OK... in a previous thread I said I would never buy another iMac. Well... boss walks in this morning.... says buy a couple of new 27" iMacs.
So.... I have not spent any time looking at Yosemite. In anticipation of that...
Am I buying 8GB RAM and a 512GB SSD or 16GB RAM and 256GB SSD?
Thanks in advance.
1. Yosemite doesn't raise minimum system requirements from Mavericks, which didn't raise minimum system requirements from Mountain Lion.
2. That being said, if you're buying 27" iMacs, I'd be smart about the purchase and order them with the minimum amount of RAM as the RAM is (a) user-upgradable, (b) at least 50% cheaper when you buy aftermarket from Crucial or Kingston or the like; from there, buy kits to either max them out at 32GB or bump them to 16GB as that is way more cost-effective and gets you the same end result. Of note, if you were ordering 21.5" iMacs, my advice would be the opposite (i.e. max it out at 16GB which is the highest that Apple will allow) since RAM is no longer user-replacable on those models.
3. I'm assuming storage capacity is of no concern and that you're already sold on not getting a Fusion Drive or a Hard Drive and I'm not necessarily discouraging that. I will say that if you don't plan on doing anything crazy with formatting or partitioning with your boot drive, that a Fusion Drive DOES get you the best of both worlds. But if you do want to do anything crazy with formatting and/or partitioning, it very quickly becomes a major pain. Otherwise, SSD capacity is more subjective; do you need more storage? If so, then buy more storage.
4. Don't discount the CPU or the GPU options. If you're going to be doing a lot of 3D rendering and/or video work, you'll probably want a Core i7. Otherwise a Core i5 will be sufficient. Similarly, unless you're gaming, you probably don't need the GTX 780M, though I'd probably at least opt for the GTX 775M as that's much closer to desktop graphics performance than the GT 755M which is much closer to standard laptop graphics performance, but again, those needs are subjective as well.
Hope that helps.
