Why is my new (Nov 2015) iMac such an old model?

Hello Mr Pixel,

The EtreCheck performance rating is not really a benchmark. Anything from 5-10 minutes rates "below average". If you run EtreCheck multiple times in a row, the lower-level Apple tools that EtreCheck calls will cache their results and run faster. It doesn't mean that you have improved anything. Plus, you appear to have manually deleted some files. That is always a bad idea. If you want to uninstall software, you must always use the vendor-provided uninstaller or uninstallation instructions. The only exceptions would be in cases of adware or scamware that doesn't have uninstallers. And you are running Cocktail to screw around with OS X's virtual memory systems. That is only going to make the system slower.

My suggestion is to uninstall anything listed in your "Login Items", including Cocktail. You may need to reinstall things like CrashPlan if you have selectively deleted parts of them. Then, restart and create a new user account on this machine. Logout of your current account and into the new account and run EtreCheck again. That would be the most accurate report.

After switching back to your primary account, you may need to wait until your hard disk finishes reindexing and Photos finishes whatever it is doing with the cloud. As long as background tasks like that are running, your computer will be slower than normal. Finally, you have an iMac with a mechanical hard drive running El Capitan. "Normal" isn't ever going to be very fast.

Yes it can, budget $2 to $300 for the drive.

Mr Pixel wrote:

Do you know, off-hand, if this model iMac can have the Hard Drive replaced with an SSD type? Without breaking the bank?

No, however you can get an external SSD and connect it via Thunderbolt. This will give you very fast startup, shutdown and file access. What I'd recommend you do is to clone your internal HD to and External Hard Disk (use SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. Then once you have the SSD, boot from the clone, format the SSD (Mac OX Extended (Journaled) GUID partition) and then restore from the clone. Then boot from the SDD and set the startup drive as the SSD and you are done.

Mr Pixel wrote:

Do you know, off-hand, if this model iMac can have the Hard Drive replaced with an SSD type? Without breaking the bank?

It isn't breaking the bank you would need to be concerned with - it is breaking the iMac. They are not designed to be upgraded like this.

I'm not sure you will like to hear this but here goes…

This is Mac it looks like you have migrated older data onto this machine, probably via Setup Assistant. You can clearly see that many older applications, plugins & junk have been installed. Some of these may be harmless, disabled or not active, however occasionally one of these older apps will conflict & can cause the issues you are seeing. Old applications also have known security vulnerabilities that can expose your machine to attack, if it is installed & used it needs to be up to date.

Have you considered that it would be better to start with a fresh copy of OS X, that way you won't need to 'peck away' at what appears to be years of cruft that was apparently installed on another Mac. For example Soundflower is installed & unused (the kernel extension is unloaded), that version is from around 2009, when El Capitan was just a big rock. Your /etc/hosts file is modified, it makes me wonder if this is deliberate or left over from some malware or other 'hack'.

I understand that you probably want all your old user files, those can be moved over without the extra junk & for the most part those files will not break the entire system.

Here is how I would approach it…

1. Backup to an external disk, ensure it is a bootable copy (make several copies if you are paranoid, one backup is never enough).
2. Boot to recovery mode (cmd+r at startup)
3. Erase the internal disk in Disk Utility, quit to go back to the installer.
4. Install OS X (DO NOT MIGRATE ANYTHING YET).
5. Create a new admin user via the assistant, use a different name to your old account.
6. Login, open /Applications/Utilities/Migration Assistant, connect the external HD with the old backup.
7. Navigate through the assistant & select the option to migrate your user data. Do not migrate Applications, other files & settings.
8. Finally install all the Applications you actually use, getting the current version from the developers site (or the App Store).

Your user account should be the same as you left it when you next login, so be aware that the login items may need cleanup. System Preferences > Users & Groups, login items tab is where you edit them. There will be cruft in your user account, however that is less harmful to the entire system.

The Applications option in Setup/ Migration Assistant will import all supporting files for apps, this inflates your backups & can cause issues like the ones you describe here.

If you want you can promote the migrated account to an admin & delete the one you created at setup but it is safer to use a non admin account for day to day use if you can stand the occasional dialogs.

Ask if you help to want to pursue this option.

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Mr Pixel wrote:

Thank you rkaufmann87. But for my bank account all of thos are to expen$ive. The 500GB ssd I ordered only cost me about $105.00

Okay, good luck finding one. Tell us what you end up with.