The motherboard on my old P4 box finally forced me to make a decision on a Mac Desktop. I bought a new stock 3.06 iMac. Given the time Ive spent on hashing my options and griping about the lack of a mid-range tower, I figured Id post my rationale and initial thoughts about the my new mac.
First a little background: This box will get used in three main venues. Work (PHP/MySQL and Filemaker development), Play (Digital Darkroom), and Sloth (second TV and Movies (farther away from bedrooms)). I reserve the right to do a little gaming in the future (especially once the kids figure out that they dont have to get up at 6AM (particularly on weekends)). Life being what it is Ill also be running an XP and Linux VMs fairly frequently. Its probably also worth mentioning that Ive been using Apple computers since the Apple IIes in my Jr. Highs Computer lab. I owned a LC II in the 90s, and we currently use a CD mini for our family computer. In short Im no stranger to Apple, but my primary box has been running openSuse Linux and XP for the last 6 years so its been a while since Ive seriously used a Mac. the mini is still on Tiger so this is also my first serious time with Leopard.
Honestly the mini could handle everything except the gaming, but the GMA 950 leaves a lot to be desired and rules out the more GPU intensive photographic software (none of which I own or feel I need, but still Id like to have the option). More importantly Im hopelessly addicted to 2 screens, and I seriously doubt the long overdue, impending mini upgrade will add that functionality. Also while we can and do run an XP VM on our mini, its fairly sluggish even with 2GB of RAM. The Pro is way more machine than Ill ever need, and even cut down to the single processor its still more than the Stock 3.06 iMac. Albeit only about $100 but that becomes >$300 when you look at the cost 2 X 2GB iMac RAM sticks vs 2 X 1GB MP RAM sticks at Crucial and bumping the MP GPU to 512 MB. Yes the GT is better than the GS and the MP is arguably more than $300 better than the iMac but if Im not going to push the box enough to notice the extra power of the MP its $300 wasted. (Plus I sold the better of my 2 monitors so I recouped another $300) Moreover owning the mini and comparing its power consumption to the AMD based, Linux, white box we use for a media server/ HTPC, Ive become convinced that Apples use of laptop hardware in desktops has merit beyond mere aesthetics. So iMac. In a perfect world I would have saved another $200 and gone with the 2.8 GHz processor, bumping the HD to 500GB and the GPU to the 8800 GS (I dont need it now, but if I do later I cant upgrade). Ive had some serious misgivings about the glossy monitor and the highly reflective glass it sits behind. I was set to buy an iMac back in Jan/Feb but spent a little time on one at the Apple store and just couldnt come to terms with the screen, but that was back when i still had a fully functioning computer. At any rate I decided the extra $200 would be worth it if I got the iMac home and just couldnt deal with the screen.
Its been a little over a week and Im really liking the iMac. In general this box kicks but. I still dont love the screen, but my office at home is in a daylight basement and is a bit of a cave, so the reflections arent as bad as they were in the Apple store. Ive also found that Im also able to focus away from them and get my eyes to pretty much ignore them. Im still trying to get used to the glossy screen for photo work, but Ive gotten decent enough results that I was willing to part with my 24 Dell. As much as I dont like the glossy screen for photo work, I love it for movies. The glossys fans are right it definitely does make images pop out of the screen. My other concern was that I would have trouble sitting in front of the screen for long periods of time. Ive done a couple of marathon sessions and have had no problems there either. I also dont have any bleeding issues and the gradient is so slight I have to look for it to see it. (i.e. I can only see it when I pull up a test page, dial down the brightness, and look for it). No dead or stuck pixels either.
The biggest pleasant surprise has been the speakers. While they are far from spectacular they are surprisingly adequate. My old box had a surround sound card hooked up t a ~$75 set of 5.1 speakers. While the stock speakers dont supply surround sound they do seem to a decent job of breaking up the sounds and bouncing them off the desk and around the room. For music they are the same if not better than my old set up. At some point Ill probably invest in a digital 5.1 speaker set, but the stock speakers are fine for now. The chicklet keyboard is also no where near as ergonomically bad as I thought from looking at it. I still may switch back to my M$ ergo board, but Ive done a couple of full work days from home and havent switched yet. My biggest gripe (aside from the glossy monitor behind glass), is the lack of USB/FW ports. Given that all add-ons have to be external there jut arent enough. Yes I know that there are hubs, but would it really kill Apple/the design to double them up with a second row?
The basic set-up was of course a breeze, but I had to laugh once I got beyond that. My biggest gripe with Linux has always been the users still have to spend way to much time hand editing configuration files and in the command line to get it set up. As soon as I needed to get a PHP/MySQL development environment set up what did I have to do? OK so I get that probably less than 1% of iMac owners would even want to do this let alone try (and it wasnt hard), but at the very least you should be able to set show hidden files (i.e. let me see the Unix file system outside of the command line) in Finder preferences as opposed to hacking the config file.
At this point Im pretty happy with my new toy, and as long as I dont run into any hardware issues Ill stay that way until its time to replace it.
First a little background: This box will get used in three main venues. Work (PHP/MySQL and Filemaker development), Play (Digital Darkroom), and Sloth (second TV and Movies (farther away from bedrooms)). I reserve the right to do a little gaming in the future (especially once the kids figure out that they dont have to get up at 6AM (particularly on weekends)). Life being what it is Ill also be running an XP and Linux VMs fairly frequently. Its probably also worth mentioning that Ive been using Apple computers since the Apple IIes in my Jr. Highs Computer lab. I owned a LC II in the 90s, and we currently use a CD mini for our family computer. In short Im no stranger to Apple, but my primary box has been running openSuse Linux and XP for the last 6 years so its been a while since Ive seriously used a Mac. the mini is still on Tiger so this is also my first serious time with Leopard.
Honestly the mini could handle everything except the gaming, but the GMA 950 leaves a lot to be desired and rules out the more GPU intensive photographic software (none of which I own or feel I need, but still Id like to have the option). More importantly Im hopelessly addicted to 2 screens, and I seriously doubt the long overdue, impending mini upgrade will add that functionality. Also while we can and do run an XP VM on our mini, its fairly sluggish even with 2GB of RAM. The Pro is way more machine than Ill ever need, and even cut down to the single processor its still more than the Stock 3.06 iMac. Albeit only about $100 but that becomes >$300 when you look at the cost 2 X 2GB iMac RAM sticks vs 2 X 1GB MP RAM sticks at Crucial and bumping the MP GPU to 512 MB. Yes the GT is better than the GS and the MP is arguably more than $300 better than the iMac but if Im not going to push the box enough to notice the extra power of the MP its $300 wasted. (Plus I sold the better of my 2 monitors so I recouped another $300) Moreover owning the mini and comparing its power consumption to the AMD based, Linux, white box we use for a media server/ HTPC, Ive become convinced that Apples use of laptop hardware in desktops has merit beyond mere aesthetics. So iMac. In a perfect world I would have saved another $200 and gone with the 2.8 GHz processor, bumping the HD to 500GB and the GPU to the 8800 GS (I dont need it now, but if I do later I cant upgrade). Ive had some serious misgivings about the glossy monitor and the highly reflective glass it sits behind. I was set to buy an iMac back in Jan/Feb but spent a little time on one at the Apple store and just couldnt come to terms with the screen, but that was back when i still had a fully functioning computer. At any rate I decided the extra $200 would be worth it if I got the iMac home and just couldnt deal with the screen.
Its been a little over a week and Im really liking the iMac. In general this box kicks but. I still dont love the screen, but my office at home is in a daylight basement and is a bit of a cave, so the reflections arent as bad as they were in the Apple store. Ive also found that Im also able to focus away from them and get my eyes to pretty much ignore them. Im still trying to get used to the glossy screen for photo work, but Ive gotten decent enough results that I was willing to part with my 24 Dell. As much as I dont like the glossy screen for photo work, I love it for movies. The glossys fans are right it definitely does make images pop out of the screen. My other concern was that I would have trouble sitting in front of the screen for long periods of time. Ive done a couple of marathon sessions and have had no problems there either. I also dont have any bleeding issues and the gradient is so slight I have to look for it to see it. (i.e. I can only see it when I pull up a test page, dial down the brightness, and look for it). No dead or stuck pixels either.
The biggest pleasant surprise has been the speakers. While they are far from spectacular they are surprisingly adequate. My old box had a surround sound card hooked up t a ~$75 set of 5.1 speakers. While the stock speakers dont supply surround sound they do seem to a decent job of breaking up the sounds and bouncing them off the desk and around the room. For music they are the same if not better than my old set up. At some point Ill probably invest in a digital 5.1 speaker set, but the stock speakers are fine for now. The chicklet keyboard is also no where near as ergonomically bad as I thought from looking at it. I still may switch back to my M$ ergo board, but Ive done a couple of full work days from home and havent switched yet. My biggest gripe (aside from the glossy monitor behind glass), is the lack of USB/FW ports. Given that all add-ons have to be external there jut arent enough. Yes I know that there are hubs, but would it really kill Apple/the design to double them up with a second row?
The basic set-up was of course a breeze, but I had to laugh once I got beyond that. My biggest gripe with Linux has always been the users still have to spend way to much time hand editing configuration files and in the command line to get it set up. As soon as I needed to get a PHP/MySQL development environment set up what did I have to do? OK so I get that probably less than 1% of iMac owners would even want to do this let alone try (and it wasnt hard), but at the very least you should be able to set show hidden files (i.e. let me see the Unix file system outside of the command line) in Finder preferences as opposed to hacking the config file.
At this point Im pretty happy with my new toy, and as long as I dont run into any hardware issues Ill stay that way until its time to replace it.
