I like NUC/1L small form factor Intel/AMD PCs and use them for most of my computing needs/wants (running Windows (10), Linux, Proxmox etc.) these days. Mostly bought second hand on Adverts or simply pulled from the WEEE recycling cages while the corpo guy turns a blind eye.
It's amazing/shocking what people throw out. So far I've repurposed a few small form factor PCs, a laptop, a BNIB front/rear car dashcam kit, two Android TV boxes, and miscellaneous other bits and pieces...A lot of it is from 3rd or 4th tier manufacturers which can't keep pace with Microsft's software upgrades, ergo cheap and nasty a lot of it. You can't sell bargain basement-priced computers using leading edge components. Does that make my meaning clearer?
Not all the time. If you don't see any difference(s) between Apple and Microsoft then this interaction becomes almost obsolete
Most hardware is commodity stuff these days. But companies try to "innovate" to make it seem like constant upgrading is a necessity even when it's not for what most people need to do on a computer.
I like NUC/1L small form factor Intel/AMD PCs and use them for most of my computing needs/wants (running Windows (10), Linux, Proxmox etc.) these days. Mostly bought second hand on Adverts or simply pulled from the WEEE recycling cages while the corpo guy turns a blind eye.
It's reached a stage now where your posts are beginning to read as obtuse. Tell me what it is you don't understand about the bolded section of my prior post and I'll try to help you understand and explain more clearly.
Keep the iMac as a standby machine, you never know! By the time you de-personalise it, advertise it, etc. it might be more cost-effective to keep it. If Apple "obsoletes", to coin a phrase, your printer, scanner, DSLR software, etc, having the networked iMac as part of your setup could pay dividends, at least saving the cost of new cables or connectors.
www.theverge.com
www.neowin.net
I'm well aware of what you can and can't do on this and have always taken time to configure stuff like Anti-Virus, Anti-Malware, Automatic Backup, OS Updates etc carefully. At the time Microsoft were trying to salvage/rebuild their reputation and implemented "unstoppable" "we know better than you" stuff in relation to OS updates. They got terrible flack for it. The only way around it was using Group Policy Editor, hardly appropriate to a home environment. For me it was more a case of the final straw, Windows was just too much hard work. An OS should be like good plumbing; unseen, unheard, reliable, invisible. Windows was unreliable, troublesome, meddlesome, shouty and high maintenance. And having gone through so many major versions (Vista, 7, 8 and 10) in less than a decade, with all the related inconsistencies, incompatibilities and hardware issues I'd had enough. It was time to go a different route. Mac OS, all though not without some shortcomings, is in an altogether different league. It's like comparing a Trabant and a Bentley.
The iMac is still alive. I'm holding back on buying a 5k display for the Mac mini (waiting to see what Apple might release to replace the Studio display) and so I am using the iMac as the display for the Mac mini. Once I have a new display the iMac is gone: I've had multiple machines in the past and I don't like it. Happy to replace cables and will sort out any issues with peripheral compatibility as they arise. I have a NAS for stuff like sharing, Time Machine etc.
The generalisation is untrue - you can't upgrade components on any of the SOC computers.