On March 5, 2013, Apple updated its $1,099 education iMac for institutional buyers. It was a rather anemic and overpriced offer at the time, and it’s even less inspiring these many months later.

So, is an update in the works or will Apple leave the configuration to molder for a year-and-a-half, as it did from Fall 2011 through last March? Here is a simple comparison explaining why education buyers might be convinced to care quite a bit:

If you can find one, the refurbished 2011 iMac that I bought last Fall for $799 is quite a bargain. But you likely won’t be able to find one, let enough to fill a school or several schools.

Or, spending $150 more than Apple’s $1,099 baseline gets an education buyer a quad-core processor, double the RAM, double the storage and palpably faster graphics. What’s not to love?

That $150 price difference adds up quickly when buying iMacs by the pallet, which is what an institutional education iMac is be about. Apple has turned the decision between a $1,249 entry-level iMac and their $1,099 educational iMac into a nearly Hobson’s choice — ‘You can have the nag or, um, yeah. How many nags did you want?’

And, have you run Mavericks on a dual-core desktop Mac running just 4GB RAM? Not ideal, especially if you wanna “get ‘em when they’re pups.”

Apple should step up and refresh their education iMac configuration…

What’s your take?

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