2nd hand iMac won’t let me install any software. Help!

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683

This link has the updaters to go to 10.15.7 which your iMac can go to. Look at that link.

Also, https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201468 needs to be read quite carefully for Boot Camp, including the need to use a USB installer and also an important footnote pertaining to iMacs that explains how to address a message that may pop up during the Windows install. I would do the update to 10.15.7 before attempting to install Boot Camp. Windows 10 did not even exist when your iMac and its original 10.9.5 MacOS came out in 2013 or 2014.

You really need to update to the latest MacOS your iMac can take (10.15.7) if you want to run any current software.

After you update to 10.15.7 you will have a very capable computer.

These Discussions are a User Forum, other users respond to questions, sort of like a crowd-sourced information center for Macs and other Apple products. Apple employees do not monitor the Discussions, but a few Community Specialists post from time to time to help with simple troubleshooting and to point users with questions to articles in the Apple knowledge base that may have answers.

Your 2014 computer is probably classified as "obsolete" by Apple (or will be sometime later this year). Its hardware does not support the latest MacOS, including the graphics card, processor, etc. There is not anything that can be done about that.

The Big Sur operating system (MacOS 11) requirements are available online: https://support.apple.com/kb/sp833?locale=en_US It does say iMac 2014 or later required.

So your Mac can go up to Catalina, 10.15.7, and the latest version of Word runs fine on that. I have a 2013 Mac laptop MacBook Air that runs the latest version of Word. The challenge would be getting an older version of GarageBand. You could do that (as I did for my 2013 laptop) if you had previously had an Apple ID account and previously downloaded a version of Garageband. Then when you connect that same Apple ID account to another Mac, even an old one, it offers to download whatever the latest version is for that Mac. I have several Macs on 10.15.7 and the download was offered for the next earlier version, as the latest runs only on Big Sur (MacOS 11) and mine are all on 10.15.7 (my choice to not yet move to Big Sur).

You may need to call Apple Support and see if they can help you with GarageBand.

I am not familiar with Boot Camp but I know that virtual machine software like Parallels does allow the latest version of Windows to be used.

P.S. What version of the MacOS are you using on this 2014 iMac?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683 has links for updaters to 10.15.7 Catalina, which I believe is the latest version of the MacOS for your iMac. With Catalina, you can run most third party commercial software, including the latest version of MS-Office, Word, etc.

As I said before, I am not familiar with Boot Camp but you should be able to use it on your iMac.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201468

BigNoseChimp wrote:

#1 - It's a late2013 version of iMac, and so the os won't upgrade beyond 10.9.5. Word requires 10.14+ I believe, so that won't install.

Dan.

That model iMac can run 10.15.7 as the latest system.

There are two free alternatives to Word you could try: LibreOffice and SoftMaker FreeOffice 2018. 

As for GarageBand I think you're out of luck.

You could try to find a 2016 version of Word. I don’t know what you can do about GarageBand.