The "itches & glitches" in my venerable 2012 (late) iMac finally got me , forcing me to go kicking and screaming to our local 'Apple Authorized Reseller' to purchase a belated Christmas gift to myself. I can't complain as its given 8+ years with very little trouble, even though I'd found over the last couple of years that if i wanted to avoid no end of trouble with sleep/wake and related functions,( crashes & numerous error messages) I had to simply leave the hard drive spinning and only put the display to rest when not needed. Other than when I was away from the island, the hard drive had soldiered on spinning continuously without a complaint for 3 years and was not why I had to replace the computer. Peripherals, mostly associated with USB had gotten really weird and in truth, I only had 'some' function on one of the USB ports, none on the rest, couldn't connect to my router via cable, only WiFi, and even though in theory wireless, many of the issues affected my printer/scanner so badly that my first move was to replace the printer, feeling it may have been the culprit, as I wished to try the cheapest things first. ( my printer was a basic HP Ink-Hog maybe 4 years old ) SO here I am... The new iMac ( 21"- 1 TB) wasn't much more expensive than was the old girl in 2012, it was explained that the extra approximately $300 reflected the 'fusion drive' over standard mechanical hard-drive - I'll have to take their word on that.
One of the last things I tried with the old desktop was to attempt to download & install Catalina, as it had dropped and was in theory compatible so I figured I had little to lose. It took about 2 hours to download, but when it tried to install it came up with a warning about 'failed download' - something about a corrupted 'DMG file'. I blamed the old machine - but that was last straw so I replaced it and am very VERY satisfied. After yesterdays 'setting up' busy work, the new unit announced that 'Catalina" was ready to download ( the machine had shipped with Mojave) , so I went right ahead, and guess what ? -Same error message about the bad file-. I repeated the process and no better. The chap at the shop advised that it would probably be best to simply hold off until the 'next' roughly quarterly incremental update issued ( probably late March, unless there are a host of similar bugs in the system) and try again, with the belief that the bug or error was an 'Apple thing" and to err on the side of caution, not wanting to have it download then go sideways in the install phase. so we we shall see and I'm not overly upset at this point. as features like 'Dark Mode' are functional in Mojave and are fine.
Interestingly , the whole exercise highlighted the fact that shopping here in the tropics isn't quite like the bigger countries as when I first approached the one & only Authorized Reseller regarding possible troubleshooting & diagnostics, he advised very much against that approach, saying that IF it was found that parts were required, obtaining would be close to impossible. I asked about smaller shops ( there are a few) but he said that they normally source parts through the one resource available anyway, and if he couldn't supply his tech & service, he probably couldn't supply for any of the smaller computer shops either. Windows computers might be a bit different, but I suspect many of the same headaches happen as well, as with even many cars over 6 or 7 years when parts are concerned. on the plus side, when I purchased my first iMac in 2012, not that intended to 'shop abroad' I did compare same with same via Apple online stores, for Barbados, vs Canada, vs USA vs UK , finding Barbados just a hair less expensive all around , especially if one considered state or provincial sales taxes and did the foreign exchange calculations correctly.
One of the last things I tried with the old desktop was to attempt to download & install Catalina, as it had dropped and was in theory compatible so I figured I had little to lose. It took about 2 hours to download, but when it tried to install it came up with a warning about 'failed download' - something about a corrupted 'DMG file'. I blamed the old machine - but that was last straw so I replaced it and am very VERY satisfied. After yesterdays 'setting up' busy work, the new unit announced that 'Catalina" was ready to download ( the machine had shipped with Mojave) , so I went right ahead, and guess what ? -Same error message about the bad file-. I repeated the process and no better. The chap at the shop advised that it would probably be best to simply hold off until the 'next' roughly quarterly incremental update issued ( probably late March, unless there are a host of similar bugs in the system) and try again, with the belief that the bug or error was an 'Apple thing" and to err on the side of caution, not wanting to have it download then go sideways in the install phase. so we we shall see and I'm not overly upset at this point. as features like 'Dark Mode' are functional in Mojave and are fine.
Interestingly , the whole exercise highlighted the fact that shopping here in the tropics isn't quite like the bigger countries as when I first approached the one & only Authorized Reseller regarding possible troubleshooting & diagnostics, he advised very much against that approach, saying that IF it was found that parts were required, obtaining would be close to impossible. I asked about smaller shops ( there are a few) but he said that they normally source parts through the one resource available anyway, and if he couldn't supply his tech & service, he probably couldn't supply for any of the smaller computer shops either. Windows computers might be a bit different, but I suspect many of the same headaches happen as well, as with even many cars over 6 or 7 years when parts are concerned. on the plus side, when I purchased my first iMac in 2012, not that intended to 'shop abroad' I did compare same with same via Apple online stores, for Barbados, vs Canada, vs USA vs UK , finding Barbados just a hair less expensive all around , especially if one considered state or provincial sales taxes and did the foreign exchange calculations correctly.
Last edited:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram