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What can I say, Niagara of saliva from my mouth right now http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/imac-retina

Hi Everyone, I'm looking into buying a new Mac for my video editing and would really appreciate any advice. Being budget minded, if I was just starting out I'd be seriously considering a PC, but I've never owned anything other than a Mac (G4 in 2001 was my first) - and I'm actually very keen on FCPX. So I'm definitely looking at Macs only. I've been editing on a MacBook Pro for the last several years, but it's now way too slow for my recently increased workload. Having done a bit of research, I'm pretty sure I'm going for a desktop setup this time - more bang-for-buck, and tbh my Macbook was plugged in 95% of the time anyway. So my choice is between: iMac 21.5"( customized: 3.1GHz i7 / 16GB RAM / GeForce GT 750M 1GB) iMac 27" ( customized: 3.5GHz i7 / 16GB RAM / GeForce GTX 780M 4GB) MacPro (the new one - lowest spec) I currently only edit AVCHD and H264 (G6 and D5300) - no RAW - and it will probably be that way for the foreseeable future. I would like the option of using Resolve in the future but it's not essential, particularly right now. The obvious answer is probably to buy the most powerful setup I can afford, but I think a Mac Pro is probably overkill, and with all the necesarry add-ons it's a bit out of my budget. So I'm primarily looking at the iMacs. In terms of screen size I'm easy - I'd lean slightly toward the 21" plus a 2nd monitor, but 27" alone would be fine too. I think it all comes down to processing power really ... As I say I'll be mainly running FCPX (and one thing I'd really love is for my new mac to rip through Neat Video rendering). Can anyone help with my decision? Will the extra processing 'oomph' (i7 and graphics card) of the 27" described above be of very great benefit? Ability to run Resolve smoothly would be a bonus but not an essential. One final note - all 4TB of my external drives are Firewire. Will performance suffer a lot from not having Thunderbolt drives, or is it feasible to get by with my old FW's until I can afford a few new HDs? Any advice or experience greatly appreciated - thank you!

Andrew's post about the Hackintosh for editing RAW files got me thinking about how to approach an editing system for the GH3 I'll be using (once it finally ships to the US).     I'm curious how much power and storage I would when shooting with a GH3. (Keep in mind I'm not thinking of a PC system, but open to the idea if someone feels they have great results).   Would a Mac Mini with quad core and 8gb RAM suffice? And has anyone done any DIY upgrades to a Mac Mini that works well?   I've been leaning towards a new Imac but can't stand the lack of adaptability and higher cost, which is why I was wondering if I could get away with a Mac Mini and getting my own monitor at a cheaper price. Tweeking a Mac Mini may be an exercise in stupidity I realize, but you can at least get into the guts and people seem to do various unauthorized upgrades, like putitng in an extra hard drive and such. But will this be worth it considering the cost?   I assume a laptop would not be enough power but maybe not?   Curious what others thought based on what you know about the GH3 and the file sizes and demands that will be required...     Cheers,   Dr. John    

As of tonight, the new iMacs are finally officially available for ordering from the Apple store. The maximum configuration looks something like this: [list] [*]3.4GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.9GHz [*]32GB 1600MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4X8GB [*]768GB Flash Storage [*]NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2GB GDDR5 [/list]All for about $4,500.   Opting for 8GB of RAM (to upgrade later) and a 3TB Fusion Drive instead bring the cost down to about $3000.    Also, the Cubix Xpander is an external peripheral that allows for the use of second GPU, and the 10GB/s Thunderbolt connection allows for additional drives to be hooked up externally -- including the 12TB Thunderbolt RAID.   This all sounds impressive, but how future-proof (i.e. ready for the next five years) is this setup? I suspect that it can handle 4K ProRes, but what about 4K RAW (and Davinci Resolve)?   I have also been communicating with a custom PC builder on eBay who is going to spec out a workstation specifically designed to work optimally with Adobe CS6 and Davinci Resolve 9. I'll post the results of that when I get them.

Hi, I have a deal to get macbook pro with retina display, and I m wondering if the 2.6 version with 16 G or RAM would be enough for the BMC postproduction with RAW DNG files - for editing on Premiere and color correction on new Resolve, or do I have to wait for the new iMac 3.6 i7 with 32 G or RAM (iMac also has option for a much better graphic card)? Also is Cuda working on either of these machines? Thanks a lot for your insights.