iMac (early 2009) in-depth impressions
By Nilay Patel 
posted March 10th 2009 11:00AM
posted March 10th 2009 11:00AM
- Apart from the revised port layout, the only external visual cue that you're looking at a new iMac is the tapered foot -- the old ones were flat slabs.
- The display is as glossy as ever. We actually think it looks really nice in a dark room -- beautiful, even -- but anywhere else, it's a mirror.
- Final verdict on the tiny keyboard? It's ridiculous. We actually love Apple's full-size aluminum keyboard, and while the lite version feels just as sturdy, the smaller space bar and missing keys are disorienting. Apple says laptop users love it, but the whole thing feels like an unnecessary compromise -- if you have room for a 24-inch iMac on your desk, we're guessing you can spare an extra six inches for the full-size keyboard. Don't believe the hype, take the free upgrade.
- Similarly, the Mighty Mouse is still totally lame.
- The Apple Remote is no longer bundled in the box, you'll have to pay extra for it. Sorry, Front Row fans.
- We did some quick'n'dirty XBench testing and the results are solid but not unexpected: the midrange $1,799 2.93GHz unit is oh-so-slightly faster than the similarly-spec'd top-end 17-inch MacBook Pro we just tested, but it's not much faster than the outgoing iMacs. Graphics are a similar story: the GeForce GT 120 chip in the model we have is certainly faster on paper than anything else we've tested, but playing Call of Duty 4 didn't make us feel like we had to race out and upgrade. Sure, you can up the settings slightly and still get 60fps now, but at 1920 x 1200 with everything maxed out there's essentially no difference between the new iMac and our 2007 unit -- you're looking at 8-15fps either way.
- Although they wouldn't say it explicitly, Apple's PR basically told us that FireWire 400 is gone for good. Goodbye, old friend.
- Similarly, it's doubtful we'll ever see HDMI on the iMac -- Apple's committed to pushing mini DisplayPort as the new standard, particularly since it supports high resolution displays better.
Reading most of these post, I'm really surprised at the Windows/Apple rivalry that seems to be going full blast. Sure in Ad campaigns and such, they poke fun at each other and stuff but, people really seem to Hate one or the other. At the end of the day, "Who gives a &$#%"! If you like Apple, you like Apple and if you like Windows, you like Windows. I'm sure Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are in each other's "Favorites" on their respective phones.
I guess in the Demolition man future when there is only One Restaurant and one Computer Manufacturer, then we can battle for dominance but for now, I think everyone just needs to breathe.
That keyboard looks way to small for the monitor...
Dell Rhymes With Hell, thats all you need to know!
Steve Jobs is the Anti-Christ. Behold the Beast.
Got to love all you haters here. More of those => More clicks => More eyeballs => More comments => More ads for engadget.com => More Apple stories like these!
Keep them coming, boys........
Eh, it's fun!
That keyboard is an ergonomical joke pulled out of S. J.'s ass...
Okay - you know, as someone who spends a considerable amount of time writing reports - most of it on the wireless version of the small keyboard - I can tell you that it is ergonomically the best keyboard I've ever used.
I type very fast, and I type a lot. It's extremely comfortable, easy to position, and the minimal key travel allows you to type very quickly - you essentially glide over the keys.
You don't have to like the look of it, and you don't have to think that it goes well - visually speaking - with the new iMac. In terms of use, however, you really have to use the blagojeviching thing - really use it - before you can make any kind of reasonable comment about the ergonomics.
Funny that in all of these Mac vs. PC comments no one makes mention of the fact that Vista is a POS and that some people choose Mac not because their hardware offerings are fantastical but because they would rather run a rock solid UNIX based OS like OS X.
You have not recently used Vista.
Or, maybe I'm typing this on a well specc'd Vista SP1 rig.
To be honest, I'm just happy when it's not Windows. There's too many dumb things that it does that drives me nuts. I've currently got the Windows 7 Beta installed to see what the fuss is all about but the annoyances still remain, such as not scrolling background windows when I mouse over them and roll the mouse wheel. It's lots of little things...
yes, because a geforce 120 is so "fantastical"
Obviously if vista isn't running well for you that isn't a well spec'd system.
Ya, because dissatisfaction with Vista would have nothing to do with half-baked driver support, UAC nag-ware, BSDs, BIOS/peripheral interactions, need (yes need) to run spyware/adware/virus scanners that slow down system performance, add/remove program, registry, crapware garbage.
Obviously none of those things would have anything to do with someone finding Vista less than satisfactory. Also, the iMac can be equipped with a Radeon 4850 mobility option which isn't bad for an all-in-one machine.
As previously stated, if you are after top games performance a Mac is probably not for you, but stop bagging on everyone who is not satisfied with MS clunker of an operating system.
Although I am a mac user, I'll be one to admit that their computer offerings are overpriced. That subject can easily be beaten to death.
However, most of the commenters that are against Apple's products simply don't get it. Yes, it's true that they lack many of the offering that you typically find in a PC. Guess what... that's there by design! The one place where they should do better is with the Mac Pro and it's video card offerings. However, in just about every other offering, the limited availability of differentiation is there by design. Why else do you think these machines are so stable? I currently have 3 macs, one of which is a 1st gen Intel iMac. I've had, literally 0 problems with the computers.
All of you can debate about how Apple's technological offerings are behind, etc. Guess what.. in Apple's eyes you are the minority. Apple doesn't cater to you. They cater to the people that do not complain about how the iPhone doesn't have a task manager. They cater to people that want simplicity and ease of use. This, obviously, seems to be working as these people represent the majority of computer purchasers out there.
So to conclude, complain all you want. It's likely that you may be right in many of the categories of discussions that you talk about. Apple's lack this, they lack that. However, their ease of use as far as computers, software (especially) and other products far surpasses that of the competition. Which is the reason why others consider them a threat, despite their relatively low marketshare, which is on the rise, BTW.
Oh, and to the author of the story.. what mouse do you use? I have a wireless mighty mouse and although I love its features, I hate how the scroll wheel needs to be constantly cleaned...
this is stupid. you make no mention of the TERRIBLE APPALLING failure rates of Apple products.
not to mention the software that Apple chooses to use, OSuX. Other companies provide UNIX based software free of charge, Apple charges an arm and a leg and encourages you to upgrade every 18 months at additional charges of $180 a pop.
If I can save just one person the agony that I went through for 2 years with my Mac Mini, I will feel satisfied.
APPLE CONNED ME. Apple is conning many many people. Some who can't afford it. Bitter ? Yes.
I'm going to have to agree with kccboy2004 here. Forget about the price for a minute. If you have the money, you have the money, someone who's going to buy a Mac is not going to complain, "why does it cost me $xxxx.xx?". My problem is, if you're going to price it that high, at least make it reliable or have better f------ QA. Just purchased a Late-2008 MacBook Pro, first one shipped w/ dents - returned. Second one, GPU was having issues - returned. Third one, the damn thing isn't even leveled on a flat surface and the SuperDrive is is louder than it should be, almost grinding. That's unnecessary trips to the Apple Store all before the original 14 days is up for returns! I'm very pro-Apple but this is just stupid. Truthfully, the price doesn't match what Apple advertises. Sure Mac OS X runs beautiful, in terms of reliability and QA, hardware is garbage.
While you're squabbling over specs, the rest of the grown-ups in the world are using their computers. We're a bit too busy to worry about how many generations old our graphics cards are.
Are you worried about how many generations old the electronic control module is in your car? Nope. You just want it to work. That's it.
The Mac, for me, just works. After 10 years of building PCs and worrying about specs and hardware I now have the computing equivalent of my toaster. It just works. I focus on my work now, not the machine. I love it.
but the point Brian is that you do have to worry; Apple failure rates are terribly high. Getting service is VERY difficult and requires your machine to be sent in or brought in. Most professionals can't afford that time.
Again, have to agree with kccboy2004. Sure every computer has problems but the amount of times people complain about booting to folder w/ a question mark, booting only to find an icon stating that there is no HDD detected, why the battery isn't being charged by the MagSafe - it becomes ridiculous. It's like Apple doesn't care what they put in, only what it looks like is all that matters. I rather pay for a Windows computer that fails and it will only cost me around 500 to buy new rather than buy a 2000+ laptop which needs to be sent in for repair often.
Macs are overpriced when you compare an all-in-one computer like the iMac to a home built tower machine running Vista. Additionally many people quote prices with their home built machine without including the cost of the MS OS, because typically they ripped the OS off.
You are right sir, most people do not buy windows. But the fact is that my 1700 dollar machine (i actually buy a windows license) runs Mac OS Leopard better then the 4,000 Mac Pro i use at work. People comparing a PC to a Mac make no sense because OS X is made specifically to run on certain hardware and windows is made to run on just about every single type of configuration but if you compare a homemade OS X machine to a Mac Pro you would be shocked to see that you just spend an extra 2,500 dollars on an apple sticker next to your machine.
Well, I think it depends on the configuration. The new Mac Pro has server versions of the i7 that cost $400 a pop, not the $200 that the desktop version runs. The machine chassis is a custom aluminum case that makes a $300 Lian-Li look like a cheap piece of crap. They use ECC RAM and very high end, high efficiency power supplies.
So when you take a workstation class professional machine and compare it to your hackentosh that is built out of budget grade parts, there really isn't a comparison at all. If you go and configure a Dell Windows workstation with the same specs you will be shocked that it, too, costs $3000-$4000 for similar hardware.
The reality is that the people running Macs are running them for the OS and aren't as concerned with how many benchie awareds they can win with it.
As to hackentosh's, well, they aren't exactly what I would call "stable", and that's exactly why Apple hasn't released OS X to the masses, they would wind up having all of the same problems with hardware/driver support that MS has.
For a person yes both a dell workstation and a mac pro would cost the same thing i never tried to compare that. But for a corporation the price of the dell would be much cheaper. I just said that a way to compare mac hardware is to compare it to a machine build to run the same operating system. Just like a home build windows machine will always be about 500 dollars cheaper then buying from dell or hp. And hackentosh may not run staple for many people that don't know much about it but with time and understanding is as reliable or better then an original Mac. And the reason apple does not release its OS for the masses is because apple is a hardware company(yes i said it the only software they make that runs on anything is safari and its about the same compared to IE).
Also based priced Mac Pros don't bring the 500 dollar core i7 they bring 2.66 xeon thats the same thing as the 200 dollar i7. The case is nice but lets face it your not buying a case when buying a computer all you look for in a case is good motherboard placement, space inside, and good air flow. Dont get me wrong i like apple because its different then just a regular PC but in my opinion just like i would never buy a dell i would never buy a Mac either.
No, that's not right. There actually is no Nehalem 2.66ghz Quad available right now other than in the new Mac Pro. The chips were announced by Intel a month or so ago and in lots of 1000 processors the cost was going to be about $440. The new chips have the new cache arrangement which should make them faster in certain tasks like rendering.
The only quad core Xeons out right now are Yorkfields etc.
The issue of the case, etc, is not a moot point to everyone, which is why some people will spend $400 on a custom aluminum case and others are perfectly happy with a $50 Antec case.
The bottom line is that value is in the eye of the beholder. Someone spending $4000 on a Mac Pro with CPU and video upgrades is looking for a workstation that they can do production on for five years.
It's not someone looking at building the cheapest machine that can mash pixels.
Absolutely if your number 1 priority is pixel mashing then you can build a far faster machine than a Mac for less money. Lets not fool ourselves though, it's running an OS that is antiquated in the extreme compared to OS X. If I want to delete an application in OS X I don't have to go into add/remove programs, "uninstall" the application and then wade through and clean up the big nasty pile of crap that the app left in the registry, leftover DLLs, program folders, etc. All I have to do on OS X is open the shell, go to the Applications directory and do rm -r on that application. Poof, it's gone.
It's funny that many of the people that bash on Apple would actually greatly enjoy running OS X since it's an OS with its roots in the 21st century, where as Vista was a half baked expansion of Windows XP that managed to break as many features as it added.
New Mac Pro Specs
Quad Core
One 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Nehalem" processor (same as 200 nehalem based core i7)
3GB (three 1GB) memory
640GB hard drive 1
18x double-layer SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 512MB
total 2500
Eight Core
Two 2.26GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Nehalem" processors (less performance the 200 dollar nehalem core i7, with 1000 dollars between 2 core i7 and a duel 1366 socket motherboard you get better performance then this)
6GB (six 1GB) memory
640GB hard drive1
18x double-layer SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 512MB
total 3299
I never bashed Mac operating system i think its amazing. I just bashed the prices of buying hardware from Mac. The fact is production based a windows workstation and a mac workstation can give you the same productivity. Also vista was not an amazing OS but yet everyone is allover windows 7 when its the same thing. I am purely talking about hardware cost. We are all held to our opinions. I can tell you like Mac OS X more then windows but me i judge them both the same one is better then the other for certain things thats why i duel boot windows 7(before 7 beta i used vista) and Leopard.
Joel,
The processor is NOT the same as the desktop Nehalem that sells for $200. You seriously need to educate yourself on this stuff because you're starting to come across as a bit of a tard on the subject.
Go to wikipedia and educate yourself on NEHALEM XEON chips with new cache management, they are NOT the same as the desktop chips.
Nehalem is the codename for an Intel processor microarchitecture,[1] successor to the Core microarchitecture. The first processor released with the Nehalem architecture is the desktop Core i7,[2] which was released on November 15, 2008 in Tokyo and November 17, 2008 in the USA.[3] The first computer to use Nehalem-based Xeon processors was the Mac Pro workstation announced on March 3, 2009.[4] Nehalem-based Xeon EX processors for larger servers are expected in Q4 2009.[5] Mobile Nehalem-based processors will follow in 2010.
please do not tell others that they are not educated when you do not know mutch about the subject their is no difference between the 2.66 quad core xeon 3500 and the core i7 the only difference number of QPI links. The chips have the same clock speed with the same memory speed. Its the same cpu core the only difference is the socket. and the xeon 3500 uses ECC memory but the performance for apps and games and everything will be the same. So please do some research before you bad mouth people. Also one little side note to add all Nehalem chips include ECC support, but Intel is not letting ECC be enabled by BIOS when a Core i7 is detected vs. a Xeon.
Joel,
You said,
"Also based priced Mac Pros don't bring the 500 dollar core i7 they bring 2.66 xeon thats the same thing as the 200 dollar i7."
Yeah, too bad Xeons are different from regular desktop processors. The Xeons in the LAST Mac Pro retailed for over $700 EACH just about anywhere you could look.
You can't even BUY one yet, so stop speculating on the price because you don't have a clue.
So does this thing support 8GB of RAM?
Oh god I'm so glad you provided that link to the article about the death of Firewire.
It was hilarious to see how many idiots were predicting the death of Blu Ray, and yet, here we are, 4 months later, and Blu Ray is doing just fine.
Hahahahaha.. idiots. When will people learn that the majority of predictions are based on nothing more than dog shit?
Me want. Me WAAANT.
lol @ dinky keyboard
I cant believe it... 1800$ for a cheap GT 120... its the equivalent of a 9500gt... For god sake, its a 60$ videocard!!
Imacs are ridiculous... you can get a quad i7, 8gb of ram, a high-end dual gpu solution and a 24inch monitor for that price.
Wow, what an incredibly unhelpful article. The whole tone is incredibly cynical and sarcastic.
I'm personally in the market for one of the new iMacs (to upgrade from my aging G5 iMac) - and I was hoping for some insightful impressions, particularly how much difference performance is between models. (specifically in processor speed, and the graphics card [120 > 130 > ATI] options.) Since no-one thus far on the internet has given a satisfactory answer to those questions.
As for the small keyboard. I specially ordered one of the wireless ones for my current iMac. Do I miss the numpad? Not at all. The large keyboard always had trouble sitting on my desk, thanks to having a massive Wacom tablet next to it. The small one shares the desk perfectly.
For those of us who are correctly i.e. left handed, the new keyboard is a blessing. Having the keypad on the wrong side just wastes desk space, I'd much rather have a USB keypad that gets out of the way when it isn't needed and is properly positioned when it is. I'd appreciate it if Apple offered a matching numeric pad though. As for the Mighty Mouse, it's not bad for a mouse but I'll keep my trackball thank you.
Anyone know what chipset this is running?
I was just on Abt Electronic's facebook page and saw that they had a pretty neat video review of the 24" imac.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wkx8Cfxe5mY