{"id":3126,"date":"2026-07-25T13:12:37","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T05:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fangloong.com\/blog\/?p=3126"},"modified":"2026-07-25T13:12:41","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T05:12:41","slug":"imac-27-inch-2009-update-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.fangloong.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/25\/imac-27-inch-2009-update-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"iMac 27-inch (2009) Update Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I hadn&#8217;t turned on my iMac for a long time. It was once my backup computer,<br>running OSX Snow Leopard, The operating system had become very outdated, <br>with many limitations. I mainly used it for watching movies, editing photos, and creating videos with iMovie.<br><br>Recently, I decided to give it a second life by updating it to the latest macOS it officially supports. <br><br>OS X El Capitan USB installer to perform a clean installation, and it was successful. After that, I copied <strong>VLC<\/strong> Media Player from my Mac Pro, and it was able to play most of my <strong>MKV<\/strong> movie files without any issues.<br><br>Once El Capitan was installed, I started researching the newest macOS that this iMac could officially run. I then upgraded through each supported version:<br><br><strong>Snow Leopard 2009<\/strong> >> El Capitan 2015 >> Sierra 2016 >> <strong>High Sierra 2017<\/strong><br><br>The entire upgrade process took around <strong>1\u20132 days<\/strong> to complete. The original hard drive was probably the biggest bottleneck, making the installation and updates extremely slow.<br><br>Should update HDD >> SSD to get better performance.<br>* Next target update <br>1). HDD >> SSD 1TB <br>2). 4 x 2gb = 8gb >> 4 x 4gb = 16gb<br><br>The second thing I did was install <strong>OpenEmu<\/strong>, transforming this old iMac into an excellent retro gaming and media system, With a <strong>PS4 DualShock controller<\/strong>, it becomes a perfect setup for classic console games while still serving as a great machine for watching movies and everyday use.<br><br>After 17 years, this iMac has a new lease on life.<br>( very enjoying the upgrade process) <br><br>For a computer released in 2009, I&#8217;m impressed by how capable it still is. With an SSD, 16GB of RAM, and High Sierra, it remains a useful machine for media playback, light creative work, retro gaming, and running many classic applications.<br><br>Next, will try install some software and try the old beast limit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I hadn&#8217;t turned on my iMac for a long time. It was once my backup computer,running OSX Snow Leopard, The operating system had become very outdated, with many limitations. I mainly used it for watching movies, editing photos, and creating &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fangloong.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/25\/imac-27-inch-2009-update-journey\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category--mac"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fangloong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fangloong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fangloong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fangloong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fangloong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3126"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.fangloong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3133,"href":"http:\/\/www.fangloong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3126\/revisions\/3133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fangloong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fangloong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fangloong.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}