Looking into the future which in the computer world you try to do with some success. I would stay away from HD's and drop the extra money on a 2TB SSD and get as much RAM as you can afford and what the hardware can hold.
Blathering nonsense. It all depends on what you are going to be doing with the machine. Typical home use would be email, browsing, online shopping, social media, downloading some photos, and maybe watching a few movies. Maybe Quicken for finances, Office 365 for the rest. The lowest priced 21.5 iMac with a 5400 RPM spinning drive would be more than enough for those tasks. Don’t try to impose your needs and wants on typical market. If you want all the bells and whistles, fine, buy them.
A guy gives his opinion on what he would do and you call it "Blathering nonsense". You do realize it's possible to respond to a comment without pouring self-rightous sauce all over yourself. Try words like "I disagree because..."
I disagree with your comment because as mentioned by others, email, browsing, online shopping, social media and the other light-weight use cases you mentioned can all be done on a phone which 99% of us all have. I would go with the SSD on an iMac. Spinning disks on computers need to go away.
The only issue with the $1,299 3.6GHz quad-core -- which applies to the dual core model above as well -- is the storage. It comes equipped with a 1TB, 5400 RPM hard drive. If the main use for the machine is browsing or Facebook, or other "average" uses, this doesn't matter at all, but this is the still biggest limiting factor to this machine.
Absolutely not. This is an excellent home machine. You wouldn't BootCamp a 256GB SSD, the partitions would be too small. 1 TB is the minimum size to run natively both Windows and macOS on the same machine, considering that an average recent Windows game takes about 60 GB of space.
Ask kids whether they want 1 TB hard disk or 256 GB SSD: all wil cheer for 1 TB hard disk because they have a lot of games to store, mostly Windows ones.. Apple could default to 256 GB SSD on that model but then the family would run shortly out of space: families have a lot of fun, photos, videos, games, music and movies to store in their home computers, 1 TB hard disk is chosen with families in mind.
Uhm I do perfectly fine with my 512 GB ssd MacBook Pro partitioned pretty well. I will admit my old 256 GB partition(older model) was a little annoying. It's called an external Hdd or Ssd if you find the space to limiting, or upgrade at the time of buying. They upgraded the latest Mac mini to a 256 GB ssd and I see no reason to assume it isn't just as family oriented. Also peoples use cases vary so much, but it is annoying that Apple doesn't have an SSD version thats not custom order, perhaps only the top models, or exchanging each type of fusion drive for an SSD thats half the capacity will be on future models.
The only issue with the $1,299 3.6GHz quad-core -- which applies to the dual core model above as well -- is the storage. It comes equipped with a 1TB, 5400 RPM hard drive. If the main use for the machine is browsing or Facebook, or other "average" uses, this doesn't matter at all, but this is the still biggest limiting factor to this machine.
Absolutely not. This is an excellent home machine. You wouldn't BootCamp a 256GB SSD, the partitions would be too small. 1 TB is the minimum size to run natively both Windows and macOS on the same machine, considering that an average recent Windows game takes about 60 GB of space.
Ask kids whether they want 1 TB hard disk or 256 GB SSD: all wil cheer for 1 TB hard disk because they have a lot of games to store, mostly Windows ones.. Apple could default to 256 GB SSD on that model but then the family would run shortly out of space: families have a lot of fun, photos, videos, games, music and movies to store in their home computers, 1 TB hard disk is chosen with families in mind.
Uhm I do perfectly fine with my 512 GB ssd MacBook Pro partitioned pretty well. I will admit my old 256 GB partition(older model) was a little annoying. It's called an external Hdd or Ssd if you find the space to limiting, or upgrade at the time of buying. They upgraded the latest Mac mini to a 256 GB ssd and I see no reason to assume it isn't just as family oriented. Also peoples use cases vary so much, but it is annoying that Apple doesn't have an SSD version thats not custom order, perhaps only the top models, or exchanging each type of fusion drive for an SSD thats half the capacity will be on future models.
It has long amazed me that Apple and PC makers haven't opted for a plugin SSD design. The standard SSD design is just like a larger camera SD card which many laptops have removable 'slots' for. A Mac mini could just as easily be designed with a 2.5" slot for a full-sized SSD card or better yet two such slots. Need to upgrade from 256 GB to 1 TB? No problem, eject and change the SSD. With a Mac, it is so easy to transfer a boot drive's OS, EFI partition and contents to a new drive using the excellent Carbon Copy Cloner be it HFS or APFS. Under Windows, it is just as doable with 3rd party utilities some of which are free or even using the more complex built-in Windows tools.
Do any of these configurations come with strictly SSD's and no Fusion Drive? The reason I ask is that one has to look at the future since who wants to buy a new iMac with ancient technology in it like a spinning HD.
You can specify an SSD when you after you add the iMac to your cart. Most people get 1 TB SSD and upgrade the memory on their own. The Samsung T5 2TB external SSD is also popular for additional storage.
Another angle from iFixit, is that people have upgraded the internal drive and CPU , but you need to correct tools and need to be comfortable with taking the iMac apart and putting it back together again. Assume the warranty is voided when you do this.
I'm on the fence between the base 3.0 GHz and 3.7 GHz models. Both are faster than my macbook pro and have a dedicated GPU. I don't create media but I do a lot of video transcoding which makes my MBP fan's go into high speed.
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They upgraded the latest Mac mini to a 256 GB ssd and I see no reason to assume it isn't just as family oriented. Also peoples use cases vary so much, but it is annoying that Apple doesn't have an SSD version thats not custom order, perhaps only the top models, or exchanging each type of fusion drive for an SSD thats half the capacity will be on future models.
Another angle from iFixit, is that people have upgraded the internal drive and CPU , but you need to correct tools and need to be comfortable with taking the iMac apart and putting it back together again. Assume the warranty is voided when you do this.
I'm on the fence between the base 3.0 GHz and 3.7 GHz models. Both are faster than my macbook pro and have a dedicated GPU. I don't create media but I do a lot of video transcoding which makes my MBP fan's go into high speed.