Buying advice - desktop setup for graphic design

[cinnamongirl96]

TLDR: graphic designer needing to upgrade ASAP - want current 27" 5K iMac, but also want the longest possible usable life from the machine

I've been planning and saving for a while to invest in a decently powerful desktop setup. I am pretty clueless about the hardware/specs side of things, and even more confused now with the upcoming move away from Intel.

Background:
I'm a graphic designer with a pretty standard Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign workflow. I do a bit of basic video editing and animation in AfterEffects here and there - not a lot, but I definitely need the capability for video. A lot of my work is web/social based but I also do some large format print design and textile design. I tend to run several programs at once and work between them.

I work 4 days a week in an office using their standard Windows machine with a 21.5" monitor (absolutely hate the interface but it gets the job done), and work freelance outside of this. I've been using a 13" Air since mid-2015 for all my freelance work - it was the only thing I could afford at the time when my previous MBP died. I keep the OS updated and keep all of my files on external drives to improve the speed as much as I can, but it still struggles a lot with my day to day workflow, and the screen is woefully small for my larger projects.

I've made do with it for as long as I can, but I've realised lately it's slowing me down to the point where it's not worth doing any freelance work on it anymore. When I was working from home during COVID, I noticed tasks that would ordinarily take me half an hour in the office were taking nearly half a day to do on my laptop. Partly due to tiny screen slowing down my workflow, partly slower processing times, partly program crashes...

I had pretty much made up my mind to go for the current mid-range 27" iMac, possibly with an SSD upgrade. Planning to buy with standard 8GB RAM and add aftermarket RAM down the track when I can afford to. I decided to wait until after WWDC to make up my mind on whether to buy now or wait a bit longer for a refresh. (I have looked into other options eg. Mac Mini or MBP with external monitor, but would still prefer an all in one machine if possible. iMac Pro and Mac Pro are out of my price range.) I'm not too fussed about an updated design and I'm certain a current iMac would be more than adequate for my needs, I'm mostly concerned about continued support for Intel Macs in the coming years. It's a big investment for me and I don't want to be in the position where I can no longer update the OS after a couple of years.


My wants:
- at least 5 years usable life
- ongoing support for new versions of OS11
- user-upgradable RAM
- 5K monitor

My budget is about $3,500 AUD.


Any advice would be much appreciated. I'm hoping to upgrade within the next month or two if possible, but still not sure if I should be holding out for a potential new release.

 

[Yebubbleman]

TLDR: graphic designer needing to upgrade ASAP - want current 27" 5K iMac, but also want the longest possible usable life from the machine

I've been planning and saving for a while to invest in a decently powerful desktop setup. I am pretty clueless about the hardware/specs side of things, and even more confused now with the upcoming move away from Intel.

Background:
I'm a graphic designer with a pretty standard Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign workflow. I do a bit of basic video editing and animation in AfterEffects here and there - not a lot, but I definitely need the capability for video. A lot of my work is web/social based but I also do some large format print design and textile design. I tend to run several programs at once and work between them.

I work 4 days a week in an office using their standard Windows machine with a 21.5" monitor (absolutely hate the interface but it gets the job done), and work freelance outside of this. I've been using a 13" Air since mid-2015 for all my freelance work - it was the only thing I could afford at the time when my previous MBP died. I keep the OS updated and keep all of my files on external drives to improve the speed as much as I can, but it still struggles a lot with my day to day workflow, and the screen is woefully small for my larger projects.

I've made do with it for as long as I can, but I've realised lately it's slowing me down to the point where it's not worth doing any freelance work on it anymore. When I was working from home during COVID, I noticed tasks that would ordinarily take me half an hour in the office were taking nearly half a day to do on my laptop. Partly due to tiny screen slowing down my workflow, partly slower processing times, partly program crashes...

I had pretty much made up my mind to go for the current mid-range 27" iMac, possibly with an SSD upgrade. Planning to buy with standard 8GB RAM and add aftermarket RAM down the track when I can afford to. I decided to wait until after WWDC to make up my mind on whether to buy now or wait a bit longer for a refresh. (I have looked into other options eg. Mac Mini or MBP with external monitor, but would still prefer an all in one machine if possible. iMac Pro and Mac Pro are out of my price range.) I'm not too fussed about an updated design and I'm certain a current iMac would be more than adequate for my needs, I'm mostly concerned about continued support for Intel Macs in the coming years. It's a big investment for me and I don't want to be in the position where I can no longer update the OS after a couple of years.


My wants:
- at least 5 years usable life
- ongoing support for new versions of OS11
- user-upgradable RAM
- 5K monitor

My budget is about $3,500 AUD.


Any advice would be much appreciated. I'm hoping to upgrade within the next month or two if possible, but still not sure if I should be holding out for a potential new release.

The non-Pro 27" iMac is the last Mac with user-upgradable RAM next to the Mac Pro, and Mac mini. The 21.5" iMac and iMac Pro both have removable RAM, but not user-accessible RAM. It remains to be seen whether Apple will design new ARM Macs to have user-replaceable RAM or not. Considering that the iMac Pro and 21.5" iMac was designed to not have removable RAM, my guess is that the only reason why the current 27" iMac still does have removable RAM slots is that they haven't otherwise updated the design not to. I could see them doing it on the 27" and not on the 21.5" as the two machines do have different target market audiences. However, for the iMac Pro to not have removable RAM while the standard 27" iMac does, that makes me think that removable RAM on anything other than a Mac Pro isn't a priority for Apple. I hope I'm wrong. But I wouldn't gamble on it, unless you're comfortable with buying the maximum RAM up front.

As for 5 years of usable life, I think you're going to be just fine there. Macs lasted an average of 3-5 years during the era of the PowerPC to Intel transition. Anyone who bought a Mac between WWDC 2005 when that transition was first announced and WWDC 2006 (14 months later) when the last Mac that hadn't yet transitioned received an Intel based refresh, had, at worst, three years before they could no longer run the latest OS. And another two years on top of that before that Mac couldn't get a security patch from Apple. So, three years of being able to run the newest, and five years before they lost support altogether. Add one to those figures if you're talking about people that bought a PowerPC Mac the week of WWDC 2005 after Steve Jobs announced the change. Not bad, considering that, back then, that was the average lifespan of a Mac. I severely doubt that Apple is going to cut off Intel Macs THAT soon. But if they did, then you're definitely getting five years of usefulness out of that iMac. If they remove support for Macs at the rate that they are right now (which is to say that they've only removed support for a three 2013 era Macs [and only one of those three had processor/graphics technology that wasn't released earlier than 2013]), I'd imagine that the 2019 iMacs will be supported for at least seven years before they're given a version of macOS that they can't run. From that point on, assuming Apple sticks to their current support "policy" of supporting versions of macOS until they are three versions behind the current one, that adds another two more years of security patches, making your total support time with that machine a whopping nine years. I think you're fine there too.

Lastly, as far as the 5K monitor bit is concerned, Apple has, even throughout the Intel era, changed up the sizes of the iMacs. At the beginning of the Intel era, you had 17" and 20". Then you had those two plus 24". Then they dropped 17". Then they dropped 20" and 24" in favor of 21.5" and 27". Current rumors talk of another 24" in a redesign. Does that mean a 27" or higher non-Pro iMac goes away? I couldn't tell you. I'd hope not. But you never know. Maybe Apple has info that suggests that the iMac Pro has successfully cannibalized the 27" iMac. Maybe they don't. If you're worried about it, I'd just get the current iMac.

TL;DR: If you are worried about not getting the things you want in an upcoming iMac, just get the current.

The only thing I could possibly see them cutting support for it for prematurely is its lack of a T2 chip (which I honestly think is a good thing and not a bad thing). But even that kind of a removal of support won't happen for at least 5 years from now, if not longer.

 

[zhenya]

Hi -

I’m also a graphic designer/web developer. I bought a 27” iMac in March. While I’ll certainly be a bit envious when the new iMacs are inevitably released, the iMac has already been such a tremendous boost in efficiency for me that it has been worth every penny. Previously I was working on a ~3 year old Thinkpad X1 Carbon with a 4k monitor. The iMac is night and day better for my workflow. It’s partially the added power, and partially that everything is simply better optimized on MacOS.

I bought an i5 model with 1Tb SSD and 8GB of RAM that I immediately upgraded to 64GB. This allows me to run as many programs as I like at a time with never a hiccup. Everything is instantaneous all the time, even with Illustrator/Indesign/Photoshop/XD all running simultaneously with multiple projects in each, as well as typically many dozens of tabs open across several different browsers. I would not wait on the RAM upgrade if you do this - I would budget that in immediately.

Now Apple did leave the question of when the new Intel iMac will come a pretty open question after WWDC. It does seem possible they could release an update at almost any time - but even if you buy the current version it will undoubtedly last 5+ years, and the new one will likely be significantly more expensive - especially if they do away with the user-replaceable RAM. In that case you could end up having to choose between a lower cost machine with perhaps only 16 or 32 GB of RAM or paying Apple prices to get what you really want and need (currently it is a $1000 USD up-charge to go from 8GB to 64GB!! - I paid $300).

The question really should be, can you start making more money immediately with a new computer? If so, don’t wait a day longer.

 

[cinnamongirl96]

Thanks for the well thought-out replies! Everything above is reinforcing what I had decided prior to WWDC and the whole "end of Intel" making me second guess myself.

However, for the iMac Pro to not have removable RAM while the standard 27" iMac does, that makes me think that removable RAM on anything other than a Mac Pro isn't a priority for Apple. I hope I'm wrong. But I wouldn't gamble on it, unless you're comfortable with buying the maximum RAM up front.

I would not wait on the RAM upgrade if you do this - I would budget that in immediately.

I would be happy to upgrade RAM upfront if the cost weren't so prohibitive. It's $1500AUD extra to max out the RAM to 64GB in the iMac - that's half as much as the computer itself, and 128GB of aftermarket RAM is basically the same price. (Either way out of my budget right now, but I'd be putting in 64GB pretty soon.) I did get the feeling that the upgradable RAM is a legacy feature that wouldn't be likely to come across to new machines, which is a shame. When I started researching my upgrade I was actually pleasantly surprised to see they offer an option for user upgrades, since I haven't exactly come to expect this from Apple. I think this is going to end up being the deciding factor in my purchase.

It's good to know that the legacy support has always been pretty solid - my last couple machines I haven't had to the point of them becoming no longer supported so it's not something I've had to deal with before really. My current mid-15 Air is still going fine (aside from not being powerful enough for my design work, it's still a great laptop), and my previous laptop was a 2012 Macbook Pro which I killed prematurely before it got the chance to become obsolete. That said, I don't remember exactly what model I had before that but it was a second-hand PPC Macbook (?) which I would have been running until 2012, long after it stopped getting upgrades. I don't remember having any issues with it apart from it feeling like a ton of bricks. This was well before my graphic design days though, so I doubt I was working it very hard.

I was worried that the obsolescence may come quicker given that we are moving from OSX to OS11. I haven't done much reading up on OS11 just yet so I'm not sure if it is going to be more of a jump than a new OSX version...

The question really should be, can you start making more money immediately with a new computer? If so, don’t wait a day longer.

I'm not sure if it's as much a question of making more money for me at the moment, but I do feel pretty limited in terms of time. Speeding up my freelance workflow = more free time, which is pretty valuable to me at the moment. However, I did have plans to step back from my current job and go fully freelance - in which case the iMac would be a necessity, not just a nice upgrade. I've put those plans on hold for now as I'm quite lucky to have a permanent creative job at the moment, but it's definitely still a possibility in the future.

One of the main reasons I've been hesitant to drop $$$ on an iMac is knowing it's only going to get used for a few hours a week...but if it means those few hours a week are twice as productive, I guess it'll be worth it.