Mac Mini i7 vs iMac i5

What are you going to do with the Mac?

The iMac has better graphics processor.

Per core, the new 2014 Mac i7 Mini is faster than the 2012 i7 Mini. Not all apps use more than two cores.

With the iMac you can always add another monitor later.

I would opt for the iMac

I would go for the 4-core iMac. You more than two cores for a virtual machine.

Don't fail to look at the refurbished machines available at the Apple.com online store.

This one is going for 1869 right now.

surf to http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?atclk=Processor+Type_Intel+Core+i7+Ivy+Brid ge&ci=10009&N=4110474298+4103497038

remove the top hard drive and insert a good SSD including 16 gig of ram and you have a fine low cost machine. The task of removal is a 5 of 10. Watch video at ow.com or fixit.com

btw this particular mac mini 2012 is difficult to find for a darn good price.

Be careful. You will void your warranty if you do anything other than replace the RAM yourself.

I had an authorized Apple Service center install an OWC 240 6G SSD in a new 2012 Mac Mini Server 2.3 i7Quad Core, 6,2. It's been nothing but trouble. Apple Store has done two reformats and reinstalls of Yosemite and every diagnostic in their arsenal. The Mini still stalls, restarts on it's own and generates kernel panics.

The Apple Store told me that if I'd installed the drive myself the warranty would be void and they couldn't help me.

I am an electrical engineer and do a lot of embedded firmware design

and supporting software, mostly in Win8.1 virtual machine with Parallels.

I also do a lot with Photoshop CS6 and some video work.

When confronted with an upgrade decision, I ended up going with the 27" iMac

and was glad I did. Expanded it to the full 32GB and am using an SSD via Thunderbolt,

I already had a Thunderbolt display, so I ended up with a very good workstation setup.

With that 32GB of RAM, I am able to have OS X, a Win8.1 coding/debug virtual machine,

and a Win7 software test platform all running at the same time and no noticable

performance hit.

Also, if developing large firmware/software, SSDs will speed the work up dramatically

as these types of projects are quite file intensive. The last project I was working on,

I could build, download and start debugging an embedded app using Win8.1 on a VM

before my coworkers were half way through building the app on their native Win laptops/desktops

which had standard had drives.

With that said, I still have 2 Minis in service. My 2011 Mini Server (my former workstation) was

repurposed to be my HTPC and my 2010 Mini has been re-assigned as my home iTunes/file server.

I've done several 2012 Mini SSD updates and have had zero issues. It was not that hard. Not sure what happened on your install.

Ola BMCouto, vou escrever em inglês para que todos entendam.

I recently bought a mac mini late 2014 i7 3.0 16GB RAM. I think if you are running a VM you should go to a 4Core model.

I have also a 2012 i7 with 4Core and i'm thinking of swapping the models for the purpose that I bought the second

If you are a programmer but using photoshop and stuff it would be better for a iMac, IMHO