Opening: I stated on Thursday when the iMac came in that I only review new technology after I’ve been using it for 2-4 weeks. It’s been 5 days and I’m already fully prepared to review this amazing machine. The key reason is that the iMac isn’t a notebook. A notebook sits in your lap, at the cafe, in your bag and at your desk. Aesthetics and the bond you form with that lifestyle machine is significantly different than a desktop PC. So, although the iMac is simply amazing, it doesn’t need the extra 2 weeks of “travel” for me to fully evaluate it.
The Apple iMac is a machine that I’ve always respected but never lusted after. Apple continued to win my heart with smaller, faster, lighter and more beautiful notebook computers beginning in 2001 when I first toted a Tangerine G3 iBook under my arm. Each iteration seemed to compliment me with orange to white to black and then to aluminum. Apple continued to innovate until I arrived at the MacBook Air. It’s the ultimate portable Mac and it’s far more of a workhouse than many PC counterparts with similar specs (and without the portability). I’ve owned every generation of Apple laptop since 2003 from 12 to 17 inches from G3 to Core2Duo. I think my laptop reviews are pretty accurate from a user perspective.
My first Mac was a Mac Plus, followed by an SE/30 (it was a hand-me-down) and then a Graphite G3 at 600Mhz. I ditched desktops but got a great price on a Dual-Processor 2Ghz G5 PowerMac in 2006. It was used, fast and heavy. so heavy, that I actually cut my toe wide-open when I walked into it at midnight while walking to the bathroom to pee. Seriously, the thing was a beast.
The iMac’s slow product cycle became boring. I was interested again in 2007 and 2008 when the iMac went aluminum with a black mirrored glass front. I waited for the redesigned MacBook Pro to ship in October and realized that I could get a similarly speced MacBook Pro for only $250 dollars more and have the same power with okay portability. Sorry Apple, I stayed true to the MacBook and, for a while, I was happy with my purchase.
I realized though around August, after purchasing the MacBook Air that the MacBook Pro was a great machine that never left my desk. It was a lot of aluminum just sitting there losing value and doing the job of a desktop machine. The iMac was still the same speed as the MacBook Pro which meant resale value of my 4 month old MBP was higher than a new iMac from Apple. Of course, when the iMac was updated, I immediately knew it was time to sell the MacBook Pro and go back to desktop.
What made me switch? What was so compelling about the iMac that inspired me to click “Buy Now” on Apple.com?
- The Intel Core i7 w/ Hyperthreading. The first Quad-Core iMac w/ 4 additional virtual cores, a blazing fast front side bus and amazing energy savings as it downclocks the processor within milliseconds so if you don’t need 3.2Ghz, it downclocks to 2.8Ghz.
- An amazingly gorgeous 27″ LED display. It puts my $2,000 30″ Dell LCD to shame. It makes my 24″ Dell Ultrasharp look like crap and even friends who have Apple’s new 24″ display will say that the new iMac is breathtaking next to it.
- A two terabyte hard drive and 8 gigabytes of ram is actually affordable. Apple really outdid themselves on pricing. Due to the recession, Apple has dropped prices all around, but I’m still making what I made 2 years ago so only $150 to double my ram from 4 to 8 gigabytes? Hell yes!
A word of warning. Apple has nearly ceased shipments of the new iMac due to quality control issues. At the time of this writing, users are getting machines that have flickering screens, yellow screens and even machines that are cracked on the edges from being too big for that iMac box that was designed back when 20″ was the largest their machines went. Be careful. If you’re ordering an iMac, be prepared to ship it back. I know 4 people who have had theirs replaced within 24 hours of receiving it.
The iMac i7 processor is overkill but it’s fast. I always get the fastest machine for resale value. 90%+ of the apps that you will find:
- Won’t support more than 1 or 2 cores ( you have 8 in the i7)
- Won’t support 64-bit processes / threads (Which the i7 is 64-bit)
- Won’t benefit but a CPU faster than 3Ghz
Keep in mind, this machine is going to last you for 2-5 years. Plan for the future! I’ll be selling it in 3-4 months but that’s just me. I did my research and those who went for the i7 are seeing 20% gains in performance while ripping DVDs, exporting movies and ripping music. If you do a lot of content creation, the i7 is a worthwhile investment. If you’re reading this in March of 2010, then yes get the i7 because more apps will support all of those blazing fast cores.
All I can say is that everyone that went for the i7, including me, are happy with it and feel a noticeable improvement.
Do you need 8 gigabytes of ram? Personally, I have worked on this thing all day and at my peak of “normal load” my “wired” memory usage is around 4.8 gigabytes. The thing to know about the Mac OS is that if you give it more ram, the OS will take it. BSD is pretty good about giving up ram, as well. It doesn’t “use” the ram, it simply wires it for an application so when that app needs it, the ram is right there waiting but it will change the wired amount of ram constantly in anticipation for certain processes or simply to give some away to another app that you’ve launched. With
I don’t need a two terabyte drive. One terabyte would have been fine. Actually, I’m pretty happy with the upgrade simply because of the resale value. What’s nice about finally going back to a desktop is that I can store my entire iTunes & iPhoto library on the boot drive and back them up to a time machine external drive. This is awesome! iPhoto is 150 gigabytes and iTunes is 400 gigabytes. It’s nice to be able to keep this local for the first time since 2003. After filling up the drive to the brim, I still have one full terabyte of free space remaining. This is pretty amazing. Now I just have to buy a 2 terabyte external drive because my 1 tb drive won’t back up the entire iMac.
Using the machine:
This is what really matters. Once the machine is setup and on my desk and after 4 hours of copying 500 gigabytes of data over from my MacBook Pro, what is the machine actually like?
It’s no doubt the fastest Macintosh I’ve ever used. It’s 3x faster than my 3Ghz 17″ MacBook Pro. It’s 5x faster than my MacBook Air just based on GeekBench Benchmarks. You will be thoroughly amazed at just how fast this machine is. In all honesty, that’s all I care about and every thing I do relies on speed. I can honestly say that my current notebooks could never ever keep up with my speed. I’m extremely demanding of my machines and was constantly fed up with the 3Ghz MacBook Pro being insanely slow. I’m happy to report that the iMac is the first machine that isn’t too slow. I’m serious. The machine is the fastest Mac I’ve ever used and I can’t get it to slow down at any time. I guess the fact that it’s 3x faster than my previous Mac certainly makes up for that.
The display puts to shame every other display I’ve ever used. At home, I have a 30″ Dell 3008WFP hooked up to my Windows 7 machine. It’s a beautiful and huge monitor but it’s not warm. There’s nothing warm or inviting about that monitor. It’s a high resolution monitor but it’s not crisp, warm and the color seems washed out. I learned that Apple used extremely high quality displays in the new iMacs that are far better than most consumers will be able to get. If you do buy a 27″ LED display w/ Super IPS technology, you’ll pay about $1200 from a non-name manufacturer. Apple is including a computer in this amazing display.
I have my 24″ Dell UltraSharp display hooked up to the iMac as a 2nd monitor and there’s just no comparison. The Dell looks like shit compared to the iMac. It’s not even noticeable in the Apple store but once you get home and assume typing position do you realize just how epic this screen is compared to any other computer. Even if you don’t need the power, just get the base $1699 model if only for that amazing screen.
With all of that space, I kind of hoped Apple would have included an SSD option as a boot drive w/ a 2nd hard drive internally. Booting to a 128GB SSD in 10 seconds and having all of my data accessible on a 2nd drive would rock. Instead, my MacBook air is up in 10 seconds and the iMac takes about 45 seconds. Clearly, the hard drive is the ONLY bottleneck on this machine. I could buy a 512GB SSD but it would cost the price of a new iMac so I’ll just deal with it. Luckily, at launch it takes about 2.5 minutes for all of my apps to start and do their thing and then, since everything is in ram, my machine is ultra fast moving forward. An SSD is really only useful for launching and opening things. Once you’re up and running, it’s totally fine so this isn’t really an issue that I should be talking about.
Hey look at my new computer!
As far as bragging rights go, this machine is the ultimate Mac. Not many PC or Mac users see a Mac Pro and drool because that Mac Pro could be an old dual-core machine from 2006 but the iMac is 27″ of beauty with an edge to edge display, small footprint and amazing look & feel.
The sound is loud and rich. It has great sound and maybe all iMacs have this but coming from a MacBook Pro, I’m amazed at how loud the new iMac can get. I just sold my speakers that were hooked up to my notebook because I simply don’t need them anymore.
NO CABLES! Seriously. Look at my desk and sit down. I don’t see a single cable. It’s simply amazing how much this affects my workflow and my overall mood. It’s not until I plug in my MacBook Air that I have a power cord running across my desk.
Noisy. The iMac gets very noisy. Dual fans kick up to high even when I am ripping a CD or doing an iTunes visualizer. The back of the machine is amazingly hot. It will burn your hands if you rest them on the back of the machine. It’s clear that the i7 just isn’t ready for laptops yet. It’s only a single chip but it’s still a desktop chip which is a first for the iMac. This is mostly why the iMac wasn’t appealing to me before. The guts were the exact same as Apple’s notebooks. Why not pay a tad bit more for portability? The 27″ iMac w/ Core i5 / i7 is a desktop machine with desktop parts and thus has desktop speeds. It’s really amazing to spec the Core2Duo 21″ model versus the 27″ Core i7. It’s totally night and day.
The SD card reader is huge if you’re a photographer. I was tired of bringing around either a USB cable or SD card reader with me everywhere. It’s amazing how convenient it is to have an SD reader. Yeah my 3 year old PC had one of these but Apple is finally doing it and I love it!
The iSight is unchanged. Still not really used. I don’t know anyone that video conferences anymore.
No eSATA? Seriously? Just look at these charts. I’ve said enough. http://macperformanceguide.com/Storage-Drive-SATA-vs-Firewire.html
No included remote? Seriously Apple? Remote doesn’t stick to the side of the machine anymore? Seriously Apple? I never used the remote but c’mon!
No number key on the included keyboard? C’mon! I love wireless to death but the fact that I don’t have a number key really sucks. Every Friday I do 3-5 hours of reports in Excel and I’m just going to keep my wired USB keyboard simply for those times when I’m going to do number crunching.
No full-size HDMI, DisplayPort or DVI? That’s fine. Apple likes to standardize their machines to cut costs and reduce issues and simply put the cost of adding adapters on the user’s shoulders. I had a DVI to Mini Display Port adater so I’m good but it would get expensive if I wanted to do anything else with it.
By the way, my Dell 30″ might not have the amazing picture quality as the iMac but it has about 10 different ports on the bottom for nearly everything you could imagine. The iMac just isn’t going to compete with that.
Overall:
The iMac is pretty amazing. I weighed in on the options quite a bit before deciding to sell my MacBook Pro. The machine is simply stunning and I admit that I’ve come into the office every day this week just to use it. I’m sure my colleagues are happy about that too.
The photoset is here. I’ve embedded it below.