After finally getting everything pretty much set-up thanks to a last minute Time Machine back up on my old iMac and being able to restore it on this new Mac I feel I can offer my first impressions.
Firstly, keep in mind that my previous machine was a white iMac (17″ / 60gb HD / 2GB Ram / 1.66ghz Core Duo) so moving from that to this new one (24″ / 640GB / 4GB RAM / 2.66ghz Core Duo) is like moving between night and day.
Apple have a knack for making the beloved machine that you just unplugged to make way for the new one look like an antiquated piece of junk. The new Mac is very sleek with its smooth aluminum casing and large (very!) reflective screen set in an inch wide border makes it look very attractive. It wouldn’t look out of place hanging on your living room wall. Construction seems solid, at least on this machine, with no obvious defects or badly fitted panels.
Moving from the 17″ really makes the 24″ seem enormous. It’s massive. Expansive. You have to move your entire head up to view the menus and down to view the dock. That may sound obvious but it’s a new thing for me. It does actually make ones posture a little better in that you can’t slouch forward as you will be too close.
The second thing that hit me is how bright the display is. Even with the brightness set to its lowest position it was still giving me mild sun-burn and I could feel my eyes starting to complain. Thankfully Twitter came to the rescue; specifically MadMax with a suggestion to use Shades. This little application installs itself as a Preference Pane and allows you to turn the brightness down further. I have the Mac’s brightness turned all the way down and Shades set to 50%.
As you’d expect, performance is speedy enough. A noticeable step up from my old Mac. This is more to do with having free memory than the processor upgrade, I would imagine. Allowing VMWare 1GB memory for the Guest OS (XP) allows it to run at a very acceptable speed. I was able to navigate around using IE8 without any slow down. This was a mild form of torture on my old iMac with typing delays and around 15 seconds for a click to register when memory started to max out.
Overall I’m very impressed. I didn’t bother with the mighty mouse as they only last a few months before the ball starts sticking and I find my Logitech more than acceptable. The small keyboard took a few minutes to get used to with a few ‘fat finger’ mistakes but generally it’s much more comfortable than the old keyboard and I can type at a fairly decent rate.
I am slightly tickled that this machine has the same amount of RAM that my first Bondi Mac had for a hard drive. Can you imagine having a 4GB HDD now?
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I actually quite like the epicly bright screen. However, it does take a while to get used to. I think it took me about two weeks to get used to the full brightness, after turning it up a notch or two every day.
However, the downside is that if you ever move to another screen which is not as bright, the other one will look useless.
I remember moving from the old tube style iMacs to the iLamp and I had the same problem. My eyes struggled to let all the light in and I ended up having pretty bad headaches for a while.
I usually turn up the brightness when watching video (You Tube, etc) or photo editing.
Wow, one of my forum posts have now been immortalized in that screenshot. I didn’t expect to see that!
On another note, is that iMac using the LED backlight like the MacBooks are or the older style lighting? I forget what the oldet style is called though…
I love my 24″ iMac. I was surprised at how much extra desktop there is to work with compared to the 17″ iMac. Unfortunately, I now have productivity problems when I am on my 13″ Macbook. It’s sort of like moving from a corporate office to a closet.
There are a couple issues I have with my 24″ iMac that you may want to watch out for:
- Image persistence. At the end of a long working day I often end up with one of my applications deciding to keep a slight presence on the screen. Sometimes it is Safari’s title bar and toolbars, while either times it is jEdit’s BufferList. It’s a bit odd because I am normally switching back and forth, and neither application is on screen more than a few minutes at a time. Fortunately, the ghost-like image goes away overnight.
- Display sleep issues. When my iMac display goes to sleep (but not the computer itself), the computer goes a bit on the fritz. Every few seconds, I hear a light ticking and the lights in my bedroom flicker. I am fairly confident this is a power supply unit issue, but I don’t really want to send in my iMac for repair at this time. Instead, sleep display got shut off.
My 24″ iMac is about a year old, so Apple probably (hopefully) fixed the display issue. And the other issue is more likely a rare failure that I am “lucky” enough to have encountered.
Enjoy your beautiful iMac.
My 24″ imac is now approaching its first birthday and like you I’ve been more than happy with it. I did encounter the white screen of death a month or so which freaked me a little – but it looked like the RAM had come loose (it sits vertically so may not have been locked in place properly in the first place? No problems since (touch wood). Looking forward to the new macbook pros when they eventually come out to replace my old mbpro which is seriously on its last legs.