Is my desktop computer obsolete?

To answer your question a 2015 iMac is considered obsolete by Apple meaning it can not run current versions of Mac OS due to its hardware simply not able to run current versions. In addition if it has a hardware failure an Apple Store cannot work on it due to parts availability.

That being said its age on its own is not the reason it is slow. It could be software that’s been installed or a peripheral that is in bad shape or other issues. Without reports on the system it is almost impossible for us to say where the problem is. My first recommendation is to run an EtreCheck report and post the report so experienced eyes can look it over and see what red flags may be waving.

What year model and size is your iMac..?

see > Identify your iMac model - Apple Support

The base model 21.5" iMac's only had 2.5" HDD's and were slow compared to iMac's with SSD's.

To save us from playing 20 questions,

Download and run the free version of EtreCheckPro, from > https://etrecheck.com/en/index.html

Then post the Report, as per > How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community

There are a lot of other reasons other than age for a computer to be slow. One is what den.thred mentioned and others are 3rd party software like any "cleaning", "optimizing", "speed-up", anti-virus or VPN apps. A very good way to get an idea of what the problem is to download and run Etrecheck. 

Copy the report

and use the Additional Text button to paste the report in your reply.

Then we can examine the report and see if we can determine the cause of the problem.

If you haven't installed and run any of those apps that I mentioned above it's probably what den.thed suggested and there's a relative easy way to fix that.

The responses you received from Apple Support were inaccurate at best. I admit to being unjustifiably charitable in that characterization. My inclination is to ignore everything they said.

EtreCheck is likely to help. Post its report.

ExplainitomelikeIm2yrsold wrote:

The CS person also stated another reason it may be slow to load is because I "sleep" my computer when not in use. Customer Service said I should "Shut Down" my computer when it's not being used. CS stated that when in "sleep" mode the computer is still "doing stuff" behind the scenes...and that stuff being done while in sleep mode has to be sorted through before anything will load and be ready for use. Is this true?

Mac OS X / macOS is based on Unix (although with a different user interface than most Unix distributions), and it's not uncommon for other Unix-based systems to stay up for weeks and months at a time.

It may be useful to "Restart" or "Shut Down" the computer every once in a while, in case there are any cleanups it has been putting off until reboot time. However, I ran a Late 2009 iMac for weeks and sometimes months at a time without shutting it down – just putting the machine to Sleep when I wasn't using it. We're not still living in Classic Mac OS days when a single buggy application could scribble over memory belonging to other applications or to the operating system, thus crashing the machine, and requiring a forced reboot.

So I'd take what this "CS person" said about Sleep mode with a grain of salt. The main disadvantage of Sleep on a Mac is that there seems to be some sort of long-running problem with Sleep and unwanted dismounting of external USB volumes. If you run into those, avoiding Sleep may be a method of getting around the problem.

ExplainitomelikeIm2yrsold wrote:

... Anyway, so the essence of the report I came away with...my computer is old. Actually it stated (I guess in some circles) that my desktop machine is considered "vintage."

Fair enough, but "old" is not sufficient to explain the problems you're encountering. I am composing this reply on a Mac much older than yours and it's not experiencing anything like what you describe.

Email works fine, everything works as it should. Waking from sleep works as it does with any Mac. Newer websites (like this one) require Firefox, but this Mac is as fast as it has ever been. It never gets shut down — a subject I hesitated to comment upon before, but the Apple representative you spoke to was way out in left field with that suggestion. Shutting it down will accomplish the exact opposite of what they claimed.

That also happens to be its original hard disk drive. As such I suppose it's an outlier, but then again it has never been affected by any garbage such as Old Toad alluded to. No Microsoft, no Google... but those are subjects for another day.

rkaufmann87 wrote:

That being said its age on its own is not the reason it is slow.

... as proven above.

If you would like help with your relatively new Mac, you will need to post the EtreCheck report. Or, do what Apple says and buy a new Mac. They won't mind.

Below are instructions for EtreCheck:

It will help us get a good idea of what is causing your problem if you provide a report of your system, that way we do not have to play 20 questions with you. The report we are requesting does NOT provide any personal information and is extremely safe to use. Please navigate towww.Etrecheck.com and download the free version of EtreCheck. Once you have you downloaded the app and installed it, please run the report and save it. This report will help us get a good idea what has been installed on your system and help us be able to diagnose what may be wrong.

When you have your report, you can attach it when you reply to this message and we can then review it and help you determine what is needed to get your system running well again. 

For instructions on how to download your EtreCheck report and attach it to your reply to this message please click How to use the Add Text Feature When Post… - Apple Community It is helpful to us if you download the report to your Desktop.

As John has requested please post the full Etrecheck report as follows;

Copy the report

and use the Additional Text button to paste the report in your reply.

Then we can examine the report and see if we can determine the cause of the problem.

ExplainitomelikeIm2yrsold wrote:

Thanks Servant of Cats....You're the first and only person to respond to the SECOND part of my question...regarding "Sleep" mode. Being the technological idiot that I am, I do not understand what you're attempting to explain in the last paragraph. "...some sort of long-running problem with Sleep and unwanted dismounting of external USB volumes." Which means what? I don't even know what "USB" means or what its' function is. Can you explain that statement in layman's' terms?

USB (Universal Serial Bus) is a type of interface that you use to connect accessories to your computer. There are several types and shapes of USB connectors – USB-A, USB-C, etc. – but the term "USB" has been around so long that I assumed that the term would be familiar to you.

You can get external storage devices for computers, and these attach in a variety of ways. Some of the ways that external storage devices attach – or have attached – to Macs, include USB and Thunderbolt. Thunderbolt being a much faster, and generally much more expensive, way of attaching a high-end SSD (solid state drive).

To use a volume on a storage device, the computer has to mount it, and before the computer stops using it, you want the computer to have a chance to dismount the volume in an orderly fashion. If you don't dismount a drive properly, you take the risk that there is some data cached in memory that should have been written to the drive, but that has not been written to the drive yet. That is, you take a risk of data loss or corruption.

When you put a computer to Sleep, the operating system has to save enough information to restore the previous state when the computer wakes up. It's one thing to do this for the contents of memory, but I am not convinced that it is always possible to save and restore the low-level state of all I/O operations and devices in a reliable way.

It would appear that when you put Macs to Sleep (when there are mounted volumes on external USB drives) and then wake up the Macs, the Macs sometimes believe that an external volume has been dismounted improperly. This potentially can lead to data loss, but whether or not it does, you get annoying messages.

Click on the underlined Etrecheck link above to go to the Etrecheck website. Download the free version and run. Follow the instructions above to add the report to your reply.

Apple considers a 2015 iMac Vintage, but not yet obsolete.

click here ➜ Vintage and Obsolete Mac Products.

There are many reasons a Mac can be slow. Least of which is age, if properly maintained.