Wanted a new Mac Pro. Talked myself down to a refurbed Late 2013 27" iMac. It sounds great.  As in literally, the music coming out of it sounds great.  I'm not sure I've gotten an iMac since the lamp post, which also had great speakers.  They really know how to design these things.

More importantly, most of the concessions I made to get a refurb seem to have played out okay.  I wasn't able to get SSD (that would've been an extra $400, since I wouldn't've been able to order refurb) or the VESA mount.  The second actually does bother me a little; the thing is huge.  But I've been running Xamarin Studio and XCode/Interface Builder without any trouble at all.  It's fast.  It's fun, which I couldn't say with my 2009 MacBook.

I worry that I'll get bitten by a Retina iMac latter this year, which will drive me crazy.  Part of the reason I went iMac was to wait two years before going Pro, and to get a decent monitor out of it.  I'm already going through monitor withdrawal at work, where I only have two ThinkVision L220XWC 22"ers (and a lower-res, 1080p ViewSonic), and even then only because I bought those two for myself.  So the monitor's great, but if I'm hoping to use Target Display Mode to connect the iMac's screen with a Mac Pro for years to come and there's a consumer-level retina iMac soon, I may kick myself for being stuck with what is, otherwise, an incredible monitor for the next six years.

But overall, wow.  Great computer.  Or, rather, an insane step up from what I'd been using previously.

Though I couldn't quite shake myself from watching some more Windows Phone 8 videos last night...

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