In spite of the fact that I’d already done it, they tried to convince me to reformat my computer and start fresh. Documents started acting up, with iCloud Drive showing up empty on my computer, so they suggested disabling that. Mail started acting up as well, so they suggested I disable Mail syncing, because I had “too many messages in my mailbox”. From the start, they agreed that iCloud was causing the slowdowns and had me go through a series of steps such as logging in and out of iCloud, disabling and enabling the various iCloud syncing options, etc.

I called Apple Support and began a series of interactions that did not end with any sort of solution. I checked Photos and there were major issues: my photos weren’t syncing properly across my devices, and there were image compression/corruption (?) issues going on, with diagonal blue lines appearing all over my recent photos, lines that persisted even when opening the photo at full resolution. I checked the Apple Server Status page and indeed they’d been having some problems with iCloud, but they were marked as resolved. There were some suggestions online that iCloud could cause slowdowns when the syncs weren’t going properly. I ran hardware tests using Apple’s software and everything checked out. I wiped the drive clean and reinstalled the OS, then reinstalled the apps anew, one by one. I ended up removing all of the apps but those that came with macOS, and the problem still persisted. I removed apps, one by one, to see if it would fix the problem. I checked everything: every app, every file, every process. At first I thought it was spyware or a virus. It started with my iMac slowing down to a crawl over the course of a few days, back in late 2018. There’s a valuable lesson in here for the people at Apple Support, if they’re interested. This is the tale I’d like to recount for you now, because it’s something that I’ve had to deal with since last autumn (october of 2018), and I’ve just recently (I hope) finalized the upgrade/repair. I’ve worked on a few upgrades to our family computers in recent months: my 2008 MacBook Pro, my mom’s 2007 iMac and my own late-2013 iMac (A1419, EMC 2639).

Upgrade late 2013 imac 2013