[DigitalEl]

My current iMac is a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo with maxed RAM and it's kind of a dog.

After next week's WWDC announcements, I'm pulling the trigger on my next Mac. It will be another desktop. My wife and I both have iPads and iPhones. Neither of us needs a MacBook.

So the short version of my question is this: Mac mini or iMac?

I can get a Mac mini, max out the RAM and a new 27-inch monitor for cheaper than a 27-inch iMac. Obviously spec bumps are likely come Monday, but the iMacs are still likely to blow the minis away on paper. Twice the cores and twice the on-chip shared L3 cache.

As a consumer user (I never use pro apps and don't game), should I save the money and go with the mini setup or spend more for a 27-inch iMac? Will the iMac's classier specs make a huge difference in resource hog apps like iTunes and iPhoto?

My other most-used apps are: Safari, Reeder, Calendar and Evernote. There's obviously nothing there that taxes the system.

I don't need SSD or terabyte drives. I don't need portability. I just need a bulletproof desktop that'll churn for 5 years+ (then another 3 as a hand-me-down for my parents). No beachballs. No bull----.

Thoughts?

[SierraDragon]

Originally Posted by DigitalEl 

...Will the iMac's classier specs make a huge difference in resource hog apps like iTunes and iPhoto?

I do not know about others here, but I do not consider either of those apps to be resource hogs in terms of base level 2012 Mac hardware.

I don't need SSD...

IMO yes, you do. Whichever solution you choose SSD for boot should be part of the plan - and therefore part of the cost analysis. An SSD affects everything for the better (except mass storage cost per GB). IMO HDD for boot is defunct.

Beyond that I think we need to first see what next week's offerings turn out to be. Small changes to the Mini line in particular or to SSD option pricing might make a big difference one way or the other to the short answer to your primary question.

My 02.

One additional consideration is possible continued usage of your existing iMac as a display only. I suggest that you check to see if yours is one of the iMacs that can be configured as a display running from another box.

-Allen

[Waragainstsleep]

iMac will get you a better bang for your buck, Mac Mini removes a potentially expensive point of failure in the 27" LCD. You won't get an LCD for a Mac Mini as good as the one in the iMac for the same total price of said iMac.

Rumour sites say 4 out of 5 Macs are getting updates next week. Mac Mini might be the one to miss out which might make your decision for you.

[DigitalEl]

Originally Posted by SierraDragon 

I do not know about others here, but I do not consider either of those apps to be resource hogs in terms of base level 2012 Mac hardware.

Both of those bring my Core 2 Duo to its knees, especially the former. It's Beachball City on my 2008-era iMac. If the lesser-spec Mac mini runs both like butter, maybe I don't need the iMac. This is exactly the kind of feedback I'm looking for.

[P]

With the rumored updates, the iMac will indeed smoke the mini in all possible ways, but from your description, I think your problem today is your HDD or possibly just out of RAM. iTunes and iPhoto - the latter especially - tend to hit the disk a lot, so I think that's what you're seeing. A new Mac mini will have a slower HDD than the one in your iMac today.

Personally I would say go for the bottom iMac (21.5") as the best bang for buck. 27" is massive, and 21.5" is really quite enough. A mini would be OK with an SSD, but I do not recommend it with an HDD.

[SierraDragon]

I do need to point out that there is a basic conflict in your hardware wants in that you are asking for Apple's cheapest Macs to also be "...a bulletproof desktop that'll churn for 5 years+ (then another 3 as a hand-me-down for my parents). No beachballs. No bull----."

That is like asking Nikon for a good cheap fast lens. Or asking Goodyear for a 100,000-mile tire with great traction. Not really a reasonable specification.

It is easy to optimize hardware suggestions to suit your other needs, but asking Apple's lowest end to not either become obsolete or suffer hardware failure for 8+ years is probably an unrealistic expectation that may lead to over-specifying the initial purchase. It may be better to just shoot for a normal 3-5 year life cycle expectation, and then if (not unlikely) 8+ years of usability occurs it becomes a bonus.

OTOH if the 8+ year life really is important to you maybe we should add used Mac Pros into the mix.

-Allen

[abbaZaba]

go mini with an SSD. none of the apps you use are intensive by any means. 16GB + SSD + i5 should be just fine for your 5 year window.

for what it's worth, I am also primarily using a C2D 2.4GHz iMac with 6GB and an HDD. my Macbook Core Duo 2.0 w/ 2GB and SSD does feel a bit snappier, though I don't throw as much at the macbook as I do the iMac.

bottom line: SSD makes a huge difference, save the money and go with the easier to open mac mini.

[SierraDragon]

Originally Posted by DigitalEl 

Both of those bring my Core 2 Duo to its knees, especially the former. It's Beachball City on my 2008-era iMac.

If your RAM is inadequate and/or the HDD is overfilled those would be the symptoms.

1) HDDs slow as they fill so keep your internal drive less than an arbitrary ~70% full.

2) You can evaluate whether or not you have adequate RAM by looking at the Page Outs number under System Memory on the Activity Monitor app before starting a typical work session; recheck after working and if the page outs change (manual calculation of ending page outs number minus starting page outs number) is not zero your workflow is RAM-starved. Ignore page ins, the pie charts and other info in Activity Monitor.

If your test shows that page outs increase at all during operation it is affecting performance. You can

• add RAM as feasible

• restart with some frequency if you suspect memory leaks (common especially with less-than-top-quality applications)

• and/or simply try to run only one app at a time, for sure diligently closing unneeded apps like browsers

• and/or switch 64-bit operation to 32-bit operation (which will make some additional RAM space available). Note that your Mac may already default to 32-bit. See Switching Kernels:

Mac OS X: 64-bit kernel frequently asked questions

Note that RAM is cheap and apps and the OS will be using more and more RAM as time goes on, IMO a good thing.

All that said, of course a new 2011/2012 Mac is the best solution of all...

HTH

-Allen

[DigitalEl]

Originally Posted by P 

A new Mac mini will have a slower HDD than the one in your iMac today.

That alone just about seals it.

SierraDragon's "Good-Fast-Cheap" reminder is a pretty universal truth. I can only pick two.

The real takeaway so far is that maybe I consider the 21.5” iMac. As that's the size of my current Mac, I really had my heart set on the 27".

Thanks for the feedback everyone. Can't wait to see what PhilSchill and Co. unveil on Monday.

[SierraDragon]

If you do go the Mini route very good displays can be had in the ~24-26" range for $300-$500 from Eizo, NEC, and Viewsonic (mine is a Viewsonic VP2365 from a year ago). Non-glossy is readily available and the value bests Apple by a lot. None ares beautiful to look at as the Apples however.

Note that HDD speed is irrelevant if you build a box with recommended SSD. One can retrofit SSD for ~$250 if necessary.

[cgc]

Originally Posted by abbaZaba 

... and SSD does feel a bit snappier, though I don't throw as much at the macbook as I do the iMac.

bottom line: SSD makes a huge difference, save the money and go with the easier to open mac mini.

"a bit snappier" != "Huge difference". Macworld tested a stock i5 Mac Mini with a Mac Mini upgraded to SSD and i7 and (obviously) the upgraded Mini won...it was actually on par with an iMac in terms of speed (except for gaming) but the Mini cost a couple hundred dollars more. I'm not sold on the value of the SSD, I think if you can get an SSD for cheap then go for it, otherwise get a Mac Mini with a 7200 RPM HDD and call it a day.

[angelmb]

Originally Posted by DigitalEl 

I don't need SSD or terabyte drives.

No beachballs. No bull----.

If you don't need terabyte drives, go for a SSD. My experience: my brother had the 27" iMac 2,66 i5 Quad-Core 16 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD. He has since replaced it with a Mac mini 2,7 i7 Dual-Core, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD & 500 GB 7500 rpm HDD

The Mac mini is just a sweet dream. No noise at all. No beachballs. We have SSD to thank for that.

[Eug]

Which machine is it? 2.4 GHz 20"? If so, how much RAM do you have in it? 2 GB or 4 GB?

P.S. I'm not a big fan of my 2009 27" Core i7 iMac. It's too tall IMO, and the pixel density is too high for Lion. If I were to buy one now, it'd be a 21.5".

And yes you do need SSD. Just do it.

[SierraDragon]

Originally Posted by cgc 

...Macworld tested a stock i5 Mac Mini with a Mac Mini upgraded to SSD... I'm not sold on the value of the SSD...

Tests like the ones MW ran are of limited utility; in fact very misleading as regards evaluating SSD v. HDD. MW should know better. Most benchmark testing measures throughput, which is relevant of course but not really the point of why SSDs are so far superior as boot drives.

The primary issue is latency. SSD latencies are orders of magnitude shorter than HDDs. The hugely improved latency makes for faster response across all applications and the OS, hence the "snappier" that new SSD users invariably report.

Some may think "it is only nanoseconds of improvement" but the overall operational improvement of all those ongoing zillions of nanoseconds quicker is very significant. SSD usage literally changes workflows.

Note too that when RAM is inadequate and page outs do occur, the operational impacts of page outs to SSD are totally different than page outs to HDD. Aperture on 2 GB RAM, for instance, will beachball constantly with HDD but with SSD it will just slow down operation.

The SSD improvement is especially dramatic when compared to always-lame Mini and laptop HDDs. Paying extra for 7200 rpm does not fix the HDD lameness.

Incidental SSD benefits include no moving parts and no noise. I would even venture a guess that Mac OS designers are now designing around SSD usage, further increasing the future superiority of SSD over HDD.

-Allen

[gooser]

i don't understand why your 2.4ghz is a dog. i have more than 100gb of music on my 800mhz g4 imac and my itunes doesn't drag. at all. i'm running itunes 6 which may help though.

[cgc]

Originally Posted by SierraDragon 

Tests like the ones MW ran are of limited utility; in fact very misleading as regards evaluating SSD v. HDD.

...

Right. I couldn't derive much from the MW HDD testing but I thought I'd post it. I really wanted to find a test using identical machines, one with an SSD and another with a HDD. I don't know if the gains would be perceptible or useful to most, of course power users would notice, but is it worth the extra cost and lower capacity? I argues this before in other forums and beat up so I expect that, but I think the value of an SSD is low for most if cost is factored in.

If I were buying a Mac Mini for the purposes the OP had, I would get a 7200 RPM HDD and call it a day as they are happy with what they have. If I personally were buying a Mac Mini (and I consider myself a power user to some extent) I'd still do the same thing...at least until SSDs can hold 750GB or so.

Not everyone should have an SSD, it's an expensive option some people really appreciate. Like we all don't need a sports car but we have a need to drive around to pick up groceries and stuff.

[Eug]

A 256 GB SSD is expensive at Apple.com, but shouldn't be as SSD prices have plummeted in 2012. I suspect with any new iMac and Mac mini release this year, the upgrade to SSD will cost a lot less than what Apple charges for it now, and likely for his use it's likely a much, much better upgrade than a faster CPU, both in perceived speed increase and in terms of bang-for-the-buck.

In fact, I'd argue that for the OP's usage, the choice of CPU is likely almost irrelevant. As far as I'm concerned, any CPU that's a 2.x GHz i3 or better is sufficient, but the minimum CPU Apple sells in its desktops is the dual-core i5, which is probably more than he needs. Much more important for him are memory and SSD.

The one caveat is that a 7200 rpm laptop drive is generally slower than a 7200 rpm desktop drive, so an iMac will feel less slow than a Mac mini. However, an 8 GB dual-core Mac mini with SSD will usually feel faster than an 8 GB quad-core iMac with 7200 rpm drive.

SSD >> hard drive >> laptop hard drive

DigitalEl, to put it another way: For basic usage my 4 GB 2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro with "slow" SSD feels faster than my 12 GB 2.93 GHz quad Core i7 with 7200 rpm drive. However, for memory intensive stuff and video encoding, the i7 is better. I think the sweet spot is probably 8 GB with SSD, with the CPU only really becoming important for specific things such as video encoding.

[SierraDragon]

What Eug said. +1

[DigitalEl]

Update: Got the Mac mini and a ~ $300 ViewSonic monitor. Hated the resolution and the way everything looked, even at 1080p. Returned it all.

Ended up with the 21.5" iMac Core i5.

Please see this new thread for another question.

[infoleather]

Lion of the pixel density is too high. If I bought one, this will be a 21.5 ".