Back in July, my college finally purchased new iMac desktops for the video editing lab in our Fine Arts building. Before the iMac line was refreshed the previous month, they had planned to get the 27" 5K Retina iMacs, as they were the only ones with discrete graphics cards. But then when the iMac line was updated, the college saw that they now make 21" 4K Retina iMacs with discrete graphics cards, and got those instead!
We got the $1499 model, eleven of them for the lab. They sure are pretty sweet machines! They have the 3.4 GHz i5 quad-core processors and ATI Radeon Pro 560 graphics cards with 4 GB dedicated VRAM, and they also bought them with 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB solid state drives. As a result, they are REALLY fast, definitely more so than the 24" early-2009 iMacs they replaced, and they're even faster than my late-2012 quad-core Mac Mini (which has a 2.3 GHz i7 processor and 16 GB of RAM).
We also got the Adobe Creative Cloud suite 2017 for the iMacs, along with Microsoft Office, Avid Media Composer First and DaVinci Resolve, and and we are also planning to get Final Cut Pro X and Compressor for them once the new versions are released. I even helped put GarageBand and iMovie on them for beginners to digital audio/video editing! (It helps both apps are free to download now.)
The TV studio director was surprised and astonished at first, because he wasn't aware the iMac line was refreshed recently and he thought all 21" models still had the integrated Intel graphics with shared VRAM, something he specifically didn't want. But then I showed him the Apple website that showed the tech specs of the new iMacs, and personally showed him the "About this Mac" screen on one of them that indeed revealed they used discrete graphics cards with dedicated VRAM, and he was pleasantly surprised by that. We also like how they have USB 3.0 ports, Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports and SDXC card slots, and we're planning to get Thunderbolt 2-to-3 adapters for students to use with the Macs, along with FireWire-to-Thunderbolt adapters for if we need to use our FireWire drives with them. (We still have some legacy equipment around we occasionally need to use for archiving purposes.) As for them lacking optical drives, they don't mind that much, as the TV studio doesn't really burn DVDs or Blu-Rays that much anymore, except for certain archiving purposes. But if need be, we do have a few external USB DVD and Blu-Ray burners available. We were also really surprised to find out online that these new 4K iMacs DO have user-replaceable RAM, though it can be a bit tedious to open up the machines and swap the RAM modules, but they are glad to know it's doable, for once the time comes and we want to upgrade the iMacs to 32 GB of RAM or something.
We also sent a ticket and list to the I.T. department as we want to have the software updated on the iMacs during the winter break, including the operating system from MacOS 10.12 Sierra to 10.13 High Sierra, the Adobe Creative Cloud from 2017 to 2018, etc. (The TV studio does not have the administrative rights for such things; we have the I.T. department handle them, and they typically do most software upgrades in-between semesters, such as last summer when most of the PCs on the campus were upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10.)
So far, I am really impressed with these iMacs, especially with how some things formerly only found on the 27" models have made their way to the 21" models (ESPECIALLY the discrete graphics.)
Just felt like sharing this interesting tidbit.
We got the $1499 model, eleven of them for the lab. They sure are pretty sweet machines! They have the 3.4 GHz i5 quad-core processors and ATI Radeon Pro 560 graphics cards with 4 GB dedicated VRAM, and they also bought them with 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB solid state drives. As a result, they are REALLY fast, definitely more so than the 24" early-2009 iMacs they replaced, and they're even faster than my late-2012 quad-core Mac Mini (which has a 2.3 GHz i7 processor and 16 GB of RAM).
We also got the Adobe Creative Cloud suite 2017 for the iMacs, along with Microsoft Office, Avid Media Composer First and DaVinci Resolve, and and we are also planning to get Final Cut Pro X and Compressor for them once the new versions are released. I even helped put GarageBand and iMovie on them for beginners to digital audio/video editing! (It helps both apps are free to download now.)
The TV studio director was surprised and astonished at first, because he wasn't aware the iMac line was refreshed recently and he thought all 21" models still had the integrated Intel graphics with shared VRAM, something he specifically didn't want. But then I showed him the Apple website that showed the tech specs of the new iMacs, and personally showed him the "About this Mac" screen on one of them that indeed revealed they used discrete graphics cards with dedicated VRAM, and he was pleasantly surprised by that. We also like how they have USB 3.0 ports, Thunderbolt 3/USB-C ports and SDXC card slots, and we're planning to get Thunderbolt 2-to-3 adapters for students to use with the Macs, along with FireWire-to-Thunderbolt adapters for if we need to use our FireWire drives with them. (We still have some legacy equipment around we occasionally need to use for archiving purposes.) As for them lacking optical drives, they don't mind that much, as the TV studio doesn't really burn DVDs or Blu-Rays that much anymore, except for certain archiving purposes. But if need be, we do have a few external USB DVD and Blu-Ray burners available. We were also really surprised to find out online that these new 4K iMacs DO have user-replaceable RAM, though it can be a bit tedious to open up the machines and swap the RAM modules, but they are glad to know it's doable, for once the time comes and we want to upgrade the iMacs to 32 GB of RAM or something.
We also sent a ticket and list to the I.T. department as we want to have the software updated on the iMacs during the winter break, including the operating system from MacOS 10.12 Sierra to 10.13 High Sierra, the Adobe Creative Cloud from 2017 to 2018, etc. (The TV studio does not have the administrative rights for such things; we have the I.T. department handle them, and they typically do most software upgrades in-between semesters, such as last summer when most of the PCs on the campus were upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10.)
So far, I am really impressed with these iMacs, especially with how some things formerly only found on the 27" models have made their way to the 21" models (ESPECIALLY the discrete graphics.)
Just felt like sharing this interesting tidbit.
I have the exact same configuration. Apple ditching "integrated graphics only" on the 21.5" iMacs and switching to discreet options was one of the reasons I purchased the 2017 model. A great move by Apple -- anyone can now finally buy an entry-level iMac without needing to spend almost $2K for a all-in-one with dedicated graphics.