Got rid of my iMac. What next?

Posted by Chris Ziegler on March 11, 2013 10:34 am 53

I finally retrieved my Late 2009 27" iMac from the Genius Bar this weekend, having gone under the knife for the Seagate hard drive recall and a failed wire that prevented Wi-Fi from working. They cleaned it up, it looks nice. It is nice.

But having left it at the Genius Bar for a few weeks (out of pure laziness), I realized that I didn't really need it. I didn't miss it. I immediately adapted to working full-time on my Air, and I haven't looked back. It'd be nice to have more screen real estate — as always — but that's obviously a solvable problem without getting an iMac involved.

So, long story short, I sold the iMac. Question is, what do I do next?

• Live on the Air for a few months and see if a Retina Air comes out?
• Get a loaded Mac Mini (i7, Fusion Drive, 16GB RAM) and this beauty, which I saw at MWC and immediately fell in love with?
• Get a new 27" iMac?
• Get a 13" or 15" rMBP?
• Something else?

I'm really struggling here. Not having any sort of permanent, always-on PC humming away in my condo at all times feels very weird. Thinking back over the past 15 years, I don't think I've been without a desktop since I was in middle school. (I used to pride myself in multi-month uptimes with Windows NT.) But, "post-PC era" and all, maybe we've reached the point where this is okay.