I do all my development work (which involves a lot of heavy Scala stuff) on a 2012 MacBook Air, which is a wee bit slower than this one. The CPU really is not a problem.
There's no SSD or 'Fusion Drive' in this one, which will make it bog down a lot. It's a shame that Apple won't go for a $999 model with a 64GB SSD or something. Should be enough for classrooms and anyone who wants a basic computer.
It's not that necessary. Sure, I use macbooks now because they're kinda great hardware. When my parents were looking for a new all-in-one, they could get all this for about half the cost with a Windows PC that they already knew how to navigate around.
SSD and Fusion are BTO options just like on the rest of the iMac line.
My bigger complaint is that the RAM is non-upgradable even as BTO. I really couldn't imagine if I had to bring my computer back down to 8GB RAM from 16.
I guess it's all in perception - I do a lot of Java work on a 2012 MBP 2.3 quad core with 16g and an SSD - still feels slow to me quite often. Have not even considered a MBA because of this.
I have a similar spec 2012 MBP. Are you using Trim Enabler? Otherwise, you may have lost a lot of SSD performance. Also, do you monitor RAM usage? Browsers can eat up your RAM. OS X needs RAM for disk caching for snappy performance.
When using Trim Enabler, you basically have to re-check it after every system software update. (Not apps, but the OS.) I have the app set up start automatically, so I can take a look. I think there are paid options for more convenient facilities.
Yeah, a fusion drive would be a perfect default for this type of computer. It would feel fast while still giving a regular desktop user plenty of space for their media.
There's no SSD or 'Fusion Drive' in this one, which will make it bog down a lot. It's a shame that Apple won't go for a $999 model with a 64GB SSD or something. Should be enough for classrooms and anyone who wants a basic computer.