New iMac

[Christina]

Working in a "premium Apple Reseller" my co-workers today seem quite obsessed with the announcement that apple have just released a new iMac. So i thought i'd start a new thread to see what you guys thought about it.

Since i work in the photo lab here, i dont really care too much about the whole "internal stuff" but i'm not too taken with the appearance. it's like they have taken the old iMac and painted a bit of it black. odd.

The new keyboards are quite fascinating though! the normal corded one is quite plain and ugly, but the wireless keyboard, for it's lack of all those numbers and everything usually on the right hand side of the keyboard.. it's quite pretty. And they're so thin!

so yes.. new iMac.. Discuss:

http://www.apple.com/au/

[race aficionado]

I am a blatant MacMan so I am biased.

It's a beautiful. powerful and reliable piece of tehology.

I want one but my wife will bonk me in the head.

I have too many of them already . . . but I am ready to jump in and get one of the super portable ones because I want . . . erm . . . I need it.


:s mokin:

[GigiGalliNo1]

mmmmm........new iMacc.....mmmm

[Mark]

I guess that is the thing these days when vista came out everyone said "but what does it do?" nobody cares about that with a mac :p

[Drew]

Can it make me a perfect cup of tea?

If not, I'm not buying it :p :

[Andrewmcm]

Meh, Macs, according to popular belief, suffer from two problems:

1. They're over-priced for what they are.

2. People who use Macs are seen as pretentious arses by non-Mac users.

The former is certainly true - I recently built a Quad-core PC for myself, with reasonably high-end specs and a 22" TFT monitor for £700 - a similar Mac would be up in the grand range (at least). Sure Macs are sleek and pretty, and if they do what you want to do then fine - web authoring, DTP and graphics are Apple's forte, which brings me to:

The latter is in some cases true. Apple's stylistic approach to computing does tend to attract the arty-farty types to them. If you've ever walked around the Apple shop in London you'll know what I mean! Now I've got nothing against Apple, buying a computer is a personal preference and Macs are perfectly functional computers - I just didn't like their advertising campaign that embraced the idea that Mac owners are better than PC owners... ;)

One thing that I am jealous of though is the synchronising ability of Macs - buy a new one, hook it up to the old one and you can have all your settings and data transferred in less than a few hours. It took me nearly two days to get my new PC up to where I wanted it......

[AndySpeed]

It looks nice, and the black around the edge of the screen seems to make sense, it probably aids contrast, the eyes or something like that. I think I'll stick with my Vaio though...

[race aficionado]

Apple's stylistic approach to computing does tend to attract the arty-farty types to them. .

I'm a video editor - an arty farty type (?)

They do what I ask them to do and I make a living out of it.

I don't even know how to use a windows computer but the reason is that since I cana remember, Mac's have been the ones that can run my programs.

Basically we use what we can afford and what works better.

and no! I'm not an arty farty guy! :mad:

and hopefully not pretentious. :eek:

I'm OK.

:s mokin:

[Christina]

Something crazy i just discovered today from the overly camp Mac rep who always wears a colour co-ordinated shuffle on his lapel. The new Imac is fully recycleable! The screen is glass and the shell is one chunk of aluminium! crazy stuff! Something to do with making a smaller carbon footprint.

I'm still not convinced about all the hype of a new computer. i've never been a gadgety kinda girl. i'm kinda amazed by all the people coming into store and asking about the new mac. it's crazy!

[BDunnell]

Apple's stylistic approach to computing does tend to attract the arty-farty types to them. If you've ever walked around the Apple shop in London you'll know what I mean! Now I've got nothing against Apple, buying a computer is a personal preference and Macs are perfectly functional computers - I just didn't like their advertising campaign that embraced the idea that Mac owners are better than PC owners... ;)

One thing that I am jealous of though is the synchronising ability of Macs - buy a new one, hook it up to the old one and you can have all your settings and data transferred in less than a few hours. It took me nearly two days to get my new PC up to where I wanted it......

I started using Macs in my current job, and wouldn't willingly change to PCs. The job is in publishing, where they are pretty much de rigeur, so I have an excuse. I just find them easier to use than PCs, and find switching back to PCs, when I do so on occasions, a tad difficult as a result.

Incidentally, the Mitchell and Webb advertising campaign has to be one of the biggest turkeys of recent years, because they made the mistake of casting their personalities the other way around from their Peep Show characters. I doubt it'll be repeated!

[Roamy]

I just use the powerbook 17inch cuz where I go it goes

[Mark in Oshawa]

First off, I have an HP desktop with Windows, so Iam envious of MAC people. That said, I couldn't afford to pay for a MAC for what I bought this for. Since I like to surf a lot and used to play a lot of games, the PC looked better for the gaming, and I am not in music or publishing, the two areas Mac's kick serious butt.

Here is the deal though, and Microsoft better be paying attention. Mac OS/2 operating systems from what I have seen from my Mac buddies don't crash nearly as much, they don't get the virus problems I have had, and they just work so much better with software and stuff that is licensed for them. Of course, Mac makes anyone who is doing business with their machines use their code and pass their tests of compatiablity. This is why everything works so well. THAT is what Microsoft has to fix if they ever want my respect, for although I am a PC guy, I must admit at times, I have a lot of Mac envy...

[Andrewmcm]

Here is the deal though, and Microsoft better be paying attention. Mac OS/2 operating systems from what I have seen from my Mac buddies don't crash nearly as much, they don't get the virus problems I have had, and they just work so much better with software and stuff that is licensed for them.

The argument as to why Macs (and Linux for that matter) do not see so many virus and security holes is that the potential for disruption that would be caused is very minimal, as the percentage of people who use such OSs is tiny compared to Windows machines. Security problems in these less popular OSs do exist, it's just that hackers and virus writers don't feel the need to exploit them. OF course, Microsoft's QA system could be a lot better than it is at present - anyone with past experience of new Windows versions will tell you that you should wait a year after a product's release before upgrading, as that year wait is essentially an open Beta test for the OS.

Licensed Mac software tends to work better on Macs because by definition Apple have some control over the product, and the hardware on Macs is all fairly standardised. The almost inifinite number of component configurations available for making a PC renders it extremely difficult for Windows-based developers to iron out all the bugs that could possibly happen before a product is released.

[Malbec]

The argument as to why Macs (and Linux for that matter) do not see so many virus and security holes is that the potential for disruption that would be caused is very minimal, as the percentage of people who use such OSs is tiny compared to Windows machines. Security problems in these less popular OSs do exist, it's just that hackers and virus writers don't feel the need to exploit them.

That would explain why there are FEWER viruses for the Mac but that isn't the case, there aren't ANY seen in the wild. Don't you think there'd be a lot of kudos for the first hacker to get a Mac virus out causing trouble? Yet not one has been produced.

The level of security on a Mac is higher, nothing can rewrite the registry without asking for your express permission first (you have to manually enter your password to allow it).

Also with a Mac you don't get the ridiculous situation whereby you have to upgrade your hardware in order to run the latest OS. I have an 8 year old Apple Cube with a low end G4 and it runs the latest version of OS X very well, very well indeed (almost as well as my dual G5). Try running a similar age PC with Vista... Oh you can't.

Another thing, while I agree spec for spec PCs are cheaper, once you get to a certain point in life it simply isn't worth the price difference to have something that you need to tinker with constantly to keep working. Macs just work and I haven't spent much time apart from downloading the patches in maintaining mine which is in stark contrast to the WinPCs I've had before. I've made the price gap up several fold simply by the number of hours I've saved sorting out my PC.

[Daniel]

1. They're over-priced for what they are.

2. People who use Macs are seen as pretentious arses by non-Mac users.


1. Yes they are

2. That's because the people generally are pretentious arses. Apologies to Race, Fousto, BDunnell and people who work with graphic design. I despise the superior attitude that Mac zealots show. If it were legal I'd have gored out the eyes of every person who came into my last place of work and said "But my Mac does/n't do that" because it's annoying how people blame the tool for their ineptitude and inadequacy.

[ChrisS]

That would explain why there are FEWER viruses for the Mac but that isn't the case, there aren't ANY seen in the wild. Don't you think there'd be a lot of kudos for the first hacker to get a Mac virus out causing trouble? Yet not one has been produced.

There have been mac viruses but as Andrewmcm said the Mac market is tiny compared to PC and virus writers have little to gain by attacking it, recognition? what do you think is better recognition for a hacker, a virus that attacks a few family Macs and causes to lose of vacation pictures or whatever or a virus that attacks windows PCs used by businesses the world over and causes millions in damages.

Mac OS X has holes, every software has holes, its just that very few bothered to looks for the holes in Mac OS X. But consider these

Mac users are increasing so the gains of an attack are also increasing[/*:m:23xxz1j9]
Macs now use Intel chips. A familiar chip to virus writers who have been attacking it for years now on Windows[/*:m:23xxz1j9]
Most Mac users don't bother with antivirus[/*:m:23xxz1j9]
When someone does find a hole and decide to attack, Mac users wont know what hit them.

[Daniel]

Most Mac users don't bother with antivirus

Because "My Mac doesn't get viruses"? ;)

[Christina]

I dont care about what complaints you have about macs, you show me widgets on a windows machine!!

Hehe.. i spent all day finding new toys to put on my widgets. I found a Tetris game, and a Jigsaw puzzle, and a kinda.. ping pong game. Ahh.. someday i will actually have something to do at work!

Oh! speaking of which! we got the new machines in today and they look really good! so much better than on the website! all black and brushed aluminium... pretty! the keyboards do look weird but..

[Drew]

Christina, you can downlaod widget applicators for windows.

I used one once, but my laptop couldn't handle it well enough :p :

[Daniel]

I dont care about what complaints you have about macs, you show me widgets on a windows machine!!

Hehe.. i spent all day finding new toys to put on my widgets. I found a Tetris game, and a Jigsaw puzzle, and a kinda.. ping pong game. Ahh.. someday i will actually have something to do at work!

Oh! speaking of which! we got the new machines in today and they look really good! so much better than on the website! all black and brushed aluminium... pretty! the keyboards do look weird but..

Here you go.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Sidebar

My computer case is 12 months old, has been available for about double that amount of time and is brushed aluminium and black so Apple is a little behind the times :p

[Andrewmcm]

Boink.

In light of my previous comments in this thread, it is with some trepidation that I take my first steps into the world of Apple computers with work purchasing a new Macbook Pro for me to use. My boss has one and swears by it for the type of work that we do, so I'm quite keen to understand what makes them so good.

From a superficial stand-point I can see the advantages in the UNIX-based OS, as a lot of my work is done on Linux-based clusters hence having a native unix/linux OS will be highly beneficial - no need for 3rd party ssh and x-windows clients as would be required in XP/Vista. I can also use VMware Fusion or Parallels to run Windows within the Mac for doing Powerpoint presentations to clients and the like.

As the last Macs I ever used were the Macintosh Classic and the Macintosh LCIII, it will be interesting for me to see how I make the transition from dyed-in-the-wool PC user who dabbles in Linux to a Mac user. I'll let you know how I get on!

[L5->R5/CR]

Boink.

In light of my previous comments in this thread, it is with some trepidation that I take my first steps into the world of Apple computers with work purchasing a new Macbook Pro for me to use. My boss has one and swears by it for the type of work that we do, so I'm quite keen to understand what makes them so good.

From a superficial stand-point I can see the advantages in the UNIX-based OS, as a lot of my work is done on Linux-based clusters hence having a native unix/linux OS will be highly beneficial - no need for 3rd party ssh and x-windows clients as would be required in XP/Vista. I can also use VMware Fusion or Parallels to run Windows within the Mac for doing Powerpoint presentations to clients and the like.

As the last Macs I ever used were the Macintosh Classic and the Macintosh LCIII, it will be interesting for me to see how I make the transition from dyed-in-the-wool PC user who dabbles in Linux to a Mac user. I'll let you know how I get on!

If you don't want to have to use Fusion or Parallels Apple's Keynote is forwards and backwards powerpoint compatible and Office V.x Student Teacher for Mac's is normally reasonably priced.


Welcome to the other side!

[Andrewmcm]

Boink.

So I've been the owner of this Macbook Pro for nearly 2 weeks, and I have to say that I really like it. It looks good, it's virtually silent and the trackpad is responsive. I'm not a massive fan of the keyboard but I don't think that any laptop keyboards are that brilliant. I get around 5 hours of battery when doing browsing/chatting with wifi on, but I've yet to test the battery when using it to watch a film.

I really enjoy using Mac OS X Leopard too. Stuff just works with the minimum of nonsense. Apple Mail is very powerful, and iCal is quite clever too. I like how installing applications is only allowed with my permission and that programs can be uninstalled simply by dragging its application icon into the Trash. And I've got VMware Fusion with a Windows XP appiance just in case I need to do stuff in Windows.

Ok, so I'm not, in my own words, an "arty-farty" type, but Macs are becoming more popular in the world of scientific computing and I can see why on the basis of this machine.

The downside is that this machine was very expensive, but as work paid for it I don't really mind so much!

[Daniel]

Thing is for that money you could build a pc just as powerful. That will always be the reason why there are Mac people and there are pc people. Fair enough when they were running fairly bespoke hardware but now they're just Intel machines. If steve really thinks his product is that great then if should allow people to build their own macs ;-) Thing is they then don't have control of the platform and security, performance and stability due to having to run any hardware anyone wants to use.

[Zico]

Macs look very "pretty" and I dare say they are very good, especially for certain purposes such as video editing etc.. My ex girlfriend had one but I just didnt like it probably because I didnt know my way round the OS well enough.

Im familiar with my PC and its OS, it does everything I need it to... inc occasional video editing.. Its a good games machine too which the Macs dont really support and I dont care what it looks like, Its there for a purpose and that doesnt include being a fashion accessory..

Just not for me..

[Andrewmcm]

Thing is for that money you could build a pc just as powerful. That will always be the reason why there are Mac people and there are pc people. Fair enough when they were running fairly bespoke hardware but now they're just Intel machines. If steve really thinks his product is that great then if should allow people to build their own macs ;-) Thing is they then don't have control of the platform and security, performance and stability due to having to run any hardware anyone wants to use.

Well yeah, and that's how Apple made their massive profits this year - they charge £400 to upgrade from 1GB to 4GB RAM on a Macbook Pro, which is an insane amount of money. If you want to use a Mac and need that much RAM, however, you don't have a lot of choice.

People have got OS X Leopard running on a PC, and it seems to work ok from what I've read. The problem in doing so is that next to no drivers are available from non-Apple hardware on the Mac, making it difficult to get things to work properly. It's also why Macs work so well without any fuss - they know what hardware will be present so no need to faff with drivers and suchlike.

Double-edged sword I guess, we can't have it both ways.

[Daniel]

Well yeah, and that's how Apple made their massive profits this year - they charge £400 to upgrade from 1GB to 4GB RAM on a Macbook Pro, which is an insane amount of money. If you want to use a Mac and need that much RAM, however, you don't have a lot of choice.

People have got OS X Leopard running on a PC, and it seems to work ok from what I've read. The problem in doing so is that next to no drivers are available from non-Apple hardware on the Mac, making it difficult to get things to work properly. It's also why Macs work so well without any fuss - they know what hardware will be present so no need to faff with drivers and suchlike.

Double-edged sword I guess, we can't have it both ways.
Very fair assesment

[Daniel]

Well yeah, and that's how Apple made their massive profits this year - they charge £400 to upgrade from 1GB to 4GB RAM on a Macbook Pro, which is an insane amount of money. If you want to use a Mac and need that much RAM, however, you don't have a lot of choice.

People have got OS X Leopard running on a PC, and it seems to work ok from what I've read. The problem in doing so is that next to no drivers are available from non-Apple hardware on the Mac, making it difficult to get things to work properly. It's also why Macs work so well without any fuss - they know what hardware will be present so no need to faff with drivers and suchlike.

Double-edged sword I guess, we can't have it both ways.
Thing is as you said it's a closed system.

You're not really comparing apples with apples (no pun intended).

With a PC you can pretty much build anything you want to with any parts you feel like using within reason. If you want to build a celeron with 256mb of ram you can and it'll work. It'll be slow but it will work.

With a Mac you walk into a shop and buy it and you can upgrade the ram in the future and that's about it really.

With our PC we bought the ram first, then the motherboard and then the processor and combined it with bits of the previous PC to make a new one and then progressively got rid of the crappy bits and now have a good PC. It's that flexibility that I like about PC's. I also like the fact that service packs are free. So when Vista SP1 comes out I'll get it for free rather than Mac users who will have to pay to buy OSX Gerbil or Marmot or whatever they call it next time.

Here are a couple of Mac parody ads which kind of get my point across.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=yg7Xh0m_Oco

http://youtube.com/watch?v=lzRrgZUnbFY

http://youtube.com/watch?v=AKiP6mX4p9E

It's smug untrue adverts like this which make me dislike Apple with a passion.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=0GWYaviIzCU

If I build a PC in February or so It'll have a processor which is 1.5 times as fast, two times the storage space, 4 times the ram and have a graphics card which is 3 or 4 times more powerful than the one in the bottom of the line iMac which retails for 800 quid :mark:

It'll actually be better in every way than the top of the range iMac which is retailing at £1459 :mark: In fact add 2 more gigs of iMemory to the top of the range iMac to mac it 4gb (which is what i'm going to have in my PC) and it comes out at over £1900.

I'll buy a Mac on the same day that I buy a Mini, become a junior real estate agent and get a really thin flippy phone and start to care more about what other people think of me than I think of myself and of using my money sensibly :)

[Andrewmcm]

I remember I used to be like you! But I'm glad I've tried a Mac and can say that they're actually rather good at what they do. Have you tried using a Mac recently Daniel?

[Daniel]

I remember I used to be like you! But I'm glad I've tried a Mac and can say that they're actually rather good at what they do. Have you tried using a Mac recently Daniel?
Last time I tried a Mac was 2003. I was almost driven to self harm by the silly single whole body click mouse, form over function styling and the counter-intuitive interface :) I could try it on one of the Mac Mini test machines we have at work but to be honest I'm not that fussed.

When my PC stops doing what I need it to do I might have a go with a Mac but not before :) I guess it's all about what you do. For the average person I think a Mac would be fine and considering most people don't know an Asus motherboard from a Cheng shing wong dingadonglong motherboard I guess most would be better off with a Mac because at least they have a lesser likelihood of getting hardware based crashes/bsod's which is the main reason why people think PC's are crap. In my job in a software support position people quite often blame us or windows for our application crashing and when they read out the error number it's almost always a memory error and it's just poor quality memory which is responsible for that in most cases.

Have you tried Vista on a proper, well specced machine yet? :) I think I built this PC in June and it's on almost 24/7 and other than IE just randomly closing down at times it runs perfectly and has never crashed or bluescreened.

[Andrewmcm]

Last time I tried a Mac was 2003. I was almost driven to self harm by the silly single whole body click mouse, form over function styling and the counter-intuitive interface :) I could try it on one of the Mac Mini test machines we have at work but to be honest I'm not that fussed.

When my PC stops doing what I need it to do I might have a go with a Mac but not before :) I guess it's all about what you do. For the average person I think a Mac would be fine and considering most people don't know an Asus motherboard from a Cheng shing wong dingadonglong motherboard I guess most would be better off with a Mac because at least they have a lesser likelihood of getting hardware based crashes/bsod's which is the main reason why people think PC's are crap. In my job in a software support position people quite often blame us or windows for our application crashing and when they read out the error number it's almost always a memory error and it's just poor quality memory which is responsible for that in most cases.

Have you tried Vista on a proper, well specced machine yet? :) I think I built this PC in June and it's on almost 24/7 and other than IE just randomly closing down at times it runs perfectly and has never crashed or bluescreened.

It comes to the point raised above about Apple having besopke drivers and hardware in their systems, hence why there are so few failures reported. You can build a PC out of an almost-infinite number of components so it's so surprise at all that things fall over more regularly with an OS that has to support all these permutations. I don't doubt your ability to build and maintain a Vista-based machine at all, but it seems that Average Joe out there is having a harder time adjusting to Microsoft's latest offering.

I have yet to use Vista as on a Windows-based machine I require OpenGL support for X-Windows applications and therefore cannot switch until these programmes are updated to do so. As a lot of my work is performed on UNIX/Linux-based supercomputers the Mac OS is ideal for me as it is natively UNIX, saving the need for 3rd party ssh clients and X-Windows programmes. I know that Vista's use of DX10 to draw everything on the screen is slower than XPs method, so (like with most MS OSs) I'll wait till SP1/2 before I consider upgrading.

Psst here's a dirty little secret - you can set those Mac mice up to have a right-click function too.... ;)

[Daniel]

It comes to the point raised above about Apple having besopke drivers and hardware in their systems, hence why there are so few failures reported. You can build a PC out of an almost-infinite number of components so it's so surprise at all that things fall over more regularly with an OS that has to support all these permutations. I don't doubt your ability to build and maintain a Vista-based machine at all, but it seems that Average Joe out there is having a harder time adjusting to Microsoft's latest offering.

I have yet to use Vista as on a Windows-based machine I require OpenGL support for X-Windows applications and therefore cannot switch until these programmes are updated to do so. As a lot of my work is performed on UNIX/Linux-based supercomputers the Mac OS is ideal for me as it is natively UNIX, saving the need for 3rd party ssh clients and X-Windows programmes. I know that Vista's use of DX10 to draw everything on the screen is slower than XPs method, so (like with most MS OSs) I'll wait till SP1/2 before I consider upgrading.

Psst here's a dirty little secret - you can set those Mac mice up to have a right-click function too.... ;)

Vista doesn't use DX10 for Aeroglass. It uses DX9 and with added features come added overheads like needing a decent graphics card for once.

I'm actually downloading the release candidate for SP1 as we speak or rather I've just run the regedit and am now doing a download which will then let me download SP1 RC :mark:

It's funny that you would say people are having problems adjusting because for me Vista seems to make more sense and most of the people I speak to seem to find it easier to live with than XP :)

[Mp3 Astra]

Me and my best friend are constandly arguing about Macs and PCs, despite us not knowing very much about each other's machines. He loves the Mac to slightly perverse levels whereas I respect my Laptop. This thread has given me vital ammunition to flame him next time the subject comes up (probably next week).

It has to be said that he does come across as very pretentious when he talks about the Mac, constantly referring to how Windows has copied every feature. Is this true or is he just trying to make me feel guilty?

[Daniel]

Me and my best friend are constandly arguing about Macs and PCs, despite us not knowing very much about each other's machines. He loves the Mac to slightly perverse levels whereas I respect my Laptop. This thread has given me vital ammunition to flame him next time the subject comes up (probably next week).

It has to be said that he does come across as very pretentious when he talks about the Mac, constantly referring to how Windows has copied every feature. Is this true or is he just trying to make me feel guilty?

Some stuff has been copied. But tbh is that a bad thing? Is it bad that every tyre company in the world copied Dunlop and started making air filled tyres. You could say Michelin sucks for having to copy Dunlop's ideas but they'd be morons not to have copied.

[Andrewmcm]

Me and my best friend are constandly arguing about Macs and PCs, despite us not knowing very much about each other's machines. He loves the Mac to slightly perverse levels whereas I respect my Laptop. This thread has given me vital ammunition to flame him next time the subject comes up (probably next week).

It has to be said that he does come across as very pretentious when he talks about the Mac, constantly referring to how Windows has copied every feature. Is this true or is he just trying to make me feel guilty?

My advice would be to have a play with his machine for about 2-3 hours and see what you think of it, and vice-versa.

[leopard]

Mac is comparable thing to Microsoft while in comparison to windows we are talking about Leopard, don't be awkward, carry on :)