Rehoming an iMac in the kitchen poses interface issues, especially when the keyboard is such an unwelcome house guest
Barry Collins is a former editor of PC Pro. He was sent the first Windows Media Centre PC to ever arrive for review in the UK… and couldn’t get it to work, either. @bazzacollins
Regular listeners to the PC Pro podcast – those who are back in the community and not judged to be a danger to the wider public – may recall that last year I bought a refurbed ten-year-old iMac. And almost since the moment it touched down here at Collins Towers, I’ve been wondering what to do with it.
It’s long been rid of macOS and revitalised with Linux Mint, making it a sprightly system once more, but I’ve struggled to find a day-to-day purpose for it. Apple kiboshed the option to use it as a secondary screen for my MacBook Pro. I’ve dallied with using it as a retro games emulator, loading all sorts of classics by live booting Batocera from a USB drive. But here’s the thing about retro games that they don’t tell you: they’re retro because they’re just not that good any more. That game you remember fondly from your childhood? Face facts, it’s utter cruft by 2024 standards.
Consequently, that still lovely piece of retro hardware was gathering dust in my office, in serious danger of being demoted to the garage where it would end up having its cables chewed by the mice before being dumped.
And then its reason for being, its long-awaited role at Collins Towers became glaringly obvious. A couple of years ago, we upgraded the Amazon Echo Show 5 in our bedroom to the larger Echo Show 8, making it easier on our close-to-50-something eyes to watch video in bed. The Show 5 was sent down to the kitchen, where my other half has taken to using it for watching 98-episode Netflix bilge while she’s cooking. The iMac could be pressed into action as a kitchen media centre, providing a sizeable screen upgrade on the dinky Echo.
This required sensitive handling. While I was reasonably confident she would appreciate the bigger screen, the merest smattering of a suggestion that I was doing her a favour by making it easier to watch TV while performing domestic chores could seriously backfire. It wasn’t quite buying her a microwave oven for her birthday, but it was dicey territory, a move that could rapidly increase my Pot Noodle consumption if bungled.
Fortunately for my calorie intake, the idea went down well. The iMac’s elegant lines and small counter-top footprint definitely helped swi
