The Mighty iMac

It was only 3 days after the presentation of the new Intel based iMac that I placed my order. Why so soon I guess one could ask? Normally I tend to wait for a 2nd generation before I buy it, just like we should all do, but I took a chance knowing that Apple is very good at making reliable hardware.

Ever since Apple said they would swicth to the intel processor I wanted to get my hands on one. The main reason for that was that I guessed I would finally be able to free myself of my dull litle box. I figured that the day I could run my windows system on the new intel imac where closing in. Especially since apple didn't do anything ground breaking to prevent it to be done technically. It was just a question of some one finding the way to hack it in.

I gues you can imagine I was pleasantly surprised when Apple came out with Boot Camp. I'd almost say I knew it was coming. I supported the WinXpOnMac effort alongside many others, but it was clear that it needed a lot of work before I would sacrifice my mac to that hack. And let it be heard that this mac hardware runs XP extremely well and fast. It's all I wished for and more.

The Intel iMac is an amazing machine with even greater speed (I have the 20" version with the 256mb graphics card, and plenty of ram). Especially considering the fact that this is a consumer product and not a proffesional product, even thought in some cases it out performes the current pro products. That fact on itself makes the iMac all worth it.

I had only 3 nuances with the machine, 2 have been fixed by Apple trough software and firmware updates.

1. Slow airport connection speed. For some unclear reason the airport connection speed on the intel iMac was heavily weighed down. Many many users complained about it to apple, they never officialy responded. But non the less they fixed the problem in the recent 10.4.6 upgrade of OS X. It would have been nice if they told us what it was and how they fixed it.
2. The very first hour of usage the keyboard and mouse showed eratic behaviour. Now and then the mouse and Volume keys on the keyboard would stop responding. Fortunatly that issues somehow solved itself early on. Non the less Apple recently released new keyboard and mouse software.
3. For some reason the security screen that I have set to appear after a wake from sleep tends to have some render issue, showing the window pixels all scatttered and smeared over the top part of the screen.

Particularly issue one bugged me as I had to transfer files to my iBook once in a while. But since it has been fixed, I really don't have any other "real" issues anymore.

I'm still very excited about the machine! The sound qualty is surprisingly good and loud for such a compact housing. It looks awesome, the 20" screen is simply fantastic and OS X runs like a real tiger. What else could I wish for apart from an Intel native Adobe CS suite? To bad I need Boot Camp to run that at an acceptable speed ;) Bravo Apple for providing such a good product and such good service.

Some other good reviews of the Intel iMac from: Arstechnica, Macworld, Macintouch.