When I was placing my order for 2 Haswell iMacs last week, I asked myself, do I really need all these high specs?
In the end, I just weighed out what I needed and what I didn't.
Spec-envy or not, it was never in my mind in the first place, because I still have a budget to worry about.
21.5" iMac:
3.1GHz i7-4770s
16GB RAM
256GB SSD
1GB GT 750M
I needed the i7 because I'm a freelance photographer, as well as a part-time videographer. I'm just an 18-year old student.
I went for 16GB RAM because it's going to be hell to have to send it to the Apple store to upgrade RAM for me. So I put it to the max.
256GB SSD. 512GB was too expensive, and the Fusion Drive was slower, so I compromised with 256GB and moved all my storage to external drives.
I paid for this with my own quid.
27" iMac:
3.5GHz i7-4771 (God knows why, but my dad always needs power for his physics simulations and modelling. He's a physicist)
32GB RAM (Originally, I ordered 8GB because y'all know how Apple charges exorbitant prices for RAM. So I bought 4x8GB RAM for just MYR800/USD253, much cheaper than what Apple charges).
4GB GTX 780. In Malaysia, it's MYR 510/USD 162 for the upgrade. So I thought, why not upgrade it, considering that it's non-user replaceable?
512GB SSD. The 1TB is crazily priced.
Edit: For the 27", I bought Samsung RAM. Before you start laughing at me, I bought it because Apple also uses Samsung RAM themselves. The OEM RAM in my Sandy Bridge MBP was from Samsung. Besides, it was the cheapest I could get in Malaysia. And since the 27" was going to be shared with my dad, I paid half, along with my dad. If I put a 1TB SSD in, I can't pay half (at least not after paying for the entire 21.5" myself).
