APB Help: iMac 5K retina or not?

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Interesting, I've never heard a bad word about Apple's after care or CS before. I currently have six assorted Apple devices and have only ever needed post guarantee help once.

Sure it was a PITA to have to trek to MK, but they were extremely helpful and the repaired a MBP that I had poured coffee over, for a very reasonable sum.

I had thought it was a write off.

I have no hard evidence to say this, but I got the feeling that they carried out much more extensive repairs than those they charged me for.

The issue is not with Apple's after sales care.

The issue is that Apple is mostly a Consumer-oriented company with only very limited incursion into the Business market sector.

They therefore lack the infrastructure for providing after sales care for mission critical equipment - they do not offer 24x7/4h response tome, or 6 hours call-to-fix, or similar support services.

For a home user it is perfectly acceptable to make an appointment for a few day's time and then bring-in the faulty device to the local Apple Store.

This will not work with servers, network switches, firewalls, or even workstations.

But Apple stir well clear of making any of these, which is why they don't have and don't need the support services infrastructure that HP/Dell/IBM etc have.
 
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The issue is not with Apple's after sales care.

The issue is that Apple is mostly a Consumer-oriented company with only very limited incursion into the Business market sector.

They therefore lack the infrastructure for providing after sales care for mission critical equipment - they do not offer 24x7/4h response tome, or 6 hours call-to-fix, or similar support services.

For a home user it is perfectly acceptable to make an appointment for a few day's time and then bring-in the faulty device to the local Apple Store.

This will not work with servers, network switches, firewalls, or even workstations.

But Apple stir well clear of making any of these, which is why they don't have and don't need the support services infrastructure that HP/Dell/IBM etc have.

The Apple Care Blurb says they do onsite repair/visits. Also, iirc they will arrange couriers at their expense throughout the cover period. I was really responding to b1g1an's comment about Apple Don't Care.

The limitations you describe are not applicable to me, but I can see how they wouldn't suit a commercial operation.

For anyone who doesn't know this, I discovered today that you can only buy from JL what they have, and this is usually bog standard spec. Any upgrades, and you have to buy from Apple. So Apple and JL tell me anyway.
 
The issue is that Apple is mostly a Consumer-oriented company with only very limited incursion into the Business market sector.
/QUOTE]

Actually they were all business until iCrap took off and they realigned to the consumer market. Moving from Apple Centres to Apple Stores was when their service vanished.

Apple Don't Care was a reference to charging premium prices and only offering the minimum warranty, then making you pay extra for the sort of cover you get on much cheaper products.

Technology is now at the point where it tends to either break immediately or go on for ever and if it does break our throwaway society just uses it as an excuse to buy another so perhaps it doesn't really matter.
 
For what it's worth, saw one yesterday and it is truly astonishing. I'd buy one, except I already have the MBPr.
I hope you bit/bite the bullet and let us know how you get on.
 
It finally arrived yesterday, rather good. Would certainly recommend it.

ETA: Aside from the screen, which is seriously good, the Time Machine thingy is extraordinarily simple to use. In my PC days I used an HP MediaSmart Server which whilst good, was not as simple to set up/use.
 

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It finally arrived yesterday, rather good. Would certainly recommend it.
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Thinking the same thing too. What spec did you go for?
 

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There you go:

Thanks, very nice spec.

I recently bought the Belkin Thunderbolt 2 dock which has given my 2011 i5 27" a new lease of life as it's sped up external Thunderbolt SSD access. Less pressure to upgrade now, well, for a week or so at least...
 
Thanks, very nice spec.

I recently bought the Belkin Thunderbolt 2 dock which has given my 2011 i5 27" a new lease of life as it's sped up external Thunderbolt SSD access. Less pressure to upgrade now, well, for a week or so at least...

The screen is quite something. I've swapped the superdrive for a BluRay drive.
Your iMac is probably still worth a fair bit if you did decide to upgrade.
 
^ no chance. I have a late 09 iMac 27" super specked at the time. Cost me 4k. Apple offered me 150 for it as a trade. ill buy the new one soon and use the old one as a second screen if I can work out a way.
 
You won't find many 2009 models below £500 on ebay. Sold mine for much more a few months ago.
 
Apple care isn't good at all from my experience.

You call them and they send you a prepaid box with which to courier your machine. This gets sent to a repair centre and there are no service levels on time to repair. I have never been offered an on site repair for any issue on our corporate machines that have apple care included.

Its OK for a consumer device but a simple next day onsite repair on a Lenovo can take 3 weeks or more for the same fault on a Mac...longer still in many countries. If you happen to be based in somewhere like Turkey or Dubai or South Africa then things are considerably worse.
 
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Two quick points on AppleCare:

1. They recently replaced my Retina screen on my MBPr for free under AppleCare - would have cost over £400 to do so otherwise, so it's paid for itself already.

2. Apple last year teamed up with IBM to better address enterprise needs. On-site service, business focused apps, etc. are on the cards and even being delivered today.

For what it's worth, my (small) company runs Macs exclusively - although we don't have SharePoint or AD or Exchange or SSCM, we have perfectly valid (sometimes better) alternatives that save money, both in the original purchase and in the ongoing support and maintenance. Plus, though this seems hard to measure, it just seems more reliable, productive and secure.

For larger organisations, I'd suggest to look at Google's own set of Mac management tools that they've open sourced. If they can make an almost exclusively Mac network work at that size, then any other company should be able to too.
 
If you're running a network of Macs, the most useful tools I've found are Carbon Copy Cloner, Apple Remote Desktop and an external hard drive

CCC is great for building install "images" - once you have installed one machine, you can clone it and use it for others. So long as you're using DCHP for IP addresses, everything translates fine. The only exceptions are applications that require online activation or which are keyed to hardware

The last Mac Pro I setup took just 9 minutes to copy the system from an external drive. Reboot and it's ready to go with printers setup, applications configured, etc, etc

Nick Froome
 
I took delivery of a 5k last week. I upgraded the RAM to 16Gb and have the 3Tb HD. It replaces a 3 year old 27 inch iMac. The 5k is a joy to own from the moment it arrives and you take it out of the box. Everything just works without hassle. The screen is pretty amazing - I've watched a couple of HD movies on it. The sound is pretty marvellous, just lacks a bit of bass, but I will get an external speaker for that. It cost about £800 more than my old iMac, but I'm so glad I chose the 5k.
 

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