Work iMac

Regarding snappiness:

Why not go for pure SSD? Presumably you will not have a lot of media on the computer at work so 256 GB should be fine; a lot of your files should be on a network drive anyways.

The SSD in the Haswell iMacs are blazingly fast!

As for waiting til after WWDC, I am not sure there will be much new especially for your use. While there is supposed to be a lower priced iMac on the way and perhaps some improvement to the GPU (CPU bump will surely be minor and you likely don't need TB2), the iMac you are looking at will be more than adequate.

brohan711 said:

Hey everyone. Needs some advice on a 21inch iMac. I work for a startup as a mobile dev and for the first four months i have been using my 1st gen retina macbook 15 inch for work and school. Main reason why i was using my own laptop is because they were distributing 13inch retinas for people who wanted them and i didn't want to carry two laptops. So now i have the ability for my work to buy me a work mac. Instead of a laptop id rather get an iMac to use at the office and use my laptop when i work remotely.

Build i configured was the 21 inch iMac:
Fusion Drive with 1TB
16gb ram
Graphics card upgrade Two Questions:

Is the fusion drive going to give me the snappiness i have enjoyed from my retina laptop?

Should i wait for june 2nd/wwdc before i buy it? Even though my work is paying for it, id rather not get it right before an upgrade. Also i know nobody really knows when the new one is coming out. But i don't know what the big things about processor upgrades from intel are expected. Like what the hell is broad well? Thanks and appreciated.

Click to expand...

Although the Fusion drive is a definite improvement over an HDD, especially at boot-up time, it will not come close to all-flash, such as your 1st gen rMBP, and the newer laptops and desktops are even faster with PCIe flash. Depending on what you're running, the speed difference between it and an HDD vary from appreciable to dramatic. If it's in your budget, you won't regret going with all-flash, even if only 256 or 512GB.

As for timing, there are no major redesigns expected for the iMac, and the latest buzz regarding processor upgrades to Broadwell are pegging that event for late fall, at the latest but that, plus some possible GPU upgrade will fall in the 'incremental' category. Also, as mentioned by RCAFBrat above, there has been some talk of a lower-priced iMac, but like the 8GB iPhone 5C, it could be aimed at, and possibly available only, in emerging markets.

Seeing we're only just over a week away from WWDC, it would seem prudent to wait at least until then, and unless you're in a particular rush, you might want to wait till late summer or early fall. But you can't go wrong with one of the current gen iMacs either; with Fusion, they're delightfully fast; with SSD, they're speed-demons.