I\u2019m looking back at my personal experience with the iMac. I had a Flower Power iMac second-hand as well as a 1.25 Ghz G4 iMac with the moving arm supporting a 17\u201d screen. I\u2019ve used the iMac G5 extensively back when it had that magnetic side that held the Front Row (pre-AppleTV) remote. I\u2019ve owned a Core2Quad iMacs and replaced that one in 2013 with a Core i7 iMac with a 1 terabyte Fusion Drive. I did own a PowerMac G5 but the Mac Pro is just out of my price range. The iMac\u2019s price compared to the Mac Pro is just too good.<\/p>\n
Last year, I wasn\u2019t alone in wanting the 5K 27\u201d iMac upon release. I remember considering an order and then hearing some of the reports that the screen flickered under heavy load and the performance of the GUI was strained while running in native 5K mode. Even though I noticed the huge difference between my 15\u201d MacBook Pro Retina and iMac 27\u201d (non-retina) day to day, I eventually got over the resolution \/ PPI difference and continued\u00a0to love the \u2018low-res\u2019 iMac.<\/p>\n
Over the last year, my needs have changed drastically in what a machine should do for me. In a typical week, this is what the iMac does for me:<\/p>\n
The iMac\u2019s 1TB hard drive is only 30% occupied because the majority of my content lives on my Synology NAS downstairs. The iMac is plugged into a gigabit Cisco switch. The Synology has two 6 terabyte drives that are mirrored. Plugged into that is three USB 3 drives. Two of these are 4 TB and another is 1TB. I should have gone for a 4-Bay Synology NAS because I\u2019m nearly out of space on all of my drives and need to figure out where to go next while still having my data replicated. Ideally, having four 8 terabyte drives with mirroring would yield 16 terabytes of usable space instead of 15 I have today and I\u2019d use a 4 terabyte drive for TimeMachine and non-critical files.<\/p>\n
Back to the iMac, a lot of the tasks I\u2019m running are taxing the system. Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, Lightroom and video games are maxing out my system and I often have to wait for tasks to complete.<\/p>\n
The biggest upgrade for me would be the speed of the RAM, GPU, SSD and CPU that will lead to less waiting when I am working in next-gen file sizes with huge resolutions. There\u2019s an argument that I could shoot at a smaller megapixel and only capture 1080P on my GoPro but in the future, I\u2019m going to regret not capturing the largest resolution that I can. Most people can\u2019t appreciate very large resolution media but in the future, it\u2019ll be a very good thing.<\/p>\n
Games will benefit from faster load times and increased frame right although I\u2019m not playing games that tax things too much. I\u2019d still go for the 4 gigabytes of VRAM to future-proof the system.<\/p>\n
Finally and this is purely driven by \u2018want\u2019 instead of need and that\u2019s the retina display. I have a 4K display at work along with my Retina MBP. My iPad Air 2 and iPhone 6S have high resolution screens for a mobile and then I get home and it is very noticeable that my iMac text is huge and grainy and fuzzy. At the same time, I also recognize and can easily discern the pixels on my 1080P television but that\u2019s another issue.<\/p>\n
\u2014\u2014-<\/p>\n
I\u2019m certain I want the new iMac 27\u201d and of course, I\u2019d get the i7 model for hyper threading and SSD for speed and will likely go with the same amount of RAM I have today which is 24 gigabytes. 64 gigabytes of RAM seems insane but if the price were lower, I\u2019d certainly go for it. Maybe that\u2019s an upgrade I do after a year of ownership.<\/p>\n
I think I\u2019ll wait to buy the iMac though once it goes on to the Apple Refurbished site which should be around February\/March. Finding an i7 w\/ SSD and 4 gigabytes of VRAM isn\u2019t likely but maybe then I\u2019ll go through eBay. Besides, I don\u2019t use my iMac much in the Winter time. I\u2019ll be traveling a lot so the MacBook pro will be my primary machine. A quick note that the MacBook Pro I have is the late 2013 model with a 2.6Ghz Core i7 and one terabyte SSD. I think it has another 2 years of life left before it needs to be retired especially since I don\u2019t play games on it and only edit photos when I\u2019m traveling.<\/p>\n
\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n
In summary, I think Apple hit a home run with the 2nd revision of this 5K iMac. The Skylake processors, fast SSD transfer speeds and modern video card pushing a 5K display with support for 2 4K displays connected means that it\u2019ll have enough power to let me edit RAW Images and 4K video at full resolution. I\u2019m very excited about the future and can\u2019t wait to buy one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019m looking back at my personal experience with the iMac. I had a Flower Power iMac second-hand as…\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"2016-03-17T02:08:41Z","apple_news_api_id":"cfb848c8-b713-4849-bd50-79178eaa69b6","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2016-03-17T02:08:41Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/Az7hIyLcTSEm9UHkXjqpptg","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_custom_appearance":"","csco_disable_excerpt_posts_layout":false,"csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-technology","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb3IC4-1m5","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5700,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2016\/04\/08\/technology-the-apple-imac-5k-27-late-2015\/","url_meta":{"origin":5213,"position":0},"title":"Technology: The Apple iMac, 5K 27″ (Late-2015)","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"April 8, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"In putting together this post, I\u2019m losing track of how many iMacs I\u2019ve owned. I know that I owned a Core i7 iMac in 2009\u00a0which I sold before my move to New Hampshire and in January of 2011, I bought a Core i5 iMac but sold it in July? That\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","block_context":{"text":"Technology","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"New iMac - Core i7 5K - 27","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm2.staticflickr.com\/1700\/25808634960_ff09ac4b78_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm2.staticflickr.com\/1700\/25808634960_ff09ac4b78_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm2.staticflickr.com\/1700\/25808634960_ff09ac4b78_z.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":7536,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2018\/08\/20\/linked-a-year-with-apples-5k-imac\/","url_meta":{"origin":5213,"position":1},"title":"Linked: “A year with Apple’s 5K iMac…”","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"August 20, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"A year with Apple's 5K iMac: Still the best Mac for your money: I love my 2016 5K iMac. It\u2019s the top of the line model in every way except I opted for a 3 Terabyte Fusion Drive which is a decision I still regret because the SSD in my\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Linked"","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6746,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2017\/04\/04\/linked-the-mac-pro-lives\/","url_meta":{"origin":5213,"position":2},"title":"Linked: “The Mac Pro Lives”","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"April 4, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"via Daring Fireball: Great piece but this part ultimately is what I wanted to reference and shed light on which is a quote from\u00a0Craig Federighi: That is a pretty incredible evolution that we\u2019ve seen over the last decade. The original iMac, you never would\u2019ve thought as remotely touching pro uses.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Linked"","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6944,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2017\/06\/30\/rants-why-isnt-final-cut-pro-using-every-computing-resource-in-my-5k-imac\/","url_meta":{"origin":5213,"position":3},"title":"Rants: Why isn’t Final Cut Pro using every computing resource in my 5K iMac?","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"June 30, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"4 Physical Cores, 4 Virtual running at 4Ghz with 4 Gigabytes of VRAM in a Radeon R9 395X and I\u2019m encoding a 4K video and for some reason, the system is only 30% utilized in CPU and 5% utilized in GPU: Why doesn\u2019t it utilize everything I have? This is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Rants"","block_context":{"text":"Rants","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/rants\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Why doesn't Final Cut Pro take advantage of all CPU \/ GPUS?","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4009\/35619808605_d18c4ed680_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4009\/35619808605_d18c4ed680_z.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4009\/35619808605_d18c4ed680_z.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5628,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2016\/03\/23\/technology-ive-purchased-a-new-imac\/","url_meta":{"origin":5213,"position":4},"title":"Technology: I’ve purchased a new iMac","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"March 23, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"As a follow-up to this post from a month ago, I have sold my iMac. It was my 5th iMac and it was most certainly my favorite. 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