A $3k desktop for which you need to buy an external drive. At some point slavishness to the Apple brand must have a breaking point.

Not wanting to start a fanboy war but I am a big believer in the right tool for the right job at the right price. For $3k I could build a monster PC with a stunning screen.

If you’re buying a “$3000” iMac you’re not buying one with a fusion drive....

Canadian price for a top-end 27" Retina iMac is $3079, and has a 2TB Fusion drive standard. The 512GB SSD option is $120 more than the Fusion drive.

A quarter of the storage at a premium price isn't exactly appealing to a lot of people, regardless of how much faster it may be.

You know there is a way that you can configure what you want for your budget....

I maxed out the CPU and got a lot of RAM, I assumed the drive would have enough cache that I wouldn't notice the spindle aspect.

And now that you see it isn’t the case after that you couldn’t just say “my bad” and spend the < $200 for an SSD drive?

I think the SSD would have been $500 more, which I would have happily paid if I had realized how poorly the fusion drive would perform.

So you would have been willing to spend $500 morethen but not spend much less and buy an external drive now?

I’m not unwilling to buy an external drive, but I’d rather have a better internal drive.

Isn't the point of an iMac the fact that it's a clean, uncluttered device?

If you are willing to accept separate components, you can buy much cheaper hardware.

Seeing that hardly any reputable company sells 5K displays anymore besides LG, the monitor itself is worth $1300. The cheapest 5K iMac is $1800. You’re not going to find computers “much cheaper” than $500 that match the iMacs specs.

So now you have to carry an external HDD around with you and plug it in every time you want it to boot up?

We're talking about iMacs. In case it's not clear, that's a desktop system not a portable one.

Ah. I got mixed up. Thanks.

They only put the anachronistic drives in iMacs which are desktop computers. You could leave a fast Thunderbolt 3 SSD permanently attached, and it would perform like a 2019 computer.

Are you carrying around an iMac with you? If you are, the drive is the least of your issues.

You mean you dont? https://i.imgur.com/RUN11Hb.jpg