Buying a new Imac tomorrow need OPINIONS!

[Josh Burgess]

Nice. All of that and no Apple customer support/service? Killer deal.

Who cares? He could dual boot it with Windows 7 and also have a Windows PC on the SAME machine.... and with the money he saved by building a Hackintosh instead of buying a Mac he could easily fix any problems he may run into himself instead of relying on Apple...

 

[LeSedna]

^ OR he thinks paying for that is worth the money, we don't all have the time or will to fix things like this. The W7 argument is not valid, MacOSX guides you to set up your dualboot on a genuine mac as well and lets you print the drivers itself so that in 10mn top chrono you have your W7 dualboot working and no need to update any driver. To me the apple warranty is a very important parameter for a professional expense. I already got several problems with previous computers or laptops, every fucking time I had to wait for a few weeks. With apple, if your problem is genuine, you go home with a new unit, and restore your last time machine save on it. It's a choice, sure you can build a computer on the same specs for half the price, but that's not the same computer if you look at the big picture, at all.

Also, he gets a decent screen included with the price, and the practicality of genuine apple parts and connections is also worth a few hundred dollars (what I mean is that with an iMac, your desk is finally clean, or with a mac laptop you don't need to carry a tremendous charger which you have to plug anyway cause in 2h max your battery is at 0%)

+1 for refurbished, that's a no brainer for me. get an easy 10 or 20% discount for a product that is as new as a new one !

Code 001 : keep us advised at how good/bad the MBPR is, because it seems wonderful bust costly. I like the ability to switch between retina OR 1920x1080p for example. I'm gonna keep my early 11 MBP for a few years I think but I will definitely look into the MBPR of the next generation at least. I just hope they keep the 17in MBP and make it Retina, i would love a Retina 1920x1080 screen (3840x2160) in the future and if it doesn't cost 3800 like the most expensive MBPR is !

 

[Code001]

The biggest issue with building Hackintoshes is the lack of potential support out there for various devices. Some guys have to modify ktexts every time there is another update, or a software update might suddenly make the thing incompatible. There may be new features you want, but you can't get them right away due to drivers and so forth. With an Apple product right out of the box, you only have to deal with these issues after about ~3 years. I'm not telling people to not buy Hackintosh computers. I'm actually all for them, as I love tinkering with stuff. I'm just putting out a disclaimer there that they're not for everyone. It's a give/take kinda thing, just like everything else out there.

LeSedna, sure thing. The machine itself has some good points and bad points. The good is that it's all solid state without any moving parts (aside from the fans). I actually prefer that the RAM is soldered, as the actual connector busses tend to go bad before the RAM itself goes bad, assuming you're running high quality RAM. The screen on the thing is ridiculous, but the rest of the computer world has to catch up with this. It'll be some time before everything is optimized for the "retina" resolution. I'll probably be running it at max res, as I like to have as much real estate as possible. The lack of firewire is somewhat disappointing, but I see why they went that route. Firewire has slowly been losing popularity, especially thanks to USB 3.0, and Apple/Intel really want to push the Thunderbolt technology. The lack of ethernet doesn't bother me, but I see a lot of guys complaining that they have to run a dongle for it. Dongles don't bother me, as I would have already had something connected into the port in the first place. The extra 6 inches is nothing worth complaining about, IMO. No optical drive is a plus for me, but some guys here might consider it a drawback. Worst case scenario - you have an external burner. They can be had for like $20, so no biggie. Here's a decent vid someone made of it:

 

[ArthurD]

^ OR he thinks paying for that is worth the money, we don't all have the time or will to fix things like this. The W7 argument is not valid, MacOSX guides you to set up your dualboot on a genuine mac as well and lets you print the drivers itself so that in 10mn top chrono you have your W7 dualboot working and no need to update any driver. To me the apple warranty is a very important parameter for a professional expense. I already got several problems with previous computers or laptops, every fucking time I had to wait for a few weeks. With apple, if your problem is genuine, you go home with a new unit, and restore your last time machine save on it. It's a choice, sure you can build a computer on the same specs for half the price, but that's not the same computer if you look at the big picture, at all.

Also, he gets a decent screen included with the price, and the practicality of genuine apple parts and connections is also worth a few hundred dollars (what I mean is that with an iMac, your desk is finally clean, or with a mac laptop you don't need to carry a tremendous charger which you have to plug anyway cause in 2h max your battery is at 0%)

+1 for refurbished, that's a no brainer for me. get an easy 10 or 20% discount for a product that is as new as a new one !

Code 001 : keep us advised at how good/bad the MBPR is, because it seems wonderful bust costly. I like the ability to switch between retina OR 1920x1080p for example. I'm gonna keep my early 11 MBP for a few years I think but I will definitely look into the MBPR of the next generation at least. I just hope they keep the 17in MBP and make it Retina, i would love a Retina 1920x1080 screen (3840x2160) in the future and if it doesn't cost 3800 like the most expensive MBPR is !

If any separated piece goes bad it has its warranty.
Its almost impossible to fail with this setup, there is a risk but you will be able to upgrade your own product cheap in near future instead of paying too much money to a whole new product just for more RAM or another CPU.

BUT

if you are not confortable with installing computers, and need a user friendly instalation, you should go for Imac.
I did my hackintosh based on the best systems ever bulit for DAWs on the internet, and I have no problems installing an OS.
Mine is so stable... I had MACs before, but I built my hackintosh and bought Cubase 6 and other plugins with the budget of buying an Imac.

Cheers!

 

[Code001]

One thing I'd like to throw in - The 27'' iMac utilizes an IPS with 2560x1440 res. If you're into photo editing, this is a pretty important thing as IPS panels are way more accurate than TN panels. They all cost around $1k for a monitor like that, and the only guys out there that make them are Apple, Dell, DoubleSight and NEC. It's an aspect that might be worth considering, depending on how you use the machine. They're slower than TNs, so they're not too great for FPS games.

 

[LeSedna]

If any separated piece goes bad it has its warranty.
Its almost impossible to fail with this setup, there is a risk but you will be able to upgrade your own product cheap in near future instead of paying too much money to a whole new product just for more RAM or another CPU.

BUT

if you are not confortable with installing computers, and need a user friendly instalation, you should go for Imac.
I did my hackintosh based on the best systems ever bulit for DAWs on the internet, and I have no problems installing an OS.
Mine is so stable... I had MACs before, but I built my hackintosh and bought Cubase 6 and other plugins with the budget of buying an Imac.

Cheers!

Indeed, and I have considered doing the same at some point ! But if the guy already has a macbook pro, and is considering an iMac, he probably wants to go the genuine apple model route.

My point was, and will always be, when people come to talking about the price : the price of a computer is not only the addition of the price of every component it is made of. If this was true, Apple would not be that successful, especially in the pro market

I do think this is more debatable for PC towers than for laptops though because the design and optimisation is more critical on a laptop than on a tower !

another last thing i'll drop about mac products : their values don't drop as much because they are still valuable 2 or 3 years later for some people, that's another point to consider. You can very easily sell an apple product 1 or 2 years later, for example

Cheers back

 

[ArthurD]

Agreed.

 

[melovine]

ok so im considering picking this one up...

http://store.apple.com/us/product/FC813LL/A

seems like a good deal, any opinions?

 

[melovine]

Went with a
refurbished 27" imac
2.7ghz quad core i5
1 TB Hd space
4GB memory (going to upgrade to either 8 or 16 GB)

going to be here monday

 

[AudioGeekZine]

congrats!

what are you using for recording drive and backup?

 

[melovine]

I use a 500g external drive for storage and usually run my daw off the computer drive, should I approach that differently?

 

[melovine]

Got the computer in and set up, thanks for the help!

 

[jipchen]

I use a 500g external drive for storage and usually run my daw off the computer drive, should I approach that differently?

It's usually best (fastest and most reliable) if you have a one drive for the OS, DAW and plugins, and a seperate drive for the audio files and sessions. I guess that's what you're talking about with seperate storage and DAW disks?

Depending on the track count and sample rate a USB 2.0 drive might suffice, but Firewire (800) is usually better. Of course PCIe and now with the newer Mac models Thunderbolt is a lot faster and would be a little better imo.. though I am not sure how many Thunderbolt hard-drives are already on the market.

 

[Code001]

The only Thunderbolt hard drives out there currently are the Pegasus RAIDs. You're looking at $1150+ for those things. Apple looks like they're dropping Firewire all together, so don't expect future support on those devices. The most you're getting is some adapter to connect it to Thunderbolt. Your best bet is getting some sort of multi-interface enclosure to throw a drive in. Something with FW800 and USB 3.0 would be great. Something like this would be pretty good, and it's already configured for you:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/firewire/usb/raid_1/Gmax