I fancy a mac - but which one?

philstanbridge

philstanbridge

philstanbridge

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I haven't used a mac in years, but I really fancy one now to replace my desktop. I don't mind if its a laptop or desktop, but only if funds permit. I don't want to spend more than £1500 ideally. Any suggestions?
 
I suppose it depends on your needs from the machine, memory requirements etc If you were to go down an iMac route which screen size would you prefer 21" or 27"

Also depends on if you'd like to purchase and remove from the box and just use for the easy life or whether you'd consider buying the base models then adding in your own memory, SSD etc there are plenty of options.
 
You'll probably get more bang for your buck from a desktop machine. It depends whether portability is desirable obviously!
 
Do you have a nice monitor already and maybe an SSD that could get some good use out of? Try a mac mini, the pov spec quad core is really good value (when you get the ssd in it too) and generally is a nice little choice.

If not get a retina macbook (the 13" looks amazing now I've seen it and the 15" is a beast but pretty expensive).

Imacs are always a good choice but it really seems the minimum is to order a fusion drive which makes them quite expensive, powerful though.

Anyway boils down to what you are planning on doing with it. Light/average gaming at 1920x1200 can be done easily on the mini (and the 13" retina), bit more gaming orentated I would push for the 15" retina or imac options with the dedicated gpus.
 
Cheers. I do have an SSD and I have a half decent 24" monitor too used with my desktop. But those retina screens are fantastic aren't they. My mate has the 27" imac all singing and dancing model and it is really nice, but way too rich for me unfortunately.

I was primarily going to be doing day to day stuff on it, some graphics manipulation, photo editing. But I'd also like to be able to run FM13 :) and a couple of other games I beta test. They're not too demanding but they do require a half decent Nvidia card whether that is integral or not.

I'm not desperate for the 27" screen, and I was actually wondering about a laptop over the desktop for mobility purposes. But I just don't know. I would have to sell the components from my existing desktop if I want to buy a mac anyway. I'd probably recoup £500-£600 doing that.
 
I went Mac mini route.... i7 model, 256gb SSD, duel drive kit, 16gb third party ram and them linked via display port to a asus pb278q (same res as iMac 27)

I flys along in everything.... And runs win7 fast via bootcamp
 
Hope you don't mind me hijacking this thread but thinking of getting a rMBP, need a new laptop for my studies and fancy a change from Windows and wanted some feedback on the 13" rMBP.

Looks very nice but are there issues with having a retina screen? What I mean is do programs which are not properly designed for the resolution look rubbish? Scaling has always looked dog awful from my experience on PC so wondered how this manifests on Mac?

The prices recently dropped so I assume a new line will be coming along soon, these will be Haswell chips if the rumours are correct, is there an ETA for a new range?

Thanks.
 
DUe to get my bonus in a few weeks and a rMBP (refurb) has been tickling my fancy. I already have a Lenovo laptop of very similar spec so not sure if I can justify it to myself.
 
Might be incorrect, but i remember reading somewhere the new macbook pro/air release is set for June '13?
 
Well I have a mac mini (the base i7 one with 2 ssd's in it and 16 gig of ram) and it's great for FM13 :D (pretty much all I play now, though it can do xcom and civ5 well enough too)

By the sounds of your usage levels the HD4000 onboard chip would do the job fine so a mini would be good fun or if you fancied a laptop have a look at the retina 13" (really starting to warm to that now as well). If you have the cash pushing the boat out for something bigger would be good but not essential :)
 
Erm..... after 3 years of finger hovering I've finally taken the plunge and bought myself a macbook pro (retina)....

It's taken so long because I've always just considered it to be too expensive. I'd save enough for it and then hold off... save even more then hold off again thinking... i could buy a 50" TV and a windows laptop for that price... Got a nice bonus though so i just thought f it and went ahead.

Went with the Standard retina but upgraded to 16GB ram and a 512 SSD.

Comes this Thursday and i cannot wait!!
 
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