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24" Imac and help deciding which one best suits my needs

B

brownste

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 5, 2009
3
0
Hi everyone,

After having been told this past friday that I am out of a job starting this coming thursday. And seeing how there is absolutely no work in my area, I have decided to try my hand at Iphone app development to see if that can tide me over untill the economy / job market in my area picks up a little.

With that being said, I do have a few questions on the current IMac lineups..

I am thinking on buying the 24" IMac with 4 gig ram, 640 gig hardrive, and the GT120 videocard.

I will be mostly using the machine for "work" related purposes such as coding and the like, but during my downtime I am also looking at playing a few games on it.

My wife and I are World of Warcraft players and if I switch over to the IMac with the GT120 video card, will WoW be playable on this machine?

I also play The Sims 3 from time to time, so I am hoping this machine can also handle this game?

I am not sure if the extra $300 price tag on stepping up to a slightly faster processor, 1tb hardrive and a GT 130 video card is worth it for what I (we if I include the wife) have in mind for using this computer.

I already have a 1tb hardrive in my old windows PC, and I was thinking about buying a firewire 800 external enclosure to add as a time machine back up device. So a cost savings to put towards a external harddrive is not really needed.

Just looking for a little advice from anyone is all before we make our final buying decision this coming tuesday.

Thank you very much in advance for any input.

Brownste
 
Honestly, I would say that the choice is kind of up to your budget. Either machine will certainly do what you want - I play WoW just fine on my MBP which is probably a tad slower than your overall configurations. One thing that I would keep in mind is that for $300 you get upgrades that you can't make in the future - hard drive aside. What I see there is that the $300 could buy you another year or so of life on the machine in the end. Not to mention faster computation for your development today.
 
2.93 iMac is a beast for WoW. You said you're out of work so I would maybe think of Mini or base iMac.
 
Cheaper the better. Any use Macbook with a C2D processor can play WoW and Sims 3 (needs an x3100 gpu for this one though). But really, any C2D mac will be fine for iPhone dev work, so I recommend saving your pennies and getting the cheapest one.
 
Im in the same boat. I have been a PC owner forever. I am looking into getting a mac now. I will still have my pc for gaming or other things. Honestly I dont play near the amount of games on the computer like I used to. I do music, video and web surfing mainly. I dont think I need a great video card or any superfast CPU.

Im just wondering what the best imac to get. thanks.
 
nezff said:
Im in the same boat. I have been a PC owner forever. I am looking into getting a mac now. I will still have my pc for gaming or other things. Honestly I dont play near the amount of games on the computer like I used to. I do music, video and web surfing mainly. I dont think I need a great video card or any superfast CPU.

Im just wondering what the best imac to get. thanks.
Click to expand...

Any iMac will out perform any G5 / PPC mac. Faster memory, bus speeds, etc etc. My brand new 20" iMac destroys the 2.0 DC G5 I had, and it had 6GB of ram!
 
zmttoxics said:
Any iMac will out perform any G5 / PPC mac. Faster memory, bus speeds, etc etc. My brand new 20" iMac destroys the 2.0 DC G5 I had, and it had 6GB of ram!
Click to expand...

im really looking at the 24", but still not sure. Im not sure what software I will need either.
 
there was a rumor a few weeks ago about price cuts/upgrades in the iMac line -- anyone know more about this? I'm also thinking about an iMac, but a little hesitant to get one now if the new line is coming out in the next few months...
 
salientstimulus said:
there was a rumor a few weeks ago about price cuts/upgrades in the iMac line -- anyone know more about this? I'm also thinking about an iMac, but a little hesitant to get one now if the new line is coming out in the next few months...
Click to expand...

Who told you that? Apple never lowers its products price, unless newer model is available. New ones aren't coming before Q1 2010
 
salientstimulus said:
It was posted here a little while ago, a crossover from AppleInsider:
https://www.macrumors.com/2009/06/26/next-generation-imacs-to-see-price-cuts/

I didn't mean that new models aren't coming, just that they're (allegedly) coming as soon as early fall. I would love to see a quad-core iMac, but maybe that's asking too much.
Click to expand...

Don't listen and look rumors as news. Last update took almost a year and rumors and speculation started about 6 months before the update existed. There were dozens, even hundreds of rumors saying that update is coming before the end of year, then at MacWorld, then late Jan when iLife '09 came, mid Feb...

Update isn't worth it before Q1 '10
 
Wow! you are losing your job and you want to go out an buy a 2k iMac so you can try your hand at iPhone development and play some games. LOL!! Oh and let me guess you are putting this computer on a credit card. Dude go find a frikin' job!
 
edk99 said:
Wow! you are losing your job and you want to go out an buy a 2k iMac so you can try your hand at iPhone development and play some games. LOL!! Oh and let me guess you are putting this computer on a credit card. Dude go find a frikin' job!
Click to expand...

Wow, that was so necessary during a time of economic downturn.


To the OP, your computer will handle what you have stated fine and good luck.
 
thegoldenmackid said:
Wow, that was so necessary during a time of economic downturn.
Click to expand...
Economic Downturn! I'm sorry I've chosen not to participate in this so called "economic downturn" by busting my ass to have a job. Just odd that the first thing the OP is doing after losing his job is to purchase a 2k computer to play games and try to develop iPhone apps. Maybe it is me but the fist thing I would be doing is busting some pavement to find a new job and not sit around waiting for this so called "crisis" to end.
 
edk99 said:
Economic Downturn! I'm sorry I've chosen not to participate in this so called "economic downturn" by busting my ass to have a job. Just odd that the first thing the OP is doing after losing his job is to purchase a 2k computer to play games and try to develop iPhone apps. Maybe it is me but the fist thing I would be doing is busting some pavement to find a new job and not sit around waiting for this so called "crisis" to end.
Click to expand...

I agree with you that getting a $2k computer to "try" iPhone app developing is wrong, but OP said that there's no jobs available on his area.

To OP: Get the cheapest Mac available, possibly refurb or previous gen iMac or Mac Mini. I assume you are paying with credit card so you may have problems paying it back. Also, iPhone app developing isn't cold mining, some have made thousands within weeks or even days but most developers have got almost nothing. It takes time to come up with an idea and more time make a working app and again, more time to find buyers.
 
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