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Say Goodbye to the 17 inch iMac G5
It's official, there are no more 17 inch iMacs in the Apple Store as of today. After the price reduction on the 20 inch models a few days ago, Apple has removed the 17 inch model completely.This means, however, that you can still purchase refurbished 17 inch iMac G5's if they come up in Apple's discount section. Other retailers have cut prices on the iMac G5 17 inch as well in a last ditch attempt to clear out stock.[via Engadget]
AnandTech takes a look at the Intel iMac
Anand, from the appropriately named site AnandTech, has gotten his hands on an iMac G5 and an Intel iMac and took both for a spin. He spends lots of time in this very lengthy review comparing the performance of the two, and time after time the Intel iMac is faster, but not mind blowingly so.This review is extensive (have I mentioned that?), but it is well worth a read because there are many thought provoking gems in there. If you don't have the time to read it, Anand likes the iMac (though it isn't the computer for him) but he thinks that the iMac to get will be the next rev when we will (hopefully) see a brand new design that takes advantage of a much cooler running processor.Thanks, Raghu.
Apple clearing out iMac G5s?
We don't usually mention bargains here on TUAW, as there are plenty of other sites already doing a fine job of that. However, TUAW reader Adam noticed that the 20" iMac G5 has dropped quite a bit in price to $1499 in the online Apple Store, bringing the edu price down even lower to $1399. These are not refurbs or special deals of any kind as far as I can tell, which leads me to wonder if this might be the first sign of the iMac G5's inevitable disappearance. Speculation aside however, it's a smokin' deal on a big iMac that's still pretty speedy. Get 'em while they're hot.
Found Footage: Broke Mac Mountain
We get all sorts of interesting email here at the TUAW compound. Stephen sent us this spoof of 'Broke Back Mountain' entitled 'Broke Mac Mountain,' which is very amusing. I especially enjoyed the line, 'Actually, it's pretty common.' I suppose this would be rated PG-13, so do with that info what you will.
Rig of the Day: The desk of a switcher
What could be more satisfying than seeing a retired Windows laptop looking sadly on as an iMac proudly occupies its former space on the desk? Flickr user markjreeves77 depicts this scene with his snapshot. Are those Mardi Gras beads? After reading Database in Depth, I can see how a guy could want to cut loose a little bit."My rig (per TUAW) at home" posted by markjreeves77. If you'd like to see your own rig featured here, simply upload photos into our group Flickr pool. We'll select an image every day to highlight.
New MacBreak podcast from Leo and friends
Yet another vidcast (and site) from Leo and friends has launched in the iTMS by the name of MacBreak (iTMS link). Its inaugural episode stars Leo Laporte, Alex Lindsay, Amber MacArthur and a new face in the Leo party: Emery Wells. This first episode is roughly 30 minutes of video coverage from the Macworld Expo floor, with the gang running around checking out iPod accessories, the Best in Show software award winners, AJA video cards, new iLife goodness and, of course, the new Intel Macs. I actually thought the Mac section was a bit interesting, as Leo interviews an Apple rep on the new MacBook Pros and tosses a few curve balls, giving the rep a good run for his money.It's a great first episode, and the vidcast as a whole shows a lot of potential. It's very well produced (thanks to Alex and the Pixel Corps, maybe?), with great special effect transition goodness and a professional flow not found in many other podcasts. Definitely check it and their site out, as I'm sure there is much to come.
Intel iMac processors replaceable
Accelerate Your Mac is reporting (I'd link directly to it, but it seems that they don't believe in the power of permalinks) that a recent issue of MacFan (a Japanese Mac magazine) has successfully replaced the Intel processor in the Intel iMac with a different, slightly faster, Core Duo. This means that it is conceivable that folks will be able to upgrade their iMacs to use even faster chips as Intel pumps them out, without having to replace the entire motherboard (which, if possible, would be every expensive to say the least).Japanese Mac fans never fail to amaze me with what they are willing to do to brand new Apple gear. I salute you!
Intel iMac desktop nirvana
As regular readers of TUAW might remember I have one of the last iMac G5's that Apple will ever produce, which are cosmetically identical to their Intel iMac brethren, so I know a thing or two about these desktops. They are great machines and I wouldn't hesitate recommending them to anyone who asks, and neither would Tom Yager.Tom dislikes desktops and goes as far as calling them, 'the muck at the bottom of the tank that swallows creativity and imagination,' but that was before he got his hands on a 20 inch Intel iMac. Tom has declared this the desktop that he has always wanted, and the perfect desktop bar none.Apple, says Tom, has gone to the effort of equipping the iMac with everything that it needs,and not skimping on the quality. This creates a great computer that takes literally 5 minutes to get up and running (and judging by the boot times of the Intel iMacs it might take even less time to get them up and running).Long story short, the iMac has converted Tom Yager from laptop snob to desktop booster.
Apple's remote controls more than FrontRow
Mat on Macs has recently made a discovery: The Apple remote that shipped with his iMac can be used to control more than FrontRow. Specifically, he found that play/pause, chapter forward/back and 4x fast forward/back all work with DVD Player (play and pause even work if DVD Player is not the frontmost application). Also, his remote worked with Quicktime Player and adjusted the system volume. That's pretty cool. Now I want one of those iMacs even more.
Rig of the Day: I just gotta be me
Ok, so technically this isn't someone's rig, but that lone green iMac among a sea of blue reminded me of that old Far Side comic in which one penguin among a multitude was trying to assert his independence. You go, lime iMac. As an aside to ghostofchicken, who posted this shot: If you don't need those iMacs, I'll be happy to take them off your hands."imacs" posted by ghostofchickenIf you'd like to see your own rig featured here, simply upload photos into our group Flickr pool. We'll select an image every day to highlight.
iMac Core Duo quirks
No, this isn't a pic of our rig of the day. It's my rig. I've had my iMac Core Duo for a few weeks now, so I thought I'd provide some more impressions for those of you still on the PowerPC side of the processor divide. Monitor spanning works nicely, especially with a nice screen like the 24-inch Dell (featuring the same a similar LCD as Apple's 23-inch Cinema display, but with an extra inch of visibility, better resolutioncontrast, and a slew of extra USB ports and a built in memory card reader). I'm still only running the default 512MBs of RAM, but I only really feel the lack of RAM when I launch one of the media-heavy iLife apps (especially iPhoto), when I have a lot of apps open, or when I run apps in Rosetta. For the most part, the new iMac is still blazingly fast.I have noticed a few oddities with Rosetta. I cannot always drag documents to Word in the Dock or pictures to Photoshop in the Dock to launch the program and open the document / picture, as I can with native apps. I can launch the program this way, but it will often not open the file after launch. If the app is already running, then this sporadic inability to open files doesn't seem to occur. Also, Rosetta apps have crashed on me from time to time. Native apps run fine.Another issue: where is X11? I cannot find it installed on the machine and cannot seem to find an installer that works online. I downloaded the Intel-savvy ports of OOo and the Gimp, but neither will run since there doesn't appear to be any installation of X11 on the iMac. If somebody knows where I can find X11 let me know. UPDATE: Found an "Install Optional Installs" app on the disk that came with the iMac and X11 would appear to be the only of the apps listed that wasn't installed by default. Odd.The processor is fast. I know I keep saying that, but yesterday I used the free Universal Binary version of iSquint to batch process about 10 movies into iPod format in just a few hours. Much faster than either my old G4 PowerBook or my old G5 PowerMac. Overall, I'm loving the new iMac, but I am noticing little spots of bugginess here and there, and I'm hoping that recent Core Duo problems in Windows land don't end up being issues with our Macs.
Rig of the Day: Oh, my electric bill!
Flickr user tbridge has got a lot of stuff plugged in at once here. Check out the 20" G5 iMac, 20" Cinema Display, Powerbook, Mac mini (with attached 160GB LaCie drive) and a 3G iPod. Not to mention the Creature Speakers, two lamps, printer and clock (though that may run on batteries)."Desk" posted by tbridge.If you'd like to see your own rig featured here, simply upload photos into our group Flickr pool. We'll select an image every day to highlight.
Rig of the Day: Crisp and clean
After the cluttered desks we've recently featured, we had to put up the polar opposite today, just to balance things out. I really like the iBook propped on its stand, as well as the iMac, iPod in a universal dock and Soundsticks. Plus, that's a sweet desktop picture. TransparentDock gets rid of the dock's background and border, and an iSight wraps up the rig."My Setup (Revised)" posted by jdys™If you'd like to see your own rig featured here, simply upload photos into our group Flickr pool. We'll select an image every day to highlight.
Jobs ain't no liar
When Steve Jobs got on stage for the Macworld 2006 keynote, he said the new Intel iMacs are 2 - 3 times faster than the former G5 models. Obviously no one took those numbers seriously, because the benchmark focused on the overall ability of the processor itself without any other performance-affecting factors, like the amount of RAM, hard drive speed, etc. Anyone with any sense would know how to put those SPEC numbers into perspective.Which is exactly why long-time Mac friend Paul "If 5 is greater than 2, then 2 must be less than 5!" Thurrott seems to have missed the point completely. He accuses Jobs of "lying" about the speed of the new iMacs, using Macworld benchmarks and his own experience to claim that they are nowhere near "2 - 3 times faster."Just for the record: Jobs is not lying, he's using real, tested numbers in an obfuscating way. Yes, I'm fiddling with semantics, but honestly: Accusing a CEO of "lying" when he's not is not just wrong, it's downright libelous.To be fair, though, Thurrott does accurately nail the "point" of the switch to Intel: "...you shouldn't get too caught up in unimportant measurements, charts, and anecdotal evidence," he writes. "The new Macs are better than the old Macs. And they're just going to keep getting better. That's good news, not bad."
Intel iMac: Easiest RAM install ever
So you purchased a new Intel-based iMac and now you want to upgrade its RAM? Well don't worry about it. According to Gear Live, it's easier than it has ever been on a Mac. The process amounts to no more than flipping the iMac over, opening a very small panel and inserting the chip. Now installing RAM on an eMac is pretty easy, but this looks even simpler. And to think of all the time I actually drew my own blood on a 7100.Thanks, Andru!
Rig of the Day: Great vintage collection
Check this out. Flickr user Henri has got a great set of vintage Apple products in his snapshot. Note the (blueberry?) iMac, the Powerbook, Newton Message Pad, the Apple PowerCD with remote (wow), eMate, Color Classic and a Twentieth Anniversary Mac. I must confess, I had never seen an Apple PowerCD before, and had to write to Henri for an explanation. "MacCollection" posted by Henri Smeets.If you'd like to see your own rig featured here, simply upload photos into our group Flickr pool. We'll select an image every day to highlight.
Intel iMac unpacking porn
It has been awhile since we featured a good set of Mac unpacking pictures (aka Mac porn). This set is brought to us by Paul Thurrott (and it isn't running Windows... yet). It basically looks exactly like my iMac G5 looked as I unpacked it, except the box doesn't say 'iMac G5,' and within the beast an Intel heart beats.Why do I enjoy looking at these pictures so much?
Intel Mac tweakers having trouble, kill iMacs in process
An interesting thread has popped up over at the Nakfull Propaganda blog regarding getting Linux or Windoze to boot on the new Intel iMac Core Duo's. Since the new Intel Macs don't have Open Firmware and instead have EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface), some enterprising people have been trying to munge around in EFI to get other OSes installed.So far, no one has managed to get Linux or Winblows to run on the iMac Core Duo, but some people have managed to irreversible kill a few iMacs (and are returning them to Apple without mentioning how they butchered the machines). The entire thread makes for fascinating reading, vacillating between the religious:"THIS IS A CHALLENGE. WE SHALL NOT REST UNTIL ALL 3 OSs HAVE BEEN INSTALLED SUCCESSFULLY ON THE NEW MACS."and extremely poetic geek-speak:"And this is with the entire contents of the Vista 5270 32-bit EFI installation DVD copied over to either its own Mac OS Extended partition or a FAT32 partition on a GPT volume."[via Slashdot]
Floppy Disk Striped Raid on a Bondi Blue iMac
I have a little ditty for you dear TUAW reader:Oh how I love RAIDs, both useful and contrived!What beauty when my data is striped,Large or small, my data is safe with all.Take for example, this lovely Bondi Blue iMac with no less than five floppy disk drives (FDD's) "melded" into a " single super duper kalimazooper floppy drive." Pure poetry.[Thank you Hack-A-Day reader tutejszy!]
Extend your wireless range to 1 mile
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you're a mooch. You don't want to get yourself a wireless set up, and your buddy has agreed to let you hitchhike on his signal. The problem is, he lives two blocks away. No problem, you just need the 27 dBm Transceiver from QuickerTek. When affixed to your 17-inch iMac G5 1.8GHz, the transceiver extends your airport range to 1 mile. Now you can easily see your friend's signal...as well as every other setup between his house and yours. The 27dBm is Wi-Fi compliant, it supports both 802.11g and 802.11b and works with both Mac OS 9.x and Mac OS 10.x. Of course, for $200US, you could just buy your own base station, but how are you supposed to snoop on your neighbors with that?
