Just for reference, what sort of plate did you replace it with? I’m waiting on a Creality glass PEI plate that should be here soon and I’m hoping it will be better. Still not sure how this happened in the first place but from what I read it looks like the print head was too close to the plate and it ground PLA into the bed. I was using the same settings as always and I trammed and levelled before my first print. It seems to have done this every time I tried to print this particular object— Is it possible the actual gcode from Cura could cause this?
I’ve got two 27” 2011 iMacs and I still use them for the kids as browsers/media players/old games. The mobile GPU isn’t amazing, but the i7 version I’ve got plays half-life 2-era games decently. Would definitely recommend sticking an SSD in it if you’re going to use it regularly. Just be aware that the spinning drives have a temp sensor on them that won’t be on an SSD but there are some easy workarounds for it. It’s a great machine for learning (a slightly older) version of Mac OS, or you can install Linux or Windows on it.
For $15, might as well just have some fun with it! If you know linux/unix at all you’ll find the terminal very comfortable, and many of us find that once we’re used to osx it’s hard to go back to windows.