First, thank you Apple for renewing the iMac line one month after I bought mine! š
After the random rant, Iād like to make some quick comments about the new iMac line. First, that the upgrades are minor, but interesting. Second, I donāt think they addressed the main problem of the old one. And last, I still recommend the iMac as the best all-in-one desktop computer out there.
Now, the technical blah-blah-blah. Ditching the i3 was a nice move. Iāve never understood why the iMacs were equipped with dual core i3 and i5 processors in mid-2010. They shouldāve been shipped with quad core i5 or i7 since then. But, oh, thatās Appleās business modelā¦ they did it just to make us upgrade again. But Iāll pass, because my main problem with the iMac is memory, not processor power of graphics.
I mainly use it as a workstation: software development, document editing, e-mailing, browsing and, in my spare time, photo and video editing. My memory footprint can easily go beyond 8GB. And from my Windows experience, gamers also use 8GB systems nowadays. Apps are getting hungrier for more RAM every passing day, so why not ship the iMac with an 8GB minimum? Memory is cheap. A pair of 4GB DDR 1333Ā MHz SO-DIMM memory modules costs about $70 to the end user. So thereās no economical reason to save on such component.
That said, if you think your mid-2010 iMac is feeling overall sluggish, try upgrading it to 8GB RAM first. Disk swap can be nasty and will make everything feel like an i386. If you know you need the extra processor power, then go for the i7 (starts at $1699) and skip the i5.
About the other stuff, it seems Thunderbolt is just a fancy interface with no much use for now. But itās cool that the 27ā iMac can drive two 27ā Cinema Displays, one in each port. And I still donāt get why we need 720p FaceTime cameras. But Iām biased, as I donāt like videoconferencing much. Oh, and there are new graphics cards from ATI as well, much faster than the previous generation, that will help gamers.
Besides the internal hardware, the rest is pretty much the same. Same design, same IPS panel, same connections (besides Thunderbolt) and same price tags. Like I said before, if you have a mid-2010 iMac like me, just upgrade the RAM to 8GB and give it one more year of use. If you have the previous model, equipped with a Core 2 Duo processor, then itās time to upgrade. And if you donāt have a Mac desktop but wants one, this is a very good setup to get. The IPS panel alone is worth it.