I’ve had my 27in Late ‘19 iMac since college and it’s worked absolutely wonderfully for me in the time I’ve had it. In ~2021, I replaced the memory up to 64gb, and haven’t upgraded it past Sonoma in an effort to keep it running at peak as an Intel Mac.

For the last year or so, I’ve considered replacing the hard drive with an SSD — it doesn’t seem too hard past removing the display, and I’ve done non-pro computer repairs in the past but I’ve always put it off because of the time and money, along with the inherent fear of cracking the glass. In the last few months, I’ve been able to tell the hard drive is failing; it’s been booting a lot slower, even the Flurry screensaver has become jittery after a while of being on, etc. 

I use it primarily for graphic design, web development, and light gaming, not much more than Minecraft. I don’t care in the slightest about Apple Intelligence features — I went to school for technical writing and am able to use an em-dash myself without an LLM telling me to use three of them in a row.

My M1 Pro MBP, meanwhile, is one of the most future proof computers I’ve ever used. I’ll leave it unplugged under our bed for a week at a time, pull it up, and immediately start working without hesitation. Apple silicon truly feels like the next step, and I’d love to have my main workstation using an M-series chip.



I can’t justify spending $1400 on a new M4Pro Mac Mini when a new SSD would be $200. At the same time, though, that’s totally my fear-of–spending brain talking, and I know that it would be an investment for my future, especially when I spent a bit more than that on the computer I’m still using to this day.

Thoughts? Is a Mac Mini really worth the money? I’ve seen a few people talk about booting off an external SSD, how feasible is that? Should I just get a docking station for my MacBook? Should I just give up, get a Pi, and learn how to get audio on Linux?

Upgrade or Replace 27in iMac?