The "Lets talk each other into buying top spec iMac's" thread.

[Macmamamac]

Ok, so here is my take on it. I want a maxed out iMac*. I probably do not need one, but i want one anyway, so i am trying to convince myself to buy one. I need help in pressing that 'confirm order' button with the juicy extras all loaded up. And i suspect others need that nudge too.

My justification to press the button is this: The new (late 2015) 27" Retina 4.0GHz, 512GB Flash Storage, M395X and 3 year apple care on the UK store comes to £2548

My latest iMac has lasted me about 8 years. I paid roughly £2000 for it in 2007. 8 years is 2920 days and £2000 divided by that number works out at about 68.5p a day for a wonderful machine ( upgraded the storage to SSD a few years ago ) that has served me so well.

So, if i apply the same 8 year time frame to the new (late 2015 iMac), i'll be paying 87p a day if it last me 8 years. Although, i really don't want to hang on to it for so long. So if i half that to 4 years, the average daily expense will be £1.74.

£1.74 a day isn't that much, its the choice between an extra cup of bad coffee a day or a shiny new iMac, and
especially when you consider the resale value after the 4 year period. Which hopefully will be around £700-1000.

Please tell me i am not delusional because i want to order immediately!!

* Will upgrade RAM myself to 32GB at later date

 

[MecPro]

Do it! You have already worked it out in your head. Now time for your heart!

I am in a similar position though:

I'm still struggling to press the button!

I have a late 2008 MBP (didn't even buy it brand new, I bought it as a refurb!) which struggles to get through YouTube videos at 720, NFL GamePass and other flash videos. I also have pretty poor performance when I try and run VMs. I work in IT so sometimes I need up to 2/3 VMs running at the same time and whilst it is possible on my current MBP, its a pain

I kinda deserve a little present for myself (turned 30 this year) but it seems like so much animosity on this site since he upgrade! My plan is for:

27", 4.0GHz, M395x and 512SSD.

I am going for fully maxed so I can use it for the next 5 years or so. I will aso be getting an initial 32GB from Crucial or OWC of RAM. It's around £2400, but comes down to around £2200 as I have 10% off from my workplace, either way it is a lot of money. I have been looking at Windows builds but I love OS X to be fair. I just don't want to get screwed over like I did with my iPad 3 which I brought a few weeks before the 4 came out ha

I don't know why I cannot seem to press the buy button!

 

[Buerkletucson]

Seriously, if you need someone else to tell you to purchase an iMac............then you probably shouldn't buy one.

Enough of your own desire, need, or want should be there before pulling the trigger.

 

[MecPro]

Seriously, if you need someone else to tell you to purchase an iMac............then you probably shouldn't buy one.

Enough of your own desire, need, or want should be there before pulling the trigger.

Many people need "talking" (aka advice) into things. £2k+ purchases aren't done in a blink of an eye for all

 

[felt.]

You failed to provide any compelling reasons how a $4000 internet forum posting machine will enrich your daily life?

 

[aevan]

It's really quite simple - if you can afford it, buy it Apple is expensive, but I never had regrets once I got my Apple product. Unless you go broke after, all doubt fades away once you get the thing.

But....

If the price does bother you, get a cheaper one. In all honesty even the lower-tiered one will probably last quite as long.

When you think about it - performance is rarely the reason computers go obsolete these days. My 2011 iMac would still be quite good, but it was the lack of Retina resolution, new BT (for Continuity), Fusion Drive, etc. that made me upgrade - not the CPU or even GPU.

Honestly, I don't see a scenario where an i7 one is still good and an i5 one is not. One day, both will be obsolete, and that's a fact of (tech) life, but I'm sure some new exciting tech will make you want to upgrade before that happens.

Either way, get what you want. The good news is - whatever you ultimately choose, you'll be happy about it

 

[fob]

Ok, so here is my take on it. I want a maxed out iMac*. I probably do not need one, but i want one anyway, so i am trying to convince myself to buy one. I need help in pressing that 'confirm order' button with the juicy extras all loaded up. And i suspect others need that nudge too.

My justification to press the button is this: The new (late 2015) 27" Retina 4.0GHz, 512GB Flash Storage, M395X and 3 year apple care on the UK store comes to £2548

My latest iMac has lasted me about 8 years. I paid roughly £2000 for it in 2007. 8 years is 2920 days and £2000 divided by that number works out at about 68.5p a day for a wonderful machine ( upgraded the storage to SSD a few years ago ) that has served me so well.

So, if i apply the same 8 year time frame to the new (late 2015 iMac), i'll be paying 87p a day if it last me 8 years. Although, i really don't want to hang on to it for so long. So if i half that to 4 years, the average daily expense will be £1.74.

£1.74 a day isn't that much, its the choice between an extra cup of bad coffee a day or a shiny new iMac, and
especially when you consider the resale value after the 4 year period. Which hopefully will be around £700-1000.

Please tell me i am not delusional because i want to order immediately!!

* Will upgrade RAM myself to 32GB at later date

Not if a redesign drops next year.

 

[MacVault]

Question: how much should I figure an iMac would depreciate 1 year from now? ie. If I get the fully loaded BTO 27" 5K now how much will it cost me to sell it and buy the 2016 model to replace it?

 

[fob]

Question: how much should I figure an iMac would depreciate 1 year from now? ie. If I get the fully loaded BTO 27" 5K now how much will it cost me to sell it and buy the 2016 model to replace it?

It depends if 2016 is a generation redesign or a spec bump like this time. Actually, can the GPU in this refresh be even considered a spec bump?

 

[Buerkletucson]

Many people need "talking" (aka advice) into things. £2k+ purchases aren't done in a blink of an eye for all

Never said it was done with a blink of an eye.....
But, I sure don't let others talk me into spending my own money......I make up my own decisions based on my research.

No prodding by others will change my mind either way...

 

[huffy15]

Question: how much should I figure an iMac would depreciate 1 year from now? ie. If I get the fully loaded BTO 27" 5K now how much will it cost me to sell it and buy the 2016 model to replace it?

Maybe 1000$ on the highest model and probably 300$ on the base model. (if you sell it after the iMac 2016 release in october 2016)

 

[Macmamamac]

Do it! You have already worked it out in your head. Now time for your heart!

I am in a similar position though:

I'm still struggling to press the button!

I have a late 2008 MBP (didn't even buy it brand new, I bought it as a refurb!) which struggles to get through YouTube videos at 720, NFL GamePass and other flash videos. I also have pretty poor performance when I try and run VMs. I work in IT so sometimes I need up to 2/3 VMs running at the same time and whilst it is possible on my current MBP, its a pain

I kinda deserve a little present for myself (turned 30 this year) but it seems like so much animosity on this site since he upgrade! My plan is for:

27", 4.0GHz, M395x and 512SSD.

I am going for fully maxed so I can use it for the next 5 years or so. I will aso be getting an initial 32GB from Crucial or OWC of RAM. It's around £2400, but comes down to around £2200 as I have 10% off from my workplace, either way it is a lot of money. I have been looking at Windows builds but I love OS X to be fair. I just don't want to get screwed over like I did with my iPad 3 which I brought a few weeks before the 4 came out ha

I don't know why I cannot seem to press the buy button!

I ordered a top spec retina in 2014 then chickened out because i kept on hearing about the over heating issues and choppy experience ( which was eventually solved with El Capitan apparently).

My take now after this latest update is that there is never perfect time to buy. I mean, everyone has been waiting around for the Skylake upgrade for years and now its here, people immediately started moaning about ports and lack of redesign.

If i listened to the doubters, which unfortunately i do, i'll be stuck with this 2007 iMac for the next 50 years.

People like us on the fence need positivity. I think maybe we should both order together and post up the pics.

I agree though, i just want to treat myself more than anything. As self help gurus would say: "You deserve it!" lol

 

[Macmamamac]

It's really quite simple - if you can afford it, buy it Apple is expensive, but I never had regrets once I got my Apple product. Unless you go broke after, all doubt fades away once you get the thing.

But....

If the price does bother you, get a cheaper one. In all honesty even the lower-tiered one will probably last quite as long.

When you think about it - performance is rarely the reason computers go obsolete these days. My 2011 iMac would still be quite good, but it was the lack of Retina resolution, new BT (for Continuity), Fusion Drive, etc. that made me upgrade - not the CPU or even GPU.

Honestly, I don't see a scenario where an i7 one is still good and an i5 one is not. One day, both will be obsolete, and that's a fact of (tech) life, but I'm sure some new exciting tech will make you want to upgrade before that happens.

Either way, get what you want. The good news is - whatever you ultimately choose, you'll be happy about it

I absolutely agree with everything here. I know i would be happy with the base models, but i just want to max out. I cant explain why, its probably not even rational.

 

[Sirmausalot]

Ok, so here is my take on it. I want a maxed out iMac*. I probably do not need one, but i want one anyway, so i am trying to convince myself to buy one. I need help in pressing that 'confirm order' button with the juicy extras all loaded up. And i suspect others need that nudge too.

My justification to press the button is this: The new (late 2015) 27" Retina 4.0GHz, 512GB Flash Storage, M395X and 3 year apple care on the UK store comes to £2548

My latest iMac has lasted me about 8 years. I paid roughly £2000 for it in 2007. 8 years is 2920 days and £2000 divided by that number works out at about 68.5p a day for a wonderful machine ( upgraded the storage to SSD a few years ago ) that has served me so well.

So, if i apply the same 8 year time frame to the new (late 2015 iMac), i'll be paying 87p a day if it last me 8 years. Although, i really don't want to hang on to it for so long. So if i half that to 4 years, the average daily expense will be £1.74.

£1.74 a day isn't that much, its the choice between an extra cup of bad coffee a day or a shiny new iMac, and
especially when you consider the resale value after the 4 year period. Which hopefully will be around £700-1000.

Please tell me i am not delusional because i want to order immediately!!

* Will upgrade RAM myself to 32GB at later date

Remember that most credit cards double your warranty to 2 years. And I think a 16gb RAM upgrade to a total of 24gb should be more than enough for most people and uses. There. Saved you a chunk of cash.

 

[qwerty2k]

Been waiting ever since the 5k came out and i heard about 'heat issues' and thermal throttling of the gpu for the next refresh vowing i was going to get one...im now not so sure. I mean i do really want one but I'm almost certain (in my own mind at least, i have no evidence) that the next 'update' will be a complete redesign with vastly superior gpu. Do i just wait another year with my 2010 MBP.

 

[eoren1]

I ordered a top spec retina in 2014 then chickened out because i kept on hearing about the over heating issues and choppy experience ( which was eventually solved with El Capitan apparently).

My take now after this latest update is that there is never perfect time to buy. I mean, everyone has been waiting around for the Skylake upgrade for years and now its here, people immediately started moaning about ports and lack of redesign.

If i listened to the doubters, which unfortunately i do, i'll be stuck with this 2007 iMac for the next 50 years.

People like us on the fence need positivity. I think maybe we should both order together and post up the pics.

I agree though, i just want to treat myself more than anything. As self help gurus would say: "You deserve it!" lol

I was/am in a similar boat. Have a 2011 iMac but only got the i5 at the time and ended up adding a Thunderbolt SSD to keep it reasonable for a few more years. I considered the 2014 riMac but hate getting Gen 1 products and the thermal stuff seemed to corroborate that. Also the screen tech is potentially improved with this iteration.

I think the late 2015 27" riMac is almost perfect for what I need. Yes, we can wait for TB3 and USB3.1 but neither would add any real world benefit for me in the next 3+ years. I have a OWC Thunderbay RAID which is TB2. Planned on the 512gb SSD option and will add a USB3 512gb SSD for documents, etc. A good external USB3 SSD should get me 500Mb/s - USB3.1 may have theoretically higher throughputs but should not see any faster transfers as the consumer SSD limits that. Similarly, the chances of my getting an eGPU to run off TB3 are zero.

I had considered keeping my current iMac and using it in target display mode but have since dropped that idea in favor of selling it locally of $650 and buying a proper 4k 100% adobeRGB display (I'm a photographer). Hence, I doubt that being unable to use the riMac in target display mode would end up mattering to me.

My only reason to delay pushing the BUY button is that I'm totally confused about the video card options and want to wait for some benchmarks. The reviews put out thus far have been incredibly weak on details/specs (even from Ars). Also, I wanted to make sure the new screen could be calibrated to something more useful than the sRGB or DCI-P3 color space. Once the first real reviews are in, I'm buying.

Hope that helps!

 

[fep52]

I agonised for a year, and while I waited my windows PC has basically died and so all my home computer has been done on an iPad. As soon as this update dropped my mind was already made up. I ordered the top spec base (i5, 2tb fusion, m395). Enough agonising, time to bite the bullet and buy a computer that works. In hindsight, I should have just bought the 1st gen RiMac and enjoyed a year of trouble-free computing.

 

[bankshot]

I will most likely buy a maxed out iMac in the next few weeks to replace my 2012 Mac mini, which admittedly is working fine. Feel free to steal any of my reasons justifying it:

• Price: I have a new Discover card with 5% cash back at Apple online, and 10% cash back using Apple Pay in-store. Discover will also double this cash back at the end of my first year with the card. Since I will BTO, I believe in-store is not possible. However, my wife can get educational discount, and the math works out to within $50 for EDU + 5% + cash back double vs. Apple Pay 10% doubled. In any scenario, I get a better deal buying this year and taking advantage of double cash back; this will expire before the next generation iMac is out.

• Max CPU: most things, like web surfing, email, document editing won't see much perceptible difference (who cares if your document opens 5ms faster - you won't notice that). But for compute-heavy tasks like video encoding and batch photo editing, the difference between a 3.3 GHz i5 and 4 GHz i7 should be very noticeable. I do enough of this to make it worthwhile. If it were something like 3.8 GHz i7 vs 4 GHz i7, not so much.

• Memory: the only thing I will not max out from Apple, for obvious reasons. However, the fact that it is confirmed to be able to use 64 GB is huge for longevity. I will buy 2x8GB now to bump the total to 24 GB. In a few years when prices fall, I'll jump to a full 64 GB.

• Video: the integrated graphics on my previous Mac mini (2007 era) could not handle several photo and video editing tasks, which was supremely frustrating. The current Mac mini handles everything ok, but often requires periodic restarts of iMovie to get things done. Therefore I want the best video card available in the machine, with the most dedicated video memory to help avoid these hassles. Edit: also want to be sure it can handle Retina as well as possible.

• Storage: I'm using a 256 GB SSD in my current Mac mini as the boot drive (large data is on multiple USB3 drives as well as a 1 TB internal spinner). Space hasn't been an issue as I've always kept large files elsewhere, but it is starting to get a little full. I will go with 1 TB SSD in the iMac to maximize capacity of fast storage for future needs. Particularly because this is not a user-upgradeable part. If it were, I'd save money now and upgrade later as prices fall (see: memory).

• Screen: 27" will be a nice upgrade from my current 22" monitor. I honestly don't care much about Retina (if there were a cheaper non-retina version with identical internals, I'd be all over it), but I'm sure it will be nice. Target display mode would have been nice, but I do plan to use the machine as it is for at least 5-6 years; by then there may be bigger and better screens anyway.

• Keyboard: wired keyboard with numpad 4evr! Same price, no-brainer.

• Magic Trackpad 2: hate the Magic Mouse, so no interest. I use a basic Logitech scroll wheel mouse + Magic Trackpad currently; the addition of Force Touch is worth $50 to me. And as much as I hate the idea of a sealed-in battery that I can't replace if the device outlasts it, never having to recharge and swap my AAs is certainly appealing.

Ultimately the buying decision will come down primarily to point 1: I will likely not get a better deal in the next few years than now with Discover double cash back, and there's no advantage to waiting until later in this product cycle. I will wait a few weeks to see how things go with the early adopters (and because I'm kinda busy right now), but that's it.

 

[gmanist1000]

I feel like this is the last iMac with the current design. For this reason, I am going to wait. Thunderbolt 3, USB-C, DDR4, all this will be added into the next iMac, which hopefully has been redesigned. We'll see!

 

[bankshot]

I feel like this is the last iMac with the current design. For this reason, I am going to wait. Thunderbolt 3, USB-C, DDR4, all this will be added into the next iMac, which hopefully has been redesigned. We'll see!

Precisely why I don't want to wait.

I've never used Thunderbolt, and so far I don't see USB-C catching on for peripherals like external drives the way USB3 did. So I'm fine with what we have there now.

For me, the last iMac redesign (2012) was a huge disappointment. I was all set to order one at the time, but then when they removed the optical drive and moved the SD card slot to the back, all in the name of ridiculous anorexia, I bought a Mac mini instead. If I was going to need an external optical drive and have to reach around the back for the SD card slot anyway, I figured saving almost 2 grand was worth the step down in CPU.

You never know, the next iMac could go with integrated graphics and soldered memory across the board in order to make it thin enough to slice your hand open. The current iMac is what it is, design flaws and all; it's a known quantity and still currently the best for the money, all things considered.

 

[The Doctor11]

As @aevan said, if you can afford it, buy it. I 100% agree with this. Obviously you want on so if it makes you happy and you can still eat after buying it, buy it!

 

[whodatrr]

Or you can consider it a lease?

I buy refurbished, every 2.5 yrs. buying a refurb saves me 15-20%. Then I tack on AppleCare, from the education store (have a few kids in school), which is pretty cheap. Sell it 2.5yrs later, still under AppleCare, for at least 50-60% of what I paid for it. One great thing about Apples is that they hold their value.

So, my top of the line Apple habit costs me about $400-500 a year. But it's how I pay the bills, so worth every penny.

 

[felt.]

One great thing about Apples is that they hold their value.

My dead (and out of warranty) macbook pro begs to differ.

 

[whodatrr]

And that's why I always sell, while it's still under AppleCare...

But I feel your pain. My woman's 11.6 MBA just died, a few months past AppleCare. Wish she would have refreshed, before it tanked.

My dead (and out of warranty) macbook pro begs to differ.

 

[sakumar]

Ok, so here is my take on it. I want a maxed out iMac*. I probably do not need one, but i want one anyway,

...

* Will upgrade RAM myself to 32GB at later date

OK, you talked me into it . I ordered a maxed out iMac:

... except for the RAM. As someone on this thread suggested, I'll get the 16 GB (2x8GB) from Crucial or OWC for a total of 24GB and upgrade to 64GB later on when prices drop.