A white M3 iMac with migration assistent on the screen sitting on a wooden desk

After using an i3 5th gen. Dell AIO for the past year and a half at work, my new M3, 24-inch iMac with 24GB of RAM and a 1TB hard drive was delivered today. As with most new installs that are highly customized, there were some ups and downs and decisions to make.

  1. I don’t know if I’ll stick with the magic mouse, opt for my familiar Logitech MX Anywhere 3 or dig out my Magic Trackpad. I also think I’m going to go for a larger keyboard with a number pad.
  2. Migration assistant worked well importing my settings and apps from the Time Machine drive of my personal MacBook. All of the Windows stuff I’m going to have to use on a VM will be what work dictates, but the Mac side is mine to customize. I didn’t have any problem changing my Setapp subscription to include a second machine.
  3. The weirdest bug was a mysterious photo import that kept trying to add duplicate photos to my library and wouldn’t allow me to kill the Photos app. Just as soon as I’d force quit it, it would open right back again. It persisted through reboots and various ways of ending the process. I was finally able to use a keyboard combo to repair the library and after a while the mystery import subsided.
  4. Getting a VM installed is an ongoing process. I couldn’t use my personal Parallels subscription and my personal license for VMWare Fusion wouldn’t work either. My commercial license is currently help up in procurement. I’m trying to get a Windows VHDX (virtual hard drive) file to work with UTM. I built one VM but it wouldn’t let me join our on-prem AD so I’m now on take two.
  5. Performance wise, the iMac isn’t noticeably snappier than my M2 MacBook Air. Of course I have two big-ass displays to use now, so that is an improvement.

It felt so good today to be able to use Raycast and all my comfortable keyboard shortcuts. I look forward to being able to craft Keyboard Maestro macros and Hazel workflows to simplify and streamline some of my work processes. I’ll be able to better integrate Things 3 task management and I’ll be able to quit using my iPhone as my iCloud conduit. All in all, I’m really happy to have this new tool. My boss did me a solid by letting me order an iMac and I’m grateful he believed my assertion that I could be more productive on a Mac.