If you have, how does it look? The same / better / worse than on a retina MBP? And how’s the performance?
I’m overdue an upgrade and retina iMac seems like an obvious choice, but since I spend most of my time in Unity (and it’s not retina ready) it’s not an easy decision to make!
Any observations would be ace.
We are all indie developers here who don’t spend money on things like that overpriced monitor. Honestly, that iMac actually doesnt seem like the obvious choice. Just get a 1080p monitor and save your money for something actually useful.
Only one? 
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The single-threaded performance (quite relevant for Unity) is actually better on the new iMacs than on the Mac Pros.
Beyond that, whether you spend most of your time in non-retina-ready Unity or not, that screen is going to be beautiful either way, and unless hardware kinks rise up, hold its value quite well.
I haven’t bought one yet but when my current iMac ceases to handle everything well enough, it’s a brilliant choice for pretty much anything (imagine having a desktop screen that could actually contain a retina iPad!).
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Calm Carrots, I suggest you go talk to your gardener about some shade: I think the Sun’s gone to your head.
I actually don’t think this first-gen 5k iMac will hold up well at all - mainly because 4k is still something that GPUs struggle with, so it’ll take a bit more time before apple releases an iMac model that comfortably supports it.
This report seems to suggest that it does remarkably well. It’s a fantastic price for such high resolution / display quality and you get a good machine with it. I have a weak spot for Apple’s unique custom-hardware efforts.
I do imagine that Editor text in Unity would be pretty microscopic, though.
We have one eye on 4k gaming (because our customers will have), but so far have held off buying 4k hardware. The new iMac perked our interest but that GPU seems woefully underpowered, with reports of low frame rates for popular benchmark games. The new iMac may have appeal for mobile games developers, but as a standalone dev where we want to push hardware to the limits, I’m not convinced it would be a good investment (even though it has massive appeal). Instead, we’re holding off until affordable 32" 4k monitors come to market to hook up to existing GTX 780 Ti’s.
Cheers @flaminghairball - that’s what I’ve read as well, that it bests the 4 core mac pro in single-threaded benchmarks. My main concern is really the blurriness of the editor, since Unity isn’t retina ready. Doesn’t look like I’m going to get any first hand experiences, so I think I’ll take a trip to my local Apple store and see if I can install Unity quickly to check it out!
@Marble - OS X treats the screen (out of the box at least) as ‘retina’, so the effective resolution is 2560x1440, but each of those ‘pixels’ is actually 4 pixels. So text size is the same as a 2560x1440 screen, but very smooth in HiDPI enabled applications (of which Unity is not one).
@Games-Foundry - I’m primarily a mobile dev, yep. Although as I understand it most systems would struggle to render 5k at playable framerates! You could always see it as a useful benchmarking / optimisation tool. 
I would definitely not buy the 5K iMac for Unity development. Yes, a 27" screen is nice for working with Unity, but then I would go with the traditional, non-Retina 27" iMac. Unfortunately, Apple did not upgrade those when they introduced the 5K iMac, so now you are easily paying 3K$ for outdated hardware (even though it was a valid Windows 1440p gaming machine when introduced).
Another argument against the 5K iMac is Apple’s choice of ATI hardware. Why the M290X and M295X? Kind of ironic that NVidia only weaks before the 5K iMac came out, introduced GPUs that fit Apple’s “power per watt” philosophy far better (i.e., the 970 and 980). I assume those came out after Apple definded the hardware specs?
I am also not so sure if you want to use Unity on Mac OS X when you could use it under Windows. The growing pains that Unity 4 had under “Mavericks” show me that Unity is not testing the Mac version of Unity thoroughly enough anymore. When I use Unity on Mac OS X right now, increasing memory consumption and resulting crashes are still a problem. And who knows what problems “Yosemite” brings - the new Finder design propably not fitting the look of Unity might be a obvious one.
I consider switching to Windows for that reason. The only reason for me to stay on Mac OS X is Final Cut Pro X, which I use occasionally. Another argument against Mac OS X when it comes to gaming or game development is bad driver performance, which will always be worse on OS X.
Bottom line, for the money Apple asks for the 5K iMac you could easily build a high end PC, use it as a Hackintosh, use a single GTX 970, install both Windows and OS X on two SSDs - and buy a 1920x1200 display for Unity (plus a Ultra-HD display just for kicks). If I was you, I’d ditch the Ultra-HD/Retina aspect alltogether and use a 2560x1440 display + a 1920x1200 display in Pivot mode (as many coders do). I tried the current non-Retina Unity Editor on a 15" rMBP once and it looked awful.
I’ve been down the hackintosh route before, for me it wasn’t worth the time and effort.
I’m primarily an iOS dev, and I’m generally happy developing in OS X. I’ve got a gaming rig for actually playing games.
Seems fine so far! 
Sounds about right. From the reviews I’ve read the M295X is perfectly capable…
So mostly you wouldn’t go for it because of the retina screen?
At the end of the day I created this thread because there’s no option out there that’s ticking all of the boxes. The 5k screen does seem like overkill, I definitely don’t need it and it will potentially make the application I use the most (Unity) look a bit crappy. I also have reservations about buying a non-mobile computer and getting a mobile GPU. BUT reviews of the 5k iMac are very good, and it looks like a very powerful machine (as mentioned above, beating the low end Mac Pro in some tasks).
But then the alternative (high end) Mac is the Mac Pro, which hasn’t been updated in a while and is going to cost more. Maybe I’ll just wait, haha.
@OP - why not go into an Apple store with the installer on a USB stick, explain the situation, and ask nicely if you can try it out? If you’re in a position to buy there and then, they’d be stupid to turn down your request. I have no idea what their policy on this sort of thing is, but surely they’d be able to wipe the machine after if they are concerned about viruses.
On my windows PC with a high pixel density Unity is fine, only it’s a tiny bit blurry… i think it’s something they will fix soon, i haven’t tried 5 yet so maybe it’s already fixed.
From experience, monitors above 1080p are definitely “actually useful”.
To be completely honest, I’ve never understood the attraction to either 1080p or 16:9 in general for computing tasks, except for the fact that 1080p screens for desktop PCs got so cheap so suddenly. Alas, the most effective way to get a monitor with more height these days is to buy a bigger widescreen… (not that the extra horizontal space will go to waste, mind you, it’s just not always necessary).
@TylerPerry - it’s not retina ready in 5 yet, not in the beta at least.
…trolling?
5K would be insanely useful. When testing for mobile (especially iPad), I’m constantly running into issues because it’s not possible to display a 2048x1536 screen on a 1080p monitor… never mind including profiling tools or the console. The only way for me to test the visuals on an iPad is to build it for the iPad. And that’s very much against the Unity philosophy, ESPECIALLY in 4.6+ with the new GUI being more dependent on how many pixels there actually are. For development, 1080p is, frankly, pathetic.
Also, “overpriced monitor”? It’s in the same price range as many monitors of the same size, resolution, and quality - but also includes a pretty powerful computer. The retina iMac has taken advantage of its being an all-in-one to make it possible to do things like have a tearing-free 5K display that simply don’t have any equivalent elsewhere.
Yes, I noticed this when I went to get a new monitor. I really wanted a 1920x1200 monitor, but I ended up settling on 1080p because it was so ridiculously cheap at $130 for 23-inch.
In Apple’s own official stores as well as in officially licensed stores you can’t install your own software no matter what since the user account of demo machines doesn’t have privileges to install things. That’s at least my experience. Non-licensed stores might have a different policy. That’s one of the reasons why I am glad that in Germany (where I live) Apple Stores aren’t as ubiquitous yet as in the US.
@OP - I guess what you are looking for are those old-school “IT houses” that still exist (but often have trouble keeping afloat) that often adress media creation pros, where you can have hands-on time with hardware. Problem is those stores are last in chain for new hardware releases.
It seems apple kind of does this with hardware… upgrades to retina resolution, upgrades graphics performance 2x not 4x… then in the next update, graphics gets another 2x boost to where it should’ve been… seems that happened with ipads too.?