Caved and purchased a 27" i7

[Staindsoul]

And another one

Refurbished 27" i5 that I've stuck a 512GB SSD and 16GB RAM for £1617 so even if refreshed in a few weeks/months/years I won't be too p**sed as I saved over £500 on the Apple BTO price and got 2x the SSD capacity.

It's a little faster than my 2007 Mac mini and used some of the money saved to get some Harman Kardon Soundsticks as the internal speakers are rubbish

Exactly what I did, just convert that over to $$$.

I am not a gamer and don't need the latest and greatest.

 

[boy-better-know]

Similarly, I bought a Retina MacBook Pro after waiting a year for an iMac upgrade. Once the redesigned iMac is released (by the sounds of it in 2013), I will purchase that too.

 

[bogatyr]

Retina(won't happen for the same actual model cost, see 15MBP vs 15MBP-R)

Actually the MBPR is cheaper than the equivalent MBP minus retina, by a couple hundred dollars. Remember it has an SSD and 8GB of RAM, both bring the cost of the MBP beyond the MBPR.

However, I doubt a 27" retina panel is available yet for them, much less at a reasonable cost. So I do agree that if there were to be a retina iMac anytime soon, the price would be higher.