Decision Made....I Think

Hi everyone,

Not new to the forum. Been lurking for a while. But this is my first thread. I have been a PC user forever. I still remember DOS commands. That being said, this old dog is ready to learn new tricks.

I am almost ready to bite the bullet and take the plunge into the 27" iMac. I am looking at the base machine except for adding the 1TB Fusion drive. My plans for the unit is pretty simple. Besides the usual web/email stuff, I have been scuba diving for about 10 years and have a tom of underwater photos that I want to re-edit. I am also going to try my hand at underwater video this summer. I thought that the the iMac would be best suited for the editing job without breaking the bank. And the only reason I chose the 27" over the 21" was the option of adding memory later.

Macs are not new to my household. My wife has had one for 10 yrs. These days it is mostly to surf. She did use Mac's at her previous job. My son who is a musician and also does audio/video editing for a local web design company has used one forever. I personally have never had the interest in touching one.....until we were looking at new Macbooks for the wife and I saw the iMac. What a sweet machine.

Not that I've bored you, just looking for opinions to see if I am on the right path and have the right thought process. I've toyed with iPhoto and assume iMovie is similar. My son uses Final Cut so I'm sure he can help with my learning curve.

Appreciate whatever other advise you have. Thanks in advance.

Pete

Gonna move you over to Switcher's Hangout where you'll get a lot more responses from people like yourself who are either thinking of switching or have recently switched.

The 27" iMac is a wonderful machine (I own one) and the ability to add RAM is key and it's unfortunate that you have to pay the extra price to get the 27" iMac to do that..however, having said that the 27" screen real estate comes in quite handy when doing editing (or coding in my case)..

The current iMac is quite more capable than my late-2009 model and as such it will have no problem with the photo/video-editing you might want to do..

If you feel things are getting sluggish, an upgrade to maximum amount of RAM supported by the iMac should take care of that..

iMovie is a nice enough editor to start playing with, and once you've mastered it or are seeking something more, you can head to Final Cut. Also check out Aperture for your photo editing needs..

Thanks for the move and the info Ashwin. I wasn't sure which forum was best.

Also, on the Fusion drive, the one downside is that if either the SSD or the HD fail, you lose both. That risk means backups are more critical. Get an external drive (almost any brand will do) and faithfully back up the Fusion drive. Carbon Copy Cloner is nice for that. There are other apps that do backups pretty well.

MacInWin said:

Also, on the Fusion drive, the one downside is that if either the SSD or the HD fail, you lose both. That risk means backups are more critical. Get an external drive (almost any brand will do) and faithfully back up the Fusion drive. Carbon Copy Cloner is nice for that. There are other apps that do backups pretty well.

Click to expand...

I have one for my Windows PC. I'm hoping once I transfer files over, I can reformat to Mac...or maybe just get another. They're pretty cheap these days.

Yep, that should work. Sounds like you are pretty much good to go!

The 27" is a great choice. As Raz0rEdge said upgrading the RAM is a good idea, its cheap and easy to do.
If you do need a little help with OSX look at the Tutors available from the App Store.
Good luck and have fun.

I stopped at a buddy's house last night. He bought the Mac Pro and was trying to talk me into that. He's telling me about the HD ports and all the bells and whistles. Sweet machine, if you were going to utilize it all. We're both accountants that dabble with photo and video editing. That's way too much machine (and price tag) for what I need. I think I'm set on the iMac 27". I just may have to take a ride to the Apple store this evening.

The newest iMac actually rivals the current gen Mac Pro in performance. What the Mac Pro has over the others is that it's REALLY up-gradable. You can add a lot of storage, a ton of memory and they come with pretty powerful processors..

But, all that comes at a fairly steep price tag..

Just curious, this generation iMac, how long have they been out? Is anything newer version being released any time soon? Hate to buy something and a new model is due out in June.

You might this guide useful: Mac Buyer's Guide: Know When to Buy Your Mac, iPod or iPhone

So the iMac was released on Nov, 2012. The iMacs were running on an approximately 300 day release cycle, except the last one took more than a year.

The current rumor is that iPhone 5S is coming out in June or so..so there might be a WWDC around that time and information about any impending iMac release..

However, the thing about this is that you cannot chase technology, the next model of ANYTHING is always going to be better than the current version..you can always wait forever..

So look at the current iMac offering, look at what it allows you to do, if it's a good fit..buy it..

Raz0rEdge said:

You might this guide useful: Mac Buyer's Guide: Know When to Buy Your Mac, iPod or iPhone

So the iMac was released on Nov, 2012. The iMacs were running on an approximately 300 day release cycle, except the last one took more than a year.

The current rumor is that iPhone 5S is coming out in June or so..so there might be a WWDC around that time and information about any impending iMac release..

However, the thing about this is that you cannot chase technology, the next model of ANYTHING is always going to be better than the current version..you can always wait forever..

So look at the current iMac offering, look at what it allows you to do, if it's a good fit..buy it..

Click to expand...

Thanks for the link. Should come in handy.

I know Apple has its annual release dates. If remember the iPad usually got released in March. iPsd 4 messed that up. I was just curious if a new the iMac was "scheduled" to be released like in Apr, I would wait. You are right, changing technology is like chasing trends in the stock market. You rarely win and never get anything accomplished.

Thanks for all the advise.

While the rumors surrounding impending releases of Apple products have gotten lax due to all the additional parties involved in making the stuff, they are still just rumors until Apple officially makes the announcement either at a conference or on their website..

Apple has always been tight lipped about future stuff even if it's vendors seem to have looser lips..they could just as easily release earlier or later to mess things up..