Okay, so you know that iMac (mid-2011 model) I rescued from a thrift store for fifteen dollars? After some struggling and a little panic about the screen not working (it was just a cable that disconnected, no biggie), I got it back up on its feet. Hooray for me!
There’s just one problem, though. What the heck do I do with this thing? I gave some thought to turning it into an emulation station, but I’m not sure that a machine this old would be much good for 21st century console emulation (ie PS2, GameCube). I tried installing Dolphin for testing purposes, only to be told that the OS (El Capitan) was too old and that I’d need to download a legacy version instead; one that’s likely less optimized and slower than the latest ones.
I’ve been doing some research and have discovered that this iMac can run a more modern OS, Catalina, with a patch. Would that newer operating system even be feasible on such an old system, though? Years ago, I bought a netbook that someone foolishly installed Windows 10 on, and it was dreadfully slow. (The previous owners put Windows 10 on a damn netbook. What were they thinking?!)
Also, I’m quickly discovering that Mac OS doesn’t work the same way as Windows. When I downloaded and installed the Dolphin software, it just plopped it on the desktop, rather than letting me specify a folder and then creating a desktop shortcut to it. Is there a guide somewhere that would help guide me through the differences? Windows is intuitive for me after using it for a quarter of a century, but Mac OS, not so much. I think I’m going to need a Mac for Dummies book to really feel comfortable using this thing.
Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!
EDIT: This wasn’t mentioned in the original post, but I wanted to clarify that I’ve already put an SSD into this system. It’s the reason I had to open it up in the first place… and then put in the terrible, terrible screen screws. (Ugh, I’m still having flashbacks.)
Plex media center/server would be a good example of what you can do with it. As people keep saying, you need to drag the app inside of it into the applications folder, the thing showing on your desktop is the image, kind of the exe installer. When you’re done copying the app, drag the thing in your desktop to the trash to ‘eject’ it.
A media center isn’t a bad idea at all. I’ve got no end of things that play video games, but it would be great to have a machine that I can copy all my disc media to, and then watch at my leisure. You have no friggin’ idea how many DVDs I’ve got, but I never watch any of them because boo hoo, switching from my game system without an optical disc player to the one that DOES have an optical disc player, and actually getting up to put the disc into the machine, takes oh-so-much effort. Good lord, the 21st century has made us so lazy as a species.
I feel ya. You may need to switch the hdd to a proper ssd drive with enough capacity, but it’s a good use for an old imac