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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Desktops > Yosemite and older 64-bit capable iMac

Yosemite and older 64-bit capable iMac
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Thorzdad
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Apr 7, 2015, 09:30 AM
 
I have a late-2009 21" iMac. It is, I believe, the oldest type of iMac that is approved to run Yosemite, due to its ability to boot into 64-bit mode. To do this, you merely reboot while pressing the 6 and 4 keys. The iMac's default, though, is to run in 32-bit mode.

Question...Does Yosemite force this older iMac into 64-bit mode automatically, or does one still have to do the 6 and 4 dance whenever you have to reboot?
     
P
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Apr 7, 2015, 01:13 PM
 
Yosemite always uses the 64-bit mode. No dance required.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
Chongo
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Apr 7, 2015, 01:22 PM
 
I have a mid 2007 iMac running Yosemite.
45/47
     
P
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Apr 7, 2015, 01:28 PM
 
Yes, all the aluminum iMacs support Yosemite.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
sdp4462
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Apr 7, 2015, 08:23 PM
 
I wouldn't rush into Yosemite. If you use RSS, you haven't been able to read an RSS page in Safari since Lion and 5.1.7, which is what I am stuck using. Most all web pages still work for me. I don't feel like Apple has done a great job of selling their iOSes, and lately they have done an especially poor job of responding to customer concerns, both hardware and software.
     
Thorzdad  (op)
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Apr 8, 2015, 07:59 AM
 
I'm probably not ever going to put Yosemite on my iMac. Heck, it's still running Snow Leopard.
I was asking because my wife uses the same iMac as I do at her office, and their IT contractor recently updated them all to Yosemite, and it's been nothing but problems ever since. So, one thing I wondered about was whether or not Yosemite forced those iMacs into 64-bit mode.

Thanks, all.
     
panjandrum
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Apr 8, 2015, 12:17 PM
 
Originally Posted by Thorzdad View Post
I'm probably not ever going to put Yosemite on my iMac. Heck, it's still running Snow Leopard.
I was asking because my wife uses the same iMac as I do at her office, and their IT contractor recently updated them all to Yosemite, and it's been nothing but problems ever since. So, one thing I wondered about was whether or not Yosemite forced those iMacs into 64-bit mode.

Thanks, all.
Sadly, I can report similar reactions from the Education and Graphics Design communities; things just haven't worked properly since the Snow Leopard era. I can't begin to describe the level of frustration I hear from users every day, and we're talking about users who were excellent users with Snow Leopard. I'm also seeing a lot of young users (K-8) being introduced to the Mac and never figuring out how it works due to all the weird backwards scrolling, missing scroll bars, etc. Never saw these problems under Snow Leopard, where everything pretty much worked as it obviously should work. Now, when a student clicks the Applications folder in the dock, and they see a bunch of icons and no scroll bars (or scroll bars so small and indistinct arrowless that they never realize they are scroll bars) they usually just use the arrow keys to move through the icons. It's just frustration after frustration for these users with no indication from Apple that it's all going sideways. It's really a shame, as I never thought I would be in the position where, when somebody says "why should I buy a Mac" and having to answer "I'm not sure." But I've simply seen far, far too many problems, and far too much user frustration to whole-heartedly recommend Mac systems as I did through Snow Leopard (well, except for the 7.5 era of course.) So the longer you can stick to SL, the happier you will probably be. You'll need to switch to a browser that still supports it properly however, as Safari on SL is really outdated. I suggest Firefox, which seems to work great.
     
P
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Apr 8, 2015, 12:39 PM
 
Well, this is maybe TAN, but... personally I'm on Mavericks and will probably update to Yosemite with the Photos app is released - or not, and just skip to whatever the next version is. I was always a late switcher, but Yosemite doesn't have a feature I want right now (Continuity/Handoff doesn't work on any of my current Macs without that hack, and I'm wary of hacks). Lion was Not Good, but Mountain Lion and especially Mavericks brought useful improvements - memory compression and better battery life in particular.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
Thorzdad  (op)
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Apr 8, 2015, 12:47 PM
 
I've been using Firefox exclusively for several years now, so no worries there.

I hear you about SL. It's as bulletproof an OS as Apple has ever made.
My wife's office recently updated to Yosemite. I think they were all on Mountain Lion. She's had a bunch of issues ever since, and checking about the 64-bit boot was one thing on my checklist to look into.

Mainly, she's having the following problems...
• Part of her job is to create biography packets for couples (it's an adoption agency) and she's been using Pages for years to do this. Apparently, the version of Pages that Yosemite installs is a complete piece of crap. Features in previous versions are missing, and there appears to be big discrepancies between how the Pages document looks on-screen and how it prints. That was never the case before. I had thought I read somewhere that any older versions of Apple apps get moved, and not overwritten, but she hasn't been able to find any sign of the old version of Pages.

• The office printer, which is what they print those biographies on, isn't working well with Yosemite, despite being supported. It seems to default all documents to printing duplexed.

• She has a "mission-critical" desktop app that requires Java. It will not launch in Yosemite, even after installing Java 8. I traded email with the developer, and it appears the app requires Java 6. So, now she's going to have to both uninstall Java 8 and install Java 6. Apparently, this isn't as simple as it sounds. From what I can tell, this will involve deleting buried files and entering a few Terminal commands. This isn't something she's comfortable with, and not something I can easily direct her on remotely (she works about 60 miles away).

So, yeah, no love for Yosemite here, that's for sure. I've thought about going to Mavericks, but I just can't see the point right now. I'm a graphic designer and everything works just fine. The only issue I run into is I will occasionally get a file from a client that was created in one of Adobe's CC apps, and they won't open for me, unless re-saved as a legacy file. No real biggie, though.
     
Chongo
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Apr 8, 2015, 02:41 PM
 
For those of us still using iDVD, the photo slide show was broken after SL. The slides are discolored or B&W.
45/47
     
   
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