Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Should I Buy An iMac Now Or Wait Till The Updates Are Announced?

P

Paulg2uk

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 15, 2008
207
18
Hi guys,

I need some help here. My boss has asked me to look into buying an iMac for the business. I've been a mac user since 2008 so I know what they are capable of. My boss has a 5 year old HP PC running windows 10 and its slow as hell. (My boss updated it himself after me telling him not to).

Anyway we are looking to get an iMac, I would think the mid model with a fusion drive would be good for us and would last a good few years. Its not being used for a lot of processing power mainly for emails, surfing the web, creating our invoices with Quickbooks etc. Most of our business relies on checking stock with the suppliers which, are all online based nowadays as you guys would expect. They have an online stock portal which shows costs and what they have etc. So we need this to be fairly quick. Although we have a really faster Fiber internet connection the 5 year old PC is struggling a lot as you'd expect right lol.

I use my 2012 macbook pro at work which works great. Soon to be upgraded as well I might add.

What do you guys think we should do? hold out till WWDC or buy now? I'm thinking for what we will use it for if the new iMacs are announced it won't make much of a difference.

What do you guys think?

Many thanks

Paul
 
I say just tentatively wait if you don't need one urgently. It's worth holding off if they drastically reduce prices or put SSDs in as standard (as painfully unlikely as either of those situations are).
 
  • Like
Reactions: Three141
Buy now, if you wait, business conditions could change and you may not have an opportunity in the future.

Also, the current crop (particularly the 5k) are excellent machines, I see no reason to hold off for 6 months - which is my estimation of when apple will refresh the iMac line.
 
maflynn said:
Buy now, if you wait, business conditions could change and you may not have an opportunity in the future.

Also, the current crop (particularly the 5k) are excellent machines, I see no reason to hold off for 6 months - which is my estimation of when apple will refresh the iMac line.
Click to expand...

I was thinking of getting the 4K model 21.5". I can use my sisters student discount as well that's 15% off over here in the UK. Not bad at all.
 
Buy now. The "overdue announcement" everybody is waiting for is all about MacBooks - the iMac typically gets updated in the 4th quarter.

Unless Apple have something unexpected up their sleeves, the only likely "game changer" for the next iMac is a switch to USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 - and, quite frankly, that's likely to be a mixed blessing in the short term, needing adapters all your existing equipment. The big benefits of USB-C are for laptops & mobiles and there's too much USB 3 (or, more technically, USB A) & Thunderbolt 2 kit around & still being sold for it to be going away any time soon.

The processor improvement is likely to be modest - especially if you're not worried about graphics.

It doesn't sound as if you need much 'offline' storage - I'd go for the 256GB SSD, and keep all that nasty "spinning rust" out of your nice sleek iMac. 256GB goes a long way until you start playing with video or virtual machines.

Check that all the software you need is available & ask around about the quality/compatibility of the Mac version (I don't use Quickbooks - any gotchas with the Mac edition?) MS Office for Mac is available, but bear in mind there's no MS Access & I think there are some capability differences with Outlook. If you rely on any complex Excel sheets (especially with macros) then they need to be checked out on a Mac before you jump.

For online stuff - most modern websites/apps will be fine in Safari and, if not, Chrome or Firefox usually solve the problem. However, a lot of old bespoke commercial stuff is only ever going to run in Internet Explorer.

None of this should be a deal breaker - and if all else fails you can install Windows on the Mac - but its worth a bit of research and don't "just assume" that if there's a Mac version of your software then everything will be peachy (especially if you have to continue to exchange data with PCs).

Edit: when I wrote the above, I missed that you had used your MacBook Pro at work - but make sure you try out everything that anybody is going to need to run on the proposed iMac.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: tgara and Cape Dave
iMacs won't be updated until October/November, buy now and make the most of the increased productivity for as long as you can.
 
Get it now, updates are not on the immediate horizon for the IMac. Whatever you get him is going to be much better than that HP thing it's replacing.
 
Important:

DON'T buy the "1tb fusion" model -- it has only a 24gb SSD portion.
DO buy the "2tb fusion" model - it has a larger 120gb SSD portion.
 
Fishrrman said:
Important:

DON'T buy the "1tb fusion" model -- it has only a 24gb SSD portion.
DO buy the "2tb fusion" model - it has a larger 120gb SSD portion.
Click to expand...

Or:

DON'T buy the 2TB fusion - if you're not doing video, pro photography/graphics, virtual machines or other Eaters of Hard Drive Space you don't actually need 2 terabytes, and there's always externals, networked storage or the cloud.

DO buy the 256GB pure SSD - its cheaper than the 2TB Fusion, is available on the base 1.6 GHz model (to get 2TB you have to buy the 2.8) and there's less to go wrong, less heat, lower power. You can fit a lot of invoices, business letters and spreadsheets into 256GB.
 
theluggage said:
Or:

DON'T buy the 2TB fusion - if you're not doing video, pro photography/graphics, virtual machines or other Eaters of Hard Drive Space you don't actually need 2 terabytes, and there's always externals, networked storage or the cloud.

DO buy the 256GB pure SSD - its cheaper than the 2TB Fusion, is available on the base 1.6 GHz model (to get 2TB you have to buy the 2.8) and there's less to go wrong, less heat, lower power. You can fit a lot of invoices, business letters and spreadsheets into 256GB.
Click to expand...

Or: don't buy an iMac period until Apple carry out a fundamental redesign, use the best and very latest components and make them user upgradeable once again.
 
I'm wondering a similar thing – in your shoes, I'd probably just go ahead. My late-2012 iMac is still performing beautifully and looking beautiful (for casual and processing-intensive tasks).

I've been tempted by Retina iMacs since they appeared and they've improved ever since, but with new and interesting things happening with Intel and OS X in the near future, I'm wondering whether we're nearing some new and interesting in the evolution of the iMac as well, and in that situation, I'm willing to wait for WWDC or possibly even the fall.
 
Lankyman said:
Or: don't buy an iMac period until Apple carry out a fundamental redesign, use the best and very latest components and make them user upgradeable once again.
Click to expand...

Sorry: you must have leaned on the keyboard, because a lot of irrelevant and meaningless words got included in your post. I think what you meant was:

Or: don't buy an iMac period
Click to expand...

Sorry, but you're not going to see user upgradeable iMacs any time soon. Traditional desktop PC sales are collapsing - but sales of Macs (yes, the new thinner, lighter, less-upgradeable ones with fewer ports) are holding up. (https://www.macrumors.com/2016/04/11/gartner-idc-pc-shipments-1q16/) - like it or lump it, thinner sells and Apple is not going to change a winning strategy. Plus, demand for RAM seems to have levelled off - if you only need 8GB now you're probably only going to need 8GB in 3 years time. Don't be surprised if the next iMac is a sealed unit with 2 USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports, a power socket and nothing else. Can't say I like that, but them's the breaks. I'd love an upgradeable Apple mini-tower, but unless they make it stupidly expensive all it would achieve is to put apple (or at least the Mac side of their business) out of business by eating sales of the high-margin SFF units.

As for the very best and latest components, they're only incrementally better than the ones in the current models and by the time those show up in iMacs then there will be even better and, er, latest-er ones coming Real Soon Now.

Sure, I have no pressing need for a new computer, so I personally might wait as long as possible before upgrading - unless my current computer suddenly dies.
 
  • Like
Reactions: merkinmuffley
theluggage said:
Sorry: you must have leaned on the keyboard, because a lot of irrelevant and meaningless words got included in your post. I think what you meant was:



Sorry, but you're not going to see user upgradeable iMacs any time soon. Traditional desktop PC sales are collapsing - but sales of Macs (yes, the new thinner, lighter, less-upgradeable ones with fewer ports) are holding up. (https://www.macrumors.com/2016/04/11/gartner-idc-pc-shipments-1q16/) - like it or lump it, thinner sells and Apple is not going to change a winning strategy. Plus, demand for RAM seems to have levelled off - if you only need 8GB now you're probably only going to need 8GB in 3 years time. Don't be surprised if the next iMac is a sealed unit with 2 USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports, a power socket and nothing else. Can't say I like that, but them's the breaks. I'd love an upgradeable Apple mini-tower, but unless they make it stupidly expensive all it would achieve is to put apple (or at least the Mac side of their business) out of business by eating sales of the high-margin SFF units.

As for the very best and latest components, they're only incrementally better than the ones in the current models and by the time those show up in iMacs then there will be even better and, er, latest-er ones coming Real Soon Now.

Sure, I have no pressing need for a new computer, so I personally might wait as long as possible before upgrading - unless my current computer suddenly dies.
Click to expand...

Oh don't get me wrong, I'm well aware Apple aren't going to alter the 'cash cow' cough 'business model' they currently use. I'm sure you have heard the saying 'there's one born every minute'? Well it's very true when it comes to Apple sales, I'm sure they could make a lot of money out of some people by selling them fresh air provided it was branded as Apple.

When my current iMac is done I plan to go back to building my own machine with the latest parts as I'm quite happy to use Windows 10 or Linux. In the meantime I will continue my dream of a decent upgradeable iMac, though I realise it is only a dream.
 
I just purchased a Late 2015K iMac with no regrets, it actually just came today at work and is sitting next to my desk to bring home.

Go for it. Get an SSD.
 
Just depends how urgent you are...


If you can wait, at least do it to see the likely GPU updates and perhaps inclusion of new DisplayPort/Thunderbolt/USB standards which will superb to have for future proofing and perhaps even bringing back Target Display Mode.


If at that time it isn't worth buying the new one, you've now automatically locked in big savings on the "old" late 2015 5k models.


With Mac hardware these days, they are really only close to top of the line when brand new, so I would always recommend buying a new Mac...when that model is first released if possible -- as it's all downhill from there w/ regard to the internal specs.
 
theluggage said:
It doesn't sound as if you need much 'offline' storage - I'd go for the 256GB SSD, and keep all that nasty "spinning rust" out of your nice sleek iMac. 256GB goes a long way until you start playing with video or virtual machines.
Click to expand...

256GB feels pretty small for a desktop. Any time I've skimped on hard drive space, I've eventually regretted it. Unless you're cool with using (and keeping backed up) external drives, I'd get something bigger up front.

But yeah, definitely don't get a plain old HDD, but that 1TB Fusion Drive is quite good -- it intelligently migrates things you use more onto the SSD and feels MUCH faster than a spinning hard drive. Be aware that the lower-tier iMacs use a scandalously small SSD portion on the Fusion Drives, but the better ones use I think 128GB.

Lastly, be aware that even if Apple comes out with some earth-shattering upgrade, an iMac's resale value is going to hold up pretty well. Just be sure to keep all the packaging on hand and probably you're looking at only a smallish hit if you decide to upgrade later.
 
Last edited:
If you need it now, get it now.
The current iMac is the best bang for the buck Apple computer right now.
If you can wait two months for WWDC, wait two months.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back