Why is this stock iMac so slow at launching apps? I bought a refurb iMac from apple.com:


21.5", late 2013
2.9 GHz Core i5 
8 GB DDR3 
Geforce GT 750M 1024 MB 
1 TB SATA Disk


No SSD, but this should still be performing well for basic tasks. It's stock, other than installing Chrome, Spotify, FCPX. I have nothing running other than OSX 10.11.2 defaults (wifi, bluetooth, airplay icons in the toolbar).

An example of the problem: I click on Chrome in the dock - it bounces for 30 seconds, then no bouncing, then ~30 seconds later Chrome is open. FCPX bounces for about 2 minutes before showing the splash screen; splash screen is up for ~60 seconds before the app is open.

Performance while using apps (Chrome, Finder, FCPX, TextEdit) is good about 50% of the time, and beachball heaven the other 50% of the time.

Is this all because of the HDD? I have about half of the hard drive filled with movies, music, and photos that I manually dragged over from an external when I first set it up.
It could very well just be the slow-ish hard drive. Apple generally does not put 7200RPM drives in its Macs. While it could be the O/S and it might be worth your while to image the internal drive onto an external drive and wipe the internal and start fresh with the OS and Apps. Depends on what is more valuable to you time or money.

An SSD WILL speed up your system, often it's like a whole new Mac, depending on your usage. A deep cleaning of the current OS or a wipe/reinstall might fix the issue or at least improve it.