Hi to all. I am wanting to get a new imac. The one I have is about 6 years old. It stills works fine but I think its time to upgrade. My questions are, all my gear uses firewire and everything now is thunderbolt. Are the adapters good to go from firewire to thunderbolt? The other is I have not upgraded my operating system because I was afraid it would change everything. There were rumors going around 3or 4 years ago that the sofware would not run correctly if you did. Now I can't upgrade any of my software because I have to upgrade my operating software first.I know now I have made a mistake so helpful insight is needed. I have logic 8, a presonus live studio 8 channel, I use Finale 2007 and various sound software like komplete 5, melodyne. My operating system is 10.4.11 Yeah I know I didnt know that still existed. Plus I have about 12 macpro videos on logic and others, are they still good? do I have to upgrade all my software. I am not a gear head but love my gear when I use it I know this is long but I am sure I am not the only one who has this question. Thanks so much TNT

The thunderbolt to firewire adapters simply work. I was worried about that too and it's been a non issue since I bought my 2013 iMac. I use an Apogee Ensemble and a UAD 2 Satellite Quad. I can even route the Ensemble through the Quad without any issues but it's better to route the interface straight into the computer. The thunderbolt adapters are firewire 800 so if you have a firewire 400 interface you should buy a firewire 400 to 800 cable. I still have my old Macbook Pro Late 2007 running 10.6.8 and Logic 8. That isn't a bus powered interface you are running so you don't need to worry about that. I'm not running any bus powered firewire stuff so I don't know the specifics of that but it's probably worth reading about if you have anything like that. As for needing new software: Logic X only runs 64 bit Audio Unit plugins. Any 32 bit plugins simply won't show up in the Audio Unit Manager. If I were you I would keep your current system intact with your current computer and start fresh on the new iMac. I upgraded to Komplete 9 for $199 on my new computer and retained Komplete 5 on the old computer and they both work fine. NI has an interesting policy about such things that says you can have Komplete installed on more than one system but you can't use them "simultaneously" and you must uninstall from one of the computers. I know that makes no sense but that's what it says but it doesn't seem to be strictly enforced. You should clone your current OS if you are going to upgrade just to be safe.

Thank you for answering my questions. If I get the new I mac did I understand you to say I can clone my os, how do i do that. also I guess you just do recording on both computers. So clone my os and then upgrade my os. Should I jump to maverick or lion or what. Thanks again

If you were going to upgrade the OS on your existing computer you might want to clone it so you can revert back to the old OS if necessary. Carbon Copy Cloner is an application that you can use to clone your OS. Ideally you would store the clone on an external hard drive that is bootable. That means you can use it as your startup disk in place of the drive in your computer. There are specific requirements that need to be met to use a hard drive as a startup disk. The requirements are all explained within CCC. You would want to test the clone to make sure it actually works before you upgrade. The OS you upgrade to is something I'm not really knowledgeable enough to answer with any degree of certainty. You should check to see if your machine can actually run whichever OS you go with. You should read up on this stuff on the apple website and other sites you can find through any search engine. Gearslutz is one forum that seems to be well informed about such issues regarding software compatibility and things related to audio. Experiences vary depending on the different devices you are trying to combine so be cautious. Some people have had issues with the new Fusion hard drives in the new iMacs. I bought the more expensive SSD Flash hard drive because of the things I read about the Fusion drives. There is nothing wrong with being cautious when upgrading stuff because it's hard to predict what problems may arise. The reason I've retained the system I had on my old computer is because I produce music professionally and I needed to be sure I had a working system throughout the process of buying a new computer. I still haven't made the switch to using the new computer as my main system but I do know that the gear I have works perfectly with both computers. Best of luck with this. A lot of people are hesitant to go with Mavericks. That's how it is with any new OS.