I use SSD iMacs and 15" retina Pros commonly and I struggle to tell a difference (and I'm not the only one). Your comparison between your new machine and old one is not valid due to more than the backing storage varying. That's what Ive seen a lot on these forums, "My 2009 iMac with a HDD is so much slower than my new 2013 iMac with an SSD". When I sat my iMac next to a maxed out 15" rMBP 2012 (non PCIe but still SSD) yes the boot time was around half (15 seconds vs 30 seconds) but when it came to launching apps, the gap was even smaller (opening iMovie for example was taken 30% longer on my iMac). Due to App Caching, the contents of a previously opened app can hold data to allow a much faster re-launch. With app caching (ie me opening the app then closing it before doing this), my iMac was exactly the same as the maxed out retina Pro.
The benefit of an SSD is that it is more durable in a laptop and will be fine if shacked about. Yes, bootup's are faster, but me along with others usually restart our Macs every 3 months so that is hardly worth it (unless you commonly use bootcamp). If you heavily import video and audio then an SSD will really help out but on day to day tasks such as opening apps (both big and small) show next to no difference. I have had people ask multiple times if my iMac had a Fusion Drive because they remember HDDs being slow on their old machines.
And how can someone determine feelings through a basic paragraph with no emotion coupled with it?
but i hate the calendar icon, doesn't seem to fit the overall feeling of the new icons. (but certainly not a life&death issue)...
