
What will be interesting and I’ll probably rebel, is leaving behind my OmniKey/102 keyboard (used for 36 years) and cheap Logitech mouse for the fancy, color-coordinated Apple keyboard and “Magic” mouse. That may not last long but I’ll really like the touchID on the keyboard and have used the Magic Mouse + BetterTouchTool before with good results.
For anyone who cares about the details, I went with a refurbished Blue M4 with 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD. I’ll be needing to add a hub to handle the peripherals no longer supported in the new iMacs. Probably just buy another copy of the one I use with my MBA or older MBP.
Before/After photos after it arrives and gets installed. Probably in a week. I’ll be using Migration Assistant as rebuilding from scratch would take days.
A Nuke and Pave might be worth the trouble. When I finally upgraded from an iMac to a Mac Studio, I didn’t want Intel binaries sneaking in when not needed and I used the multi-day process to do a “just in time” review of all the apps and get rid of those I really didn’t need any more.
Both paid and free apps and utilities, the time was well spent being forced to sort through them all one by one.
P.S. It also was a forced time to document install procedures (whether an app came from the Mac store or directly form a web site) and update copies of install keys / licenses, etc.
That would be my first choice. But I see very little downside to using Migration Assistant. An M4 is going to be a massive upgrade, with or without a few Intel leftovers.
Worse case, IMO, @tomalmy decides to do a clean install at a later, more convenient, time.
Ah! They should update the page since it is more useful these days for finding Intel apps than for finding 32-bit apps. I just used it to get rid of all my Adobe and Microsoft cruft (I don’t use either anymore).
I did surface the Users Guide for a 2006 iMac along with a non-runnable Welcome to Tiger.app! Since that was my first iMac (I think) that probably means that I’ve never done a Nuke and Pave.
In Activity Monitor, the “Kind” column will show either Intel or Apple. Of course, that’s only for things that are currently running. You can also do a Get Info on an application, and at the top, under General > Kind, it will say “Application (Intel)”, “Application (Universal)”, or “Application (Apple silicon)”.
But I honestly wouldn’t worry about accidentally having Intel apps. I guarantee you won’t notice a performance hit, especially jumping from Intel to M4. Rosetta 2 is great, and it will be faster than it was.
Since you have experienced the M1 24" iMac, sounds like you’ll be happy with the size. Otherwise, I’d say look at the Mac Mini and a monitor. The newer crop of 27" 4K/5K monitors with USB-C are pretty good and much more affordable than Apple’s, just without the amazing Apple build quality. Being able to just keep your monitor and upgrade the Mini is nice.
Asus has an $800 RRP 5k27 ProArt monitor now. I adore the idea of an iMac but I can’t see any justification for anybody to actually buy one vs a 5k27 display plus a Mac mini (or MacBook Air)
While I like having touchID and the Magic Mouse isn’t really that bad, and everything is color coordinated, I’ve left it open to go back to my Northgate keyboard and cheap Logitech mouse in the future.
I had to buy a small hub to get an SD card slot and a few extra USB-A slots. But now I’ve got parity with slots of the old iMac. It also looks like I’ll be fine with the missing 3".
I did give some thought to mini+27" monitor, or even docking a MacBookPro, but I really like the iMac.
Some of us don’t want a 27” screen. Too big for my needs and space. The all-in-one also cuts down on the cable mess. I also like the color options - I have red/pink.
