Info:
Link my button!
Follow me!
Retro Tech May - May 19th - My iMac - and why I'm joining the dark side!
Using the Windows XP computer is surprisingly decent in 2025 but it's far from optimal. For starters I had to use a patch to allow me to use more than 4gb of RAM and even with 16gb of RAM it's not the fastest and most seamless experience. Tabs take a long time to load at first, sometimes tabs straight up crash and there's always this sense of "it can happen anytime so I should keep my usage limited" and most of these issues are more of a Windows XP limitation. Even with way more RAM than it was built to handle, Windows XP can't tap into more than a few GB of RAM at a time which I assume is why the perfomance isn't the greatest and some more demanding websites can cause some degree of lag too. However I would be first to say these limitations don't make browing impossible or even hard but it's far from a clean experience.
Lately I've been slowly getting into older Apple devices mainly due to a small youtuber I've been watching lately talking in detail about old macs and how usable they are to the point I started growing curious. So I searched around. I found a 2010 iMac, 21"5', custom built with the most high end official parts apple would provide to users as a Build-To-Order service for that year. All that for 30 bucks plus shipping. And those 30 bucks were so worth it. Despite using parts from the era and only 4GB of RAM (which I can easily upgrade to 32 if I wanted) it was a significantly smoother browsing experience than it's been on XP.
I'm running Mac OS X 10.9.5 Mavericks on my iMac, main reason as to why I picked that version is because it's the last version before Apple abandoned the skeumorphic look but it's also the oldest version which allows you to connect to the iTunes store and server - and that's very important to me as someone who still buys music on iTunes on a weekly basis. Firefox Dynasty allows me to use the latest version of Firefox on Mavericks. For fast YouTube playback I'm also using h264ify which forces YouTube to stream H.264 videos instead of VP8 and VP9, leading to a better performance and less resource use for a comparable playback quality.
Obviously when it comes to gaming, the Windows XP computer takes the cake easily and I won't even entertain or try gaming on the iMac however when I'm not gaming I'm pretty much exclusively using the iMac at this point due to how snappy it is not to mention bootup to having both Bluesky and Discord open it takes the iMac about a minute meanwhile it takes the Windows XP computer well over 5 minutes, most of which being turning on Supermium. Using Firefox on the iMac and gaming on the XP machine provides me with an extended combo of great productivity and a great gaming experience. Windows XP is still okay with browsing the web but you can feel it was not meant to handle modern day web. That's not an issue on Mavericks - likely because it's over a decade newer but also due to everything being better optimised than it is on XP. When it comes to raw horsepower the XP PC is beefier but that doesn't add up to much in this case.
The reason why I mention joining the dark side is due to me being a former Apple hater years ago. I wouldn't unironically look down on mac users no - even back then I knew better. But I couldn't truly understand why people liked apple devices so much. Now I get it. And given Microsoft's pivot to focusing on AI and also being an overall scummy company I've been considering moving away from Windows once Windows 10 fully kicks the bucket. I will keep using Windows 10 for the forseeable future, even after end of support, but my move forward for the future is Linux. the iMac supporting iTunes really takes care of one big concerns I had in regards to a lack of software support. Most apps I can find an alternative to just fine, even if it's slightly worse or more inconvenient. However iTunes is one of the few cases where there is no such thing as an alternative and it's a piece of software that already is dreadful to use on Windows, let alone on Linux via Wine or whatever. The iMac makes my move to Linux ever so slightly easier and it's the perfect multimedia device. Despite being 15 years old it does everything I want it to do and more and that's why I love it! If you want a computer you can browse the web with for under 50 bucks an iMac from around 2010 is the perfect fit. You can use an older version of Mac OS like I do, use the latest officially supported version on the device like most do or you can even unofficially put it on the latest version (though I can't guarantee it will run great and in that case I suggest upgrading the RAM to 32 gigs since it's very easy to do so and maybe consider getting an SSD). Anyway as always; Be kind, rewind.