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Photo Taco – 2017 iMac for Photogs

Jeff Harmon talks about a few changes to the show with some consolidation to a single Improve Photography podcast feed and a single Facebook group and then answers a question from listener Katie Shipley who asked:

I had just finished listening to the podcast and taking notes on what to look for when buying a new computer when Apple announced the new iMacs last week. Now I am confused on which one is best. I think the iMac Pro is out of my price range so I need to stick with an iMac. I would love suggestions on what to buy to get the best performance in LR and PS. The top of my budget is $2000 but would love to not spend that much if I can get great performance for less”

Jeff recommends the base level 27″ iMac with upgrades of 256GB SSD and 16GB of memory that comes in slightly over budget at $2,100 before taxes.  If the $2,000 budget is more hard than that then the mid-level 21.5″ iMac with upgrades to a Core i7 CPU, 256GB SSD, and 16GB of memory brings the price in at right on $2,000 but leaves not room for taxes in the budget.  If that is still a problem then go with the Core i5 CPU and the 256GB SSD and 16GB RAM which comes to $1,700 and should mean with taxes the computer will come in under budget.

Other Photo Taco Resoucres

Vote for Jeff’s “Cull” module idea to be added to Lightroom: https://bit.ly/cullmodule

Photo Taco Archive: https://improvephotography.com/category/taco/

iTunes review link: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/photo-taco-quick-photography/id980781096?mt=2#

Photo Taco Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phototacopodcast/

Photo Taco email: [email protected]

 

Jeff’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/harmon_jeff

Jeff’s Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/jsharmonphotos/

Jeff’s Portfolio: https://jsharmonphotos.com

Jeff’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harmonjeff/

4 thoughts on “Photo Taco – 2017 iMac for Photogs”

  1. Hi Jeff

    You mentioned on this podcast that memory (RAM) was not upgradeable by the user on the 2017 iMacs.

    Various sites including OWC and iFixit have confirmed that RAM can be upgraded by the user on all the 2017 models.

    According to information currently available from Apple, users will not be able to upgrade RAM on the new iMac Pro which is to be released in December this year.

    1. @Paul, yes for the 27″ version it remains trivial to do the memory upgrade. I hadn’t seen the report on it yet when I recorded the podcast, had only seen it for the 21.5″ 2017 version which gets a lowly 3 of 10 on the ifixit repairability score and warnings at the end of the guide saying “Most replaceable components (like the RAM) are buried behind the logic board, meaning you’ll have to take apart most of the iMac just to gain access to them. The glass and Retina Display are fused together, increasing the cost of replacement.” Glad to see that the 27″ version has the same panel on the back to make upgrading the memory trivial. Wish Apple would do the same for all of their models. One more reason to go for the bigger screen version I suppose. Thanks for keeping me honest.

  2. Totally agree with what you said about the 5k iMac. I do like mine, but honestly the 2560 x 1440 was just as good. If you can find one of those for less money and still get the internals you want, they are every bit as good.

    1. @Jim, I sure hope Adobe has been pounding away at a significant architecture change for a Lightroom 7.0 release to take better advantage of both multiple cores and GPU. Doesn’t do either very well and that is how they get it to perform.

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