iMac vs Custom PC

I know not the best place to ask since you are all heavy Apple fans, but for those that are open minded:

I am a web developer but 99% of all my development is done on the PC. I play games like Heroes of the storm, WoW, but nothing serious. I absolutely LOVE apple products, but is getting an iMac and having to do keyboard remappings (like where end is actually end of a line and not the worthless end of a document like mac does), running parallels (all my dev work has to be inside a VM on PC)... or am I just going around the long more expensive way to using a mac as a pc?

 

I completely agree the only thing that makes me even ask this question is that everything I do is in Virtual Machines, so I'd technically still be working in Windows just on a mac. I guess I love my rMBP and wondering if the desktop would be just as good. Only issue is I do like to play games, but again, they aren't high-performance games.

 

Win 10 is definitely better. I tried it on rMBP. They fixed a lot of stuff, even the DPI stuff is better (not fully fixed, still have to log out). And I agree on cases. They are AWFUL. The only one I found that is decent is the ft05, which is what i use now. It's vertical so the video card doesn't bend over time from weight and heat disposition is really good.

Sounds like, I should probably stick to PC since I'm a PC developer... even if all my work is done in a VM. I got to admit vmware workstation > vmware fusion > parallels. Parallels has been buggy and I stopped using it even on my macbook.

Thanks for all your honest answers!!

 

Already have PC hardware. Some of it won't work, not sure I'd want to. Plus with Mac you always want the latest and greatest and not have to wait until someone figures out how to get some hardware working on a hackintosh.

 

I guess I wouldn't care so much for a hackintosh. I'd rather buy a mac pro.. i know it's extra money, but i'd love the full mac experience including their awesome hardware

 

I don't think I care about upgradability as much. Generally when it's time to upgrade there are new sockets, new memory standards, so you have to upgrade everything anyway. And doing small upgrades, I don't bother as I usually buy things maxed out.

As for apple stuff being outdated yes!! I think I'd more likely jump on a mac pro if it was refreshed and new monitors were released. But as it stands, neither is going to happen anytime soon. In fact I think the MS Surface Pro 4 with Skylake is coming out before Apple refreshes ANY of their hardware.

Thanks for the suggestion though. I just think if I'm going to self-build and lose the mac "experience", might as well run windows. Games are faster, OS feels faster, virtualizing is faster, etc.

 

By experience I meant solely the hardware. The software, yeah I don't think it matters what it runs on. The thing that is even bigger than me not really using OSX for anything other than it's pretty, is that it's buggy. Lately everything Apple releases has been buggy. At least for me. Phone locks up, crashes, gets hot sometimes and battery drains even when I have no apps installed. OSX mail crashes all the time, fails to retrieve email (looks like no new mail when server shows you have x unread messages), laggy cursor, cursor not changing when putting it over like a textbox (doesn't change to the I-beam).. i can keep going on and on. I was hoping capita was going to fix some of this, but not a single mention of any fixes and a lot of what I described has been going on for years.

 

When the problems first started. I didn't even do icloud or timemachine restore in fear that it might have been a program. Didn't matter

 

Ya, I did just that. So far very happy. Now just to find two good monitors... These small work monitors suck. I like the u2715h, but QC is causing me to not jump on it yet. They are getting 5 stars or 1 star for backlight bleed, dead pixels, etc.

If anyone knows of any good monitors that you can just buy without playing the panel lottery game, let me know. I'm looking for 27"+

 

Ever since I wrote this, I took my wife's imac to just try it out. Like I said I LOVE my rMBP. She has a 2014 iMac so it's very good. 32gb of RAM i7. I got to admit, I'm a bit disappointed. I'm trying Parallels but everything is so buggy. If I do fullscreen and launch another VM in full screen and close one of them, the last running VM takes over the desktop. So it's like the same thing is on two spaces but you cannot open any windows or do anything else. You have to get out of fullscreen for it to "release" the desktop. The mouse cursor never changes properly. Half the time it looks like the OSX cursor in the VM so things like scrolling doesn't work. If you move the mouse in big circles it seems to switch to the windows cursor and everything works, but I don't want to do that all the time. When running the big VMs (SQL, Visual Studio), at times (not sure what causes it), I get the spinning candy or beachball or whatever it is. I have to hold power button and restart. I am not assigning too much memory or processor so I don't think it's a resource issue. I tried VMWare Fusion, definitely a lot more stable but same cursor issues and spaces issue.

She has a the flash drive in there but it feels slower than windows. Little things like launching onenote takes 2-3 seconds as opposed to instant in Windows. Also no windows snap feature.. didn't realize how often I use that. It's a lot easier snapping a window to the top to maximize it rather than trying to click a really really small green circle which takes up a full screen and the animations/getting it full screen takes closer to 2-3 seconds to do. I guess I'm used to things being instant.

I DO love the interface however. Something about the font, the "task tray" in the top-right hand corner, the dock. But the bugginess is killing it for me. I received a call from my iPhone and it called on iMac. I answered but no one could hear me, it was too quiet even if I yelled. I checked all the settings and ran some tests and nothing is broken. It's also insanely delayed for when people tried to listen to me (when you say something the other person doesn't hear it for 2-3 seconds) which causes a very awkward conversation of talking over each other. Definitely not like they showed in the keynote. Wasn't instant either, took about 4 rings before iMac started ringing.

You are right about the screen. It is very good, great color reproduction. Only thing, I have to close my blinds because the glossiness is insane and gives me a headache pretty quickly. She has a newer iMac (the thinner one), so I guess screen is supposed to be better, but it's still a mirror.

Sorry about all the complaints, but I'm convinced now that I won't be using an iMac for work. For personal stuff, browsing the net, watching youtube videos, reading news, maybe even playing basic games, etc, it's beyond perfect. Safari is snappy and smooth scrolling feels nice. Love the keyboard and the mouse (although it feels insanely laggy, but I'm sure I can get used to it).

I guess I have to do a time machine restore (very nice) for my wife's stuff to get back. I did a clean install of Yosemite.

But thanks for all your answers. Was really helpful.

 

Yeah thanks for the reply. I do agree, but I decided against the iMac because of the bugginess I experienced (see earlier post). Outside of WoW and HotS I can't imagine playing any other games.

Now just to find two good 1440p monitors or possibly get the Dell curved 34".. Saw one @ microcenter and it's a beaut.

 

Removed. Bugs persisted