She was considering a Mac Pro but I guess that's out the door now. For those of you in a similar situation, what do you do? Does an iMac cut it, or have you moved over to Windows?
On the subject of the Mac Pros themselves, speculation here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/17mzf5/apple_to_disco...
is that it's because they draw too much power when switched off but still plugged in. As for those worrying Apple's discontinuing Mac Pros they're on record as saying there are new ones coming, so this just means they're probably coming sooner rather than later:
http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/12/apple-spokesperson-confi...
IMO not good enough for professional image work. The LED backlighting gives the panel more consistent, longer life, but also means a pretty dramatic reduction in color gamut.
Even the Dell UltraSharp series will soundly beat out the 27" iMac display in every color accuracy measure, and those are on the lowest end of the professional scale - Eizo, NEC, and others have even more exacting panels.
The issue isn't performance - I agree a top-line iMac will trounce practically any image you throw at it (short of, say, the 100MP images coming out of a Phase One back), but the monitor is a big problem. Professionals frequently invest multiple thousands in a monitor that will last a long time - they aren't interested in throwing it out every time they need to upgrade the CPU.
Definitely agreed with that -- the iMac screen certainly isn't suitable for a lot of pros, but it ultimately depends on what you're doing and what your budget is. The iMac screens are still much better than a lot of what's out there, and price-wise is actually a good deal when you consider how much just the monitor would cost separately. I actually thought they used the same panels as the Dell UltraSharps? but I must be mistaken about that.
Edit: from The Verge's review
"...on the 27-inch behemoth, you get a 2560 x 1440 panel that's matched only by the Dell XPS 27."
"The IPS panels are the same as in last year’s iMacs, but they’re better integrated now — Apple says that by laminating the display to the glass it reduced reflections up to 70 percent, and indeed the glare problems that beset so many displays are much less present here, though there's still some reflection and glare. The improved manufacturing also makes whatever’s on the screen feel closer to you, almost like things are jumping out of the panel. The display's glossy bezel, which houses its HD FaceTime camera, is actually the most reflective part of the whole machine now.
I have to say, I was really surprised to see how much better the screen could be without a single change to the actual technology — but hey, I guess plastic surgery can work wonders. Both screens have fantastic color reproduction, are remarkably (like, blindingly) bright, and have near-180-degree viewing angles."
http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/30/3709120/apple-imac-mac-mi...
The Pro line will very likely (finally) be revamped this year, Cook pretty much stated so last year: http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/06/12/tim_cook_confirms_...
Apple will probably just jam the channels with a four month inventory so there's no issues.
Bear in mind also that mine is the i7 + maxed out RAM, which helps also.