Apple iMac 27-inch Retina

I've got a 2014 Retina iMac and a 2017 Retina iMac. Both of them run flawlessly but are now past Apple's support window. And third party software developers are mostly already adopting a "LOL we don't care" attitude about them. The hardware works impeccably, but software developers refuse to lift a finger to make their software run on them anymore. The Apple ecosystem is infuriating. With great sadness, I retired both of them a few months ago and am now running a boring Linux box with a pretty standard DPI monitor. I miss the Macs but their window of usefulness is way too short.

I haven't seen much mention of APFS yet. APFS is mandatory now. I recently used OCLP to coerce macOS 15 "Sequoia" onto my now-elderly 2015 27" Retina iMac. It's a capable machine: 4 cores, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD as the system drive and 8TB HDD for data. I kept my home directory on the HFS+ HDD. So, fast OS, slower but very capacious personal drive. It was a very simple hack and everything automatically obeyed. Worked fine up to Monterey (macOS 13), the last supported version. Not now. Lots of apps wouldn't run and the OS couldn't save lots of settings. I had to go through the first-login wizard every single time. In the end I moved my home directory to the system volume on the SSD, and then moved all the big folders back out to HFS+ HDD (Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Music, Videos, etc.) This took 2 days of work but it did the job. Everything works now and the machine is noticeably faster, but now, I'm using 2x more SSD space and less HDD space. The point being that the POSIX texts require setting classic Unix values on HFS+ drives, and I am not sure all of those still work on APFS, and that will make passing harder. I think they might do it anyway, and soon, macOS 27, on Arm64 only, might pass... but in an even more wildly nonstandard config.

Exactly. I have carried my 27-inch retina iMac multiple times. It's only slightly sharper than the typical monitor given its thinness. But "painfully sharp" really? OP probably just has soft hands.

I'm still using my 2017 27" iMac Retina, and vastly prefer it for most things over my 2020 M1 MacBook Pro (which I dislike primarily for not having volume buttons).

iMac 27" Retina, 7 cores, 32 gig ram, 2 TB drive. This is, bar none, the best computer I have ever owned. Finally, a zippy and powerful workstation that is a pleasure to use. My old Mac Mini served me well for 8 years, but after a couple of OS updates, it had become laggy and nearly unusable.