Often times people ask me which Mac would I recommend for them to purchase. Everyone has different needs and wants so it is hard to create a written post that defines which machine would be the best to purchase. Apple is changing machine configurations a few times a year so anything I would write here would likely be superseded within a few months anyway. So what can I put in writing that would be universal to anyone looking for a new Mac?
In the last few weeks I have had the opportunity to setup a few new machines for people. I have setup a new MacBook Air and a couple of iMacs. From these experiences, here is the recommendation I will be sticking with for 2019.
In 2019, I vow to make this single recommendation to anyone that asks me “Which Mac should I Purchase?”. By a Mac with a Solid State Disk Drive (SSD)!
Some of you might ask why this is so important. Why is an SSD so much better? There are no moving parts to an SSD. Rather, information is stored in microchips. Conversely, a hard disk drive uses a mechanical arm with a read/write head to move around and read information from the right location on a storage platter. This difference is what makes SSD so much faster.
In recent years, beginning with Apple’s Sierra operation system (10.12), Apple has been optimizing there operating system for faster solid state drives. In fact, in this years release of Mojave (10.14), Macs with spinning disks are terribly slow. Very noticeably slower than a machine with a SSD. If you check the activity monitor you can see that the disk is continuously thrashing as it reads and writes and a spinning disk just can’t keep up.
Many of you may be under the mistaken impression that all Macs have Solid State Drives. That’s not exactly the case. If you are in the market for a laptop, you are pretty much golden. All the MacBooks, MacBook Air’s, and MacBook Pros that are current model machines are now outfitted with a solid state disk. I can definitely argue that some of these machines are better choices than others depending on a persons individual needs but all of these pass George’s Disk Test. They have SSD’s installed by default.
If you are looking for a desktop, the MacPro, and now the new Mac mini are all outfitted with the solid state disk too. But many people are looking for an iMac and that’s where thing become a problem. iMacs are still sold with spinning disks in the default configuration. In fact, the lower cost iMacs not only ship with a spinning disk, they ship with a 5400 rpm disk. We could talk about what the difference in rpm speed is but suffice it to say, these disks were shipping in Macs 15 years ago. That is how old 5400 rpm drives are. These disks are way past prime and brand new 3 ghz iMacs equipped with these disks are miserable to use, difficult to update, and overall a poor Mac experience. There is nothing worse than dropping over a grand on a new Mac only to find it is no faster than your 8 year old machine.
In some configurations, Apple ships a Fusion drive in new iMacs. A Fusion Drive is two separate drives ‘fused’ together. It contains a Serial ATA drive (that’s a regular hard drive with a spinning plate inside) and a solid-state drive.
MacOS places the more frequently accessed files on the flash storage part of the drive so that they are always quick to obtain, while less frequently used data is stored on the hard drive.
The benefit of this solution is that you get the best of both worlds. Faster operation thanks to the fact that the data you use most regularly is accessed quickly from the Flash part of the Fusion Drive, and a lots of storage space for keeping all your files, photos, movies and more backed up. While this is much better than a standard spinning drive only configuration, it is still not as fast as a solid state drive for all your storage. If this is all you can afford, it is acceptable but a better solution might be to get the SSD only in the Mac and add a low cost external drive to expand your storage.
So if you are purchasing a new iMac, stay away from spinning drive machines, Spend performance you want in a new computer by selecting a machine with a SSD built in. You will be much happier with your new machine.
So what will I tell people who tell me the SSD machines are just too expensive? If you can’t swing the extra cost for a machine that performs the way a Mac should…. perhaps you need to be looking at a new PC instead of a Mac. They are certainly less expensive.