I bought a Studio and sold my 2014 iMac 27. I missed the screen so I bought a 2015 iMac 27 for $200 with 32 GB of RAM. I run my office stuff on the iMac and my production on the Studio and this works nicely. I only got the base M1 Max so having more RAM is nice even though I only use about half of it. There's a 2017 iMac 27 in my area for $200 right now but I'm looking for a 2019 or 2020 that's cheap for a bit more video performance. The 2015 does not play 720p YouTube full-screen smoothly and I could use a better GPU.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Ex-iMac users - happy you switched?
- Thread starter Geoff777
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
If you missed the screen, why not just buy a nice screen? If the Studio display is not within your budget, go to eBay for the LG 5K Ultrafine. I currently see at least two going for $400 - which is what you'd have spent on used iMacs. If my Ultrafine is anything to go off of, they even still develop the pink fringing issue with time that the original 5K iMacs did (which was supposedly due to something with the adhesives aging) 🤪 And of course, you can use any screen, so you're not locked into the Ultrafine or Studio displays, either.
I just bought an iMac Pro to replace the 2015 iMac.
The 2015 iMac or iMac Pro are nice to run my office stuff on as my Studio only has 32 GB of RAM. The iMacs both have 32 GB of RAM and I can offload programs that use moderate memory but not a lot of CPU/GPU.
Not a studio user, but I replaced an iMac Pro with a 7,1 Mac Pro. I was always unhappy with the inability to upgrade my graphics card, which the progress for generally far outpaced CPU progress. You can guess how I feel about being stuck with a RX 6900 XT until I switch to either a studio or updated Mac Pro ... with locked in GPUs.
Kinda feeling like I couldn't win.
Kinda feeling like I couldn't win.
I just needed something good enough to run YouTube at full screen and I think that a 2017 iMac would have been enough. The iMac Pro has double the CPU and triple the GPU and it runs it just fine.
These days, your options are to go Hackintosh with an AMD CPU and nVidia GPU, go Apple Silicon or go with an Intel Mac Pro and hope for another 3-4 years of macOS Intel support. Or maybe Apple will launch a 27 inch Apple Silicon iMac with M4 Max and M4 Ultra CPUs.
I have a spare GTX 1660 Ti on a table which I could put in my Windows desktop and that would certainly be enough - but I'd prefer keeping that desktop on Windows.
If you need or want user-upgradeable GPUs, you need to switch to PCs. You’re never going to have this with ARM.
I had a 2011 27" iMac, 3.2 GHz and 16 GB RAM, plus 1.5 TB of disk store. It was a FABULOUS machine in it's day, and I still have it. These days it is just gathering dust.
I replaced it with my M1 Max MacStudio and took the opportunity to create my first two monitor Mac configuration. I now have two old Dell 27" monitors being driven by my MacStudio, creating one large seamless desktop.
The MacStudio is brilliant... fast, quiet and courtesy of the above 2 monitors, supporting the largest Mac desktop I have ever had the pleasure of using. I LOVE my MacStudio and can't see what will lead me to upgrade it. As I posted elsewhere, it is already "stupid fast". I may drive this machine for a lot of years.
I replaced it with my M1 Max MacStudio and took the opportunity to create my first two monitor Mac configuration. I now have two old Dell 27" monitors being driven by my MacStudio, creating one large seamless desktop.
The MacStudio is brilliant... fast, quiet and courtesy of the above 2 monitors, supporting the largest Mac desktop I have ever had the pleasure of using. I LOVE my MacStudio and can't see what will lead me to upgrade it. As I posted elsewhere, it is already "stupid fast". I may drive this machine for a lot of years.
If you are an Apple fanatic (and I suspect that more than a few of us here are) there is one other thing to keep in mind. While some may say the MacStudio is just a grown up Mac Mini, I prefer to think of it as the spiritual successor to the incredible G4 Cube, perhaps the most innovative Mac of all time.
Steve Jobs loved cube shaped computers, and the MacStudio is the first machine since the G4 Cube to approach this ideal. I would never have purchased my MacStudio for that alone, I would be lying if I didn't admit that it was a real selling point for me.
Steve Jobs loved cube shaped computers, and the MacStudio is the first machine since the G4 Cube to approach this ideal. I would never have purchased my MacStudio for that alone, I would be lying if I didn't admit that it was a real selling point for me.
