Thanks Joe, replying from the tiny iPhone in park which is rare might et some typos here
I usually resort to dictation on the iPhone.
The external for an internal not even sure if it has a thunderbolt
seems kind of crazy no?
If it doesn't have Thunderbolt, then it will almost certainly have Firewire 800 which would be satisfactory for use with an inexpensive external enclosure, like the one I referenced.
would you bother even hauling it in Tuesday or it’s just a waste of time and energy you’d have to leave it there there’s no chance they could just fix it quickly
It all depends on the particular Apple Store and how busy they are. If all they do is run diagnostics, that shouldn't take too long. If they have to open it up, which is highly likely, it will take at least a few hours, if they elect to send it to Austin for work, you are looking at a week to ten days. In any case, it is unlikely to be a quick fix.
Or what you’re saying it’ could be beyond just replacing the internal hard drive it could be more serious so you can’t tell a buyer it could just be to get a new hard drive soon?
As I said, that is your decision.
I have no problem getting the Mac mini and a third-party external monitor or maybe a 24 inch iMac now
I was preparing to do that and then decide that you know what I’ll just keep this a couple more years until security updates phase out boom and then drive X shows this
As long as you are going to the Apple store, why not just go ahead and get the M1 Mac mini?
NOTE: the Apple Store only stocks the basic configurations, so if you intend getting more memory or a larger SSD, they can order it, or you can order online and have it drop-shipped directly to your home for the same price.
but I was hoping to get it you know a good 400 to 600 for the computer
ah you were saying just ask 300 but what’s the exact text you would write in the ad ?
What you want to get, what you can get for it, and that it is worth are three perhaps very different things. I haven't shopped for used Macs in years and have no real idea of its worth but a DuckDuckGo search turned up
DankPads and
Mac Prices as possible information sources. DankPads scans eBay daily. There are also several sites that offer to buy your iMac, which might be a viable alternative in this case. If you take the used car salesman's attitude of
caveat emptor then you can get whatever the market will bear and likely more than its actual worth. But that is between you and your conscience, and I won't attempt to go there.
Would you bother taking it in to the appointment genius bar or just call it a day now?
I am not you, and I would never attempt to tell you what to do. That is your decision. But since you asked what I would do.
I would jump on my iMac and,
- go to the Apple Store and place an order for an M1 Mac mini with 8 CPU and 8 GPU cores, 16GB memory, and at least 512 GB SSD
- go to Amazon and order the monitor of my choice
- put the iMac up for sale as is with a note about the hard drive and take what I could get or add an external Thunderbolt or Firewire HD boot drive like this one and sell it without a notice at a higher price.
WHAT I WOULD NOT DO
- I would not spend more than $150 (the price of Firewire 800, 1TB external HD and enclosure) on the iMac.
