When I returned from vacation earlier this week, one of the first things I did was unpack our Retina iMac loaner from its box and plop it on my desk in place of the non-Retina 2012 model I normally use.
Senior Reviews Editor Lee Hutchinson has already spent ample time talking about the GPU and the screen itself, which are by far the two most notable things about this machine. In the interest of wrapping up our multi-part "review" of Apple's first Retina desktop, let's spend some time comparing it to the rest of Apple's Macs, and evaluate what it's like to use the computer as a standard Mac rather than a video editing workstation.
Retina done right
At this point it's clear that Retina is an inevitability for all of Apple's products. Eventually, every device it sells will include a high-density screen, from the 220-ish PPI screens of the Retina iMac and MacBook Pro to the 400-ish PPI display of the iPhone 6 Plus.
Early on, it seemed as though Apple was willing to prioritize those screens over other desirable features. The third-generation iPad was heavier than the iPad 2 and included a much larger battery that took a long time to charge—Apple corrected both problems a year and a half later with the original iPad Air. A combination of overtaxed GPUs and rough software meant the first Retina MacBook Pro sometimes couldn't render the OS X desktop and its apps smoothly, to say nothing of heavier 3D software (that was back in the Lion days, though; subsequent OS X releases have helped out with smoothness a bit).
Later devices have only taken on Retina-density screens as the hardware has been ready for it. The original iPad Mini wasn't Retina, but by the time the iPad Mini 2 rolled around Apple managed to fit a high-resolution screen and a chip fast enough to power it into a tablet that was essentially identical to its predecessor in size and weight. And with the Retina iMac, Apple waited until it could release a desktop with a dense screen that could also equal or beat the standard iMac's colors, contrast, viewing angles, brightness, and power consumption.
In my week with the Retina iMac, I haven't noticed that "first-gen feel" that you sometimes run into with new consumer electronics—that thing where Apple or whoever has gotten most of the core ideas right but still needs one or two pieces to fall into place before it realizes its full potential.
There are a few things to watch out for that may be rectified in later releases. First, this iMac can't be used as an external display and can't drive external displays of equal resolution. This comes down to the DisplayPort 1.2 spec, which is adequate for 4K displays but unequipped to drive 5K ones. It's why Apple had to design its own timing controller to drive the internal display—it's combining multiple DisplayPort lanes together to make the whole thing run at 60Hz. We'd expect next year's Retina iMac to include DisplayPort 1.3 support, and I wouldn't be surprised if updated Retina Thunderbolt Displays finally followed. Updated GPUs and DisplayPort 1.3 would enable all the other Macs to use 5K displays, too.
Second, there's also the problem of 5K support when booted into Windows; namely, that there isn't any. Hopefully Apple will release a driver for its controller that will allow Microsoft's OSes to run at 5K instead 4K. Finally, there have been reports of GPU throttling, especially in the high-end models with the AMD Radeon M295X GPU—your mileage may vary here (and GPU performance may or may not be a primary concern to you), but users on the MacRumors forums report that performance can take a substantial hit when the graphics processor is under heavy load.
Overall, nicest thing about the Retina iMac is that it's exactly what it promises to be: the existing 27-inch iMac with a big, pretty, high-resolution screen. You still get fast quad-core processors and capable GPUs, useful for those who prefer to use iMacs as workstations instead of Mac Pros. The RAM hatch is still back there, and will let you add your own memory after purchase (up to 32GB total across four 8GB sticks). We like it when upgraded gadgets giveth without taking away—removing features can alienate chunks of your audience and it's best to avoid doing that if you can.
The value proposition
Just like the first Retina MacBook Pros, the Retina iMac perches atop the regular lineup at a new, higher price (it starts at $2,499). It doesn't replace any existing 21.5-inch or 27-inch model, and those non-Retina models all have broadly comparable internal specs (the Retina model has a faster GPU but it has more pixels to push, too).
At $2,499, the Retina iMac begins to encroach on the Mac Pro's $3000 starting price. It's $700 more expensive than the cheapest 27-inch non-Retina model. The gap narrows to $500 once you add a 1TB Fusion Drive, which really should be a mandatory upgrade for anyone dropping a couple thousand bucks on a computer even though Apple's SSD pricing for that 128GB is far above market rates. If you need a computer first and the display is of lesser importance, you can save a decent amount of money and still get solid performance and a pretty nice screen if you buy a non-Retina iMac.
That said, the size, resolution, and quality of this display means the Retina iMac is surprisingly economical for what you get. Consider Dell's standalone UltraSharp 5K display, which hasn't been priced yet but will apparently be available for "less than $2000." Decent comparably sized 60Hz 4K displays from the likes of Asus, Samsung, and others go for a little under $600. Given that you're also getting a fairly powerful computer with the purchase, you're getting a good deal on the iMac's screen.
The worst thing about that screen is the worst thing about any all-in-one—it's attached to your computer, and replacing the computer or any components other than RAM means replacing everything all at once. Macs do typically retain high resale value, though, which will take some of the bite out of future upgrades.
As for the specs, John Poole of Primate Labs has already thrown together some charts from the Geekbench results browser that compare the new iMacs' quad-core Haswell CPUs to the Xeon chips in the 2013 Mac Pros.
Faster peak clock speeds and a newer CPU architecture means that the iMacs actually outdo the Mac Pros in single-core performance, which has been the case for a while now (bear in mind, though, that the Mac Pro is due for an update now that Haswell-EP CPUs have hit the market). The iMacs are also pretty competitive with the multicore scores of the base $3000 Mac Pro, though you'll want to pay an extra $250 for the 4GHz CPU if you want to outperform it.
The Mac Pro is still superior in heavily multithreaded tasks (and the same will go for GPU performance, since the Mac Pro has a pair of GPUs to the Retina iMac's one). If the more expensive Mac Pros are too much computer for the work you need to do, the iMacs will sufficefor many photo and video editing and 3D rendering tasks.
For those with 2012 or 2013 non-Retina iMacs, our general recommendation would be to hold off on buying one of these. The screen is excellent, but not transformative—having sharper screens is great for phones and tablets that I hold close to my face, but I generally find that Retina in a laptop or desktop is a nice-to-have and not a need-to-have. Like the Retina MacBook Pros, the Retina iMac will likely get faster and come down in price as time goes on and high-resolution displays become the norm.
If you're a new iMac buyer or if you're upgrading something a little older (particularly dual-core models from 2010 or earlier), give the Retina iMac a good long look. Yes, it's expensive, but it has no major dealbreakers and you get a lot for what you pay, and even the base configuration is going to get you a fast CPU and GPU, a decent amount of RAM with two slots free for easy upgrades, and a Fusion Drive (I've been using one for two years in my 2012 iMac and only rarely run into situations where it feels much slower than a "pure" SSD). Over two years of Retina MacBook Pro availability mean that developers have had plenty of time to develop Retina-ready apps. It's a computer with a lot going for it.
What comes next?
The way that Apple has handled the Retina MacBook Pros and the Retina iMac tells us more about when we can expect the rest of the Mac lineup to go Retina. Within the next year or two, we'd expect a 21.5-inch Retina iMac to be introduced—remember, the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro trailed the 15-inch model by several months. Eventually those iMacs are likely to replace the non-Retina models as the "normal" iMacs, just as the Retina MacBook Pros have nearly replaced all the non-Retina models.
Finally, there's the MacBook Air. Rumors of a Retina version have been going around for a long time, but it still has yet to surface and we suspect it's because Apple is waiting for the technology it needs to get the laptop "right." Apple won't want to release a MacBook Air that's much heavier than current models, or one with lesser battery life. The missing pieces here are likely Intel's Broadwell CPUs and their faster integrated GPUs—U-series Broadwell chips like the ones in the current MacBook Airs are due for release in early 2015. These chips will reduce total power consumption while providing more GPU horsepower to adequately drive a Retina-resolution display. Once the chips are available, we'll start taking rumors of a Retina MacBook Air more seriously.
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