How long should an imac last?

I will try and answer all your concerns.

1) Do not worry about what happened to your iMac, sounds like an end of Friday off the production line, unlucky. Keep to all Mac products, be careful on 3rd party software, use Intego Virusbarrier x6. Also get MacPaw clean my mac this will keep all your registry in tip top condition. Other than that enjoy the iMac for what you want to do, it's just a tool to make your life easier and have fun. It will last 5 years plus......10 years will be optimistic if you want to keep up with the operating system of the day even if all the hardware is still functioning well.

2) if you have the budget buy the best you can afford, at least 8gb RAM. I use the on-line Apple store, their delivery of hardware is excellent and you can customise your computer, I have used it for two years and never had a problem and you are covered for dead on arrival with a 14 days return window for full replacement, after that you get full AppleCare warranty for 1 year included so your drive, screen, hard disc etc is all covered. Would never recommend second hand as you may inherit someone else's problems. Avoid buying 1st generation products like Retina MacBook Pro as quality improves once the initial production run surge is levelled off and any gremlins are sorted, this takes 6-12 months.

My experience of Apple is very good after three years. I have iMac 27", Minimac, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, 2 iPads, 2 iPhones, 2 Timecapsules, 2 airport extreme, 2 airport express, atv2..........alot of hardware and software. Only two problems were ever experienced and only on the iMac (hard drive was replaced after 2 years and the optic drive after 3 years) it was used heavily every day and my Apple retailer repaired it same day. It is still working perfectly and I treat it with love and care, if we move house it gets packed in original packaging to avoid knocks and vibration.

Never forget the other side of the coin, the beautiful smooth working well integrated software, no other company on the planet does it this well. It is a package, it needs you to go online to your Apple store and browse through the product range, read about the features and get excited by what it can do for you, pick what you need and set an upper limit budget. Do your research first like you are with this post and good luck.

It is hard for us to diagnose the issues you had with the old computer. The startup issues could just have been a corrupt directory issue which could have been easily repaired with running Disk Utility from your system installer disc.

Motherboard and hard drive? I suppose it is possible if one failed that it could take out the other. Still, we don't know much about "a local repair shop". Was this a place where people really know about Macs?

I have a Mac that is 10 years old and running well. Now that's not to say that Macs made today are the same. Think about modern cars made of plastic and compare those to 40 year old cars made of metal. Which ones will still be on the road 30 years later? Here's Apple's official statement (basically 5 years):

Vintage and obsolete products - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1752

Apple's software support is also a nominal 3-5 years. After 5 years it's rare to find updates that apply to your computer.

The above is not saying anything about how long hardware should last, just that after 5 years they don't even want you walking in the door with an older computer because as far as they are concerned it's ready for the recycle pile.

With 4 years I would say your 2008 computer met a slightly early demise. On the other hand if you had walked into an Apple Store with it they would probably have looked at you somewhat askance and honestly, totally fail to comprehend why you aren't already looking for a newer machine. We bought an iPhone last December and when I asked about how many years the battery would last the salesperson said, "Oh, at least two years, by which time you will be wanting to replace it with a newer model anyway." Okay, should I be anticipating still using this iPhone 6 years from now?

Apple's doing the reverse of the razor and blades. They're virtually giving the blades away (the OS), and charging an arm and a leg for the razor, the computer. And much money to be made on the locked up Mac "ecosystem." Apple gets 30% of an app that's sold, and everything outside the Gatekeeper walled garden, for which developers must pay $99 -- and set by default in ML to exclude non-Gatekeeper approved, non MAS apps (and how many users will even realize it's there or can be changed?) is virtually, effectively blacklisted. So, even though they're giving the blades away, they're making it up quite handily elsewhere.

Anyway, at this rate, the longevity of a computer won't matter much. It will be nothing more than a terminal to access the Cloud. That was Jobs' vision.

Your iMac probably needed some software diagnosis and repair which you could've gotten from either an Apple store, an Apple authorized reseller/repair center or right here in these forums.

If you took your iMac to just a general computer repair center, chances are these people didn't know much or any at all about Macs or Apple computers.

Lots of very knowledgeable and extremely helpful Mac users here.

Turning the Mac on and off randomly when it won't start properly is not good for the OS or components.

Also, how careful were you when transporting it?

iMacs are not laptops. The components and HD in iMacs aren't really designed for constant transportation for prolong periods of time. iMacs are desktop computers and are designed as such.

Three years is a very short time for a Mac to go completely bad, but since you admit that is was not that we'll cared for and didn't do any thing to solve your issues earlier on, it may be possible an iMac could undergo fairly catastrophic failure.

Relatively speaking, hardware-wise, you should be able to get between 6-8 years of useful life out of a Mac.

In my case, I pushed this to almost 10 years.

That said, Apple tends to decide to obsolete Macs within a 4-5 year range by limiting what hardware will run their latest operating system. Sometimes it can be sooner than this.

Doesn't mean that the Mac isn't still useful past this time, it just means Apple will no longer support it or have any more OS software or software updates for it.

I think your iMac just needed some early repair/maintenance.

Put it this way. Based upon the performance of Macs 1990-2000 I personally feel you could buy a Mac (especially a tower desktop which are rare now) in 2000 and fairly anticipate with a few upgrades in hardware and software to see at least >5 years use out of it:

I used a IIci dating from 1989 until mid 1990s when I was given a Quadra (IIci still worked). ~7 years service

I used a 1993 Quadra 650 until 2001 when I bought a used G3 beige (Quadra still worked). ~ 9 years service

I used a 1998 G3 beige until 2005 (replaced because web absolutely required a G4 but G3 still worked). ~ 7 years service

I am using a 2002 Quicksilver as I write. 10+ years service

My only recollection of hardware issues was routine replacement of PRAM battery and one failed hard drive.

Do I feel I could expect the same if I bought a Mac today? We're not supposed to speculate so I cannot say my answer. 🙂

That said, Apple tends to decide to obsolete Macs within a 4-5 year range by limiting what hardware will run their latest operating system. Sometimes it can be sooner than this.

Doesn't mean that the Mac isn't still useful past this time, it just means Apple will no longer support it or have any more OS software or software updates for it.

I think your iMac just needed some early repair/maintenance.

I kind of feel we're getting closer to the point where hardware and software last about the same amount of time, vs. the good old days where as long as you could tolerate running old software your hardware was still running strong. This really does remind me of cars. By law the manufacturers have to provide parts for 20 years. So why produce a car that lasts more than 20 years? If your software support plan is only designed with a 4 year lifespan in mind...

8GB because right now a new Mac will come with Mountain Lion which requires 2 GB minimum which means in reality twice for smoother running, that so 4 GB, but in a few more OS upgrades (if things go as they have for the past 20 years) you will likely need 4 minimum which means 8GB in reality. If you're doing video it is nice to have a RAM edge.

I guess if you're strapped for funds you could postpone on the RAM in the hope it comes down in price but check out all the specifications of the Mac you want to buy. You don't want to get one where you are having to throw out old RAM to fit in new because then you are just buying it all over again. And certainly make sure it is one where you can do it yourself. Heaven forbid getting 4GB in one with RAM soldered in or where you have to pay Apple to install more.

One factor affecting longevity is heat. A computer used in a climate-controlled environment can last longer than one used in widely varing temps (an outdoor gig in Houston, Texas in August would not be a happy place for any computer!)

Heat degrades some logic board components. We had a G3 iMac CRT from 2000 that worked fine here in an air-conditioned house but started to fail when we gave it to our daughter, who lived in an apartment without A/C. After Portland Oregon had an unseasonably hot August when it would get to 90F (32C) in her apartment, the iMac started acting up and eventually would not start. That model had no fan--it relied on convection cooling, which was not enough for that environment. Even after returning it to our comfortable house, it would "sorta" work but not very well after the "heat stroke." She replaced it with a Mac Mini which has shown no tendency to overheat in summer.

For years, all Macs have enjoyed thermal protection that shut down the computer if the CPU got too hot, but this does not mean other components on the logic board won't slowly "cook" over time in continuous high-temp environments.

My current iMac (details below) is my first for my own use. I've always had towers but could not justify a Mac Pro for what I do today. Its fans are very quiet. The only time I heard them speed up to handle higher heat was while booted into Windows (via BootCamp and Windows was doing one of tiose thigns it does that runs the hard drive overtime. In OSX, internal temps reported are seldom over 100F (38C) ina house that is a constant 76F.

That said, no current iMac has the massive fans found in most tower computers; there's not room. There are software packages that let you set a particular fan speed in known hot comditions that wil run the fans faster than what the default Apple programming calls up. The most common is SMC Fan Control. I use it on an older MacBook Pro of a vintage when their video cards could fail under hot conditions. The fault was with an particular NVIDEA video card, not entire series. Mine is still OK, largely because I've stayed aware of its heat issues and use the above utility to kick up the fans when I know I'm doing anything that will make the computer run hotter.

If your outdoor gigs are more often that not is high-temp seasons, you may need to consider a Mac Pro with its most robust cooling. It's heavy and you'd also have to lug a monitor, but it may be the better choice than Macs built with a compact form factor that basically rely on smaller fans typically used in laptops.

Mountain Lion just came out. We don't know what Apple plans for the future, and they are keeping us on our toes by bringing out two OS upgrades in one year. Part of the decision is how important you feel it is to run a newer OS. I think even ML excluded some 2007 Macs, and certainly even some newer ones for some features (Airplay).

Mac OS X: System requirements for Mountain Lion (10.8) - http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html

3 years from now we could possibly be at least one more OS upgrade, or maybe two? Who knows? How important is it to you to be able to follow those? To me it is only important in as much as everybody follows the pack and then I start getting shut out with my old hardware when some web innovation says I must be running an Intel Mac in order to read my e-mail.

Another consideration is Apple is making it hard to upgrade to anything but the newest OS version. It used to be you could find old system discs on the used market. Now everything is downloads, and the license stays with the account used and doesn't travel with a disc like it used to, so even if somebody does sell you a used Mac with Snow Leopard on it originally but with Lion on it now, you won't be able to reinstall Lion without buying it yourself. If Apple decides to pull the plug on an OS you cannot upgrade. Even now old Mac owners trying to upgrade to Lion are having to try through the backdoor since Lion was pulled from the online store. One nice thing about my Quicksilver is it made the journey through 5 major system upgrades (OS 10.1/OS9.2.2 - OS 10.5). With the new OS purchasing and [un]availability structure I think those days are gone. Unless Apple changes the way it does things with older OS availability then buy a OS 10.8 Mac today and I very much doubt you will be able to get hold of 10.9 when 10.12 is the current OS.

Personally, my next Mac will be a 2010 Intel running Snow Leopard which will run my old PPC software, and I'll keep it at that until somebody pries it from my dead hands. I'll then have to rethink the situation in 2020.