27" retina iMac owners: real world differences between configurations?

[Ellis Vener]

another update. Just did my first stitched panorama with the the new machine using PTGui Pro. It was shot back in 2010 with a Canon EOS-1D Mark IV, and consisted of  2 rows (38 frames total). The DNG files were stored on a Drobo 5D connected to the computer via Thunderbolt.  I exported the 38 frames from Lightroom CC 2015 (very fast with GPU enabled) as 8-bit per channel TIFFs  to  a file on the same Drobo 5D  and instructed LrCC to open in PTGui Pro

And that is where things got very, very fast.

I have stitched this particular panorama, a skyline of Austin, TX,  before and back then the PTGui process Back then it took about ten-fifteen minutes as I recall for the entire process of editing, stitching and exporting as a layered PSB file. This time it look well less than 5 minutes and Iwas ready to edit the stitched and layered PSB file (3.3GB) in Photoshop CC 2015.

[Ken Bennett]

Thanks for the updates, Ellis. I'm in the same position you were before the new machine, and this is very helpful.

My iMac is my personal machine, though, for the little freelance that I do and any personal work. So even though it has slowed to a crawl, it's hard to drop three grand on a new one. But I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and do the upgrade this year, and I want to get a machine that will last another six years, or more.

[Ellis Vener]

I think you'll be pretty happy. But I really expect, based on past experience with multiple computers (Apple, IBM, NeXT) and given the increasing speed of technological changes that expecting six years or more of service out of a computer is being wildly optimistic. But of course it will  depend on how hard you make the machine work and what you do with it.