Woah. So much to respond to.
Steenamaroo: I am considering switching to a mac. Yes, I would only be using it for making music. I would probably run a browser and some other online crud like Dropbox, but Music would be it's only job. My wife has her macbook for her photography. My projects are usually Ez drummer, between 2 to 5 guitars tracks, bass, 2 to 4 tracks of vocals and ideally some effects bussses. nothing major. Plus all your standard processing effects. Definitely not going to be scoring any orchestrated soundtracks or 30 tracks of synths and stuff. I might upgrade from Ezdrummer to superior drummer? I wanted to explore a little bit of Amplitube Guitar sims? Maybe?
I was going to see if there was something in refurbished / clearance section on the apple.ca online store and there seems to be a few options available in my price range for the 21.5inch. I looked again last night and that model is just a 5400 Rpm hard drive. no Fusion drive. So that was my mistake.
I really could care less about the mac displays. If i could get a workhorse macmini that would be awesome i'd sooner spend the money on mac guts then mac displays but i don't really see alot of wiggle room for configuration on those mac minis. ???
I was also under the impression that with macs the phrase "it is what it is" rings pretty true. But you say you can upgrade hard drives and ram and junk in those things?
Ok, thanks for the info.
What you describe doesn't sound especially intensive. I suspect you'd get by just fine with the built in hard drive.
Generally speaking you'd have your sessions on a separate disk anyway, although I've gotten by with the system disk just fine on many occasions.
If you bought a mac mini or a macbook pro, hard drive replacement would be very easy, should you ever want/need to do it.
iMacs are a little more tricky. Don't get me wrong...I could still do one in 10-15 mins, but the average computer user might not want to.
You can upgrade the ram and hard drive in any mac.
For what it's worth, I ran a 2011 mac book pro, albeit with SSD, as my main computer for a few years, and did some pretty heavy sessions!
I just used a thunderbolt/dvi adapter and plugged it into my screen with bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
When I left I'd just unplug it and take it with me.
I did buy a mac pro but only because I think I'm going to be doing bits of video editing and gaming here and there, and I wanted a dedicated computer for convenience.
If graphics power for gaming isn't a big deal to you, I'd shop for a used mini or book pro.
Chances are you'll get a 2011/2012 in great shape on eBay, with an SSD, within your budget.
It's kind depressing how much my macbook pro is worth now.
Look for 2.3/2.5ghz i5 or better.
Don't worry about the 'music only' thing. It's a mac. Use it as your day to day computer too if you want.
There's no real reason not to.