iLove my iMac!
Written: Jul 12 '03 (Updated Jul 13 '03)
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Pros: Fantastic design, iPhoto, iDVD and iTunes are very powerful as included apps.
Cons: Functionality lags behind in some areas compared to Windows (WEP support, browsers, etc.)
The Bottom Line: The iMac is a beautiful, functional addition to our household. If you're looking for a powerful computer that lets you be creative, the iMac is it!
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| mrs-j's Full Review: Apple iMac G4 17 in. (M8935LL/A) Mac Desktop |
Introduction
When Apple introduced their revamped iMac with its slick base and highly-adjustable flat panel monitor, I was immediately entranced by the design. I started my long computer career on Apple Macintosh computers back in high school and though I later began working on Windows and Unix exclusively, I always had a soft spot for Macs.
The 15” flat panel LCD was nice, but I couldn’t rationalize trading in my 21” monitor and my PC, and all of the cables and cruft that accompanied it for an Apple iMac just yet. I did, however, begin saving for one. I couldn’t get the folks at the Apple store to confirm it, but I had a feeling they would introduce a 17” iMac soon enough. Hopefully around the time I accrued enough savings to buy one.
I wanted an iMac not just for the sleek, simple design, though admittedly that was a part of it. I knew that I would be getting married, and with the impending birth of my nieces and other big family events coming up, I wanted a computer that could manage and manipulate photos better than my current Windows box did. I especially liked the Apple’s new OS X platform, with its Unix underpinnings, and the iPhoto and iDVD applications.
Finally the day came, when they unveiled the 17” iMac. I purchased mine about two weeks after they started shipping and haven’t spent very much time on my old PC since.
Purchasing my iMac
I could order an iMac online, but once I had the money in my hot little hands I decided I wanted to take one home with me quicker than I could have one delivered. I went to my local Apple store one evening. Fortunately, it was pretty slow so I didn’t have to wait in line to be helped.
I ordered the 17” iMac at the counter, and I also ordered a memory upgrade to 512MB of RAM, from the standard 256MB of RAM. I have a wireless network at home, so I also had an Airport wireless card installed for an extra $100 into my new iMac.
The employee keyed in everything I wanted, swiped my credit card, and told me that it would be about 45 minutes for them to assemble and custom configure my new iMac. I wandered around the mall for 45 minutes and then went around back to their loading dock, following the employee’s instructions to pick up my computer.
I rang the back doorbell under the harsh streetlamp and the door opened to reveal a guy in a black t-shirt and jeans with a big white apple on his shirt. I handed him my order pamphlet and he disappeared. I fidgeted awhile, looking at all the shadows along the alley, thinking that this was much different from the brightly lit store.
Finally the employee showed back up with my very large iMac box and a shopping bag containing the boxes that once held my memory upgrade and Airport wireless card. I threw everything in the back of my car and headed home.
Setup and Installation
Setting up the iMac is insanely easy. There is one poster-sized sheet of paper included that has setup instructions. There are no words on the setup sheet, just pictures. Each picture depicted very, very obvious steps such as plugging in the power cord, hooking up the keyboard and mouse and then using your finger to hit the power button and turn it on.
I’m all for Idiot Proofing instructions but this was ridiculous! I had a good laugh over the instructions and then proceeded to unpack the rest of my iMac.
The iMac is packed very sturdily among custom-fitted styrofoam pieces. It’s a good idea to save these pieces as they cradle the iMac’s arm and display nicely if you ever find yourself performing a user upgrade.
I had my iMac assembled inside of ten minutes, and powered it up to see what all the fuss was about.
Specifications
This iMac has the following specifications:
Removable Media: CD-RW/DVD-R
- Read Speed - 32x (CD) / 8x (DVD)
- Rewrite Speed - 8x
- Write Speed - 16x (CD) / 4x (DVD)
Hard Drive Capacity - 80 GB
Display - 17 in. Flat panel display
- Max display mode: 1440 x 900 pixels, millions of colors
- Dynamic switching between displays, between 800x600 (in regular and "stretched" mode) and 1440 x 900 is possible
Operating System - Apple MacOS X 10.2
Processor - PowerPC G4 1 GHz
Installed RAM - 256 MB (I upgraded to 512 MB)
Installed Video Memory - 64 MB
Bus Speed - 133 MHz
Networking - Fast Ethernet/Ethernet built in (I upgraded by adding an Airport wireless networking card)
Modem - 56k fax/modem
Warranty- 1 year warranty
Impressions
Setting up new user accounts was a breeze. And I was very impressed at the clarity of the flat panel display. I left my display at the max resolution of 1440 x 900 pixels and find it to be the clearest of all the options available. I purchased a small desk to replace my old, crumbling behemoth of a desk that was required to support my monstrous PC (which was now relegated to my husband’s office).
The first thing that had to go was the mouse. Apple is notorious for those single-button mouses of theirs and I’m a bit beyond pounding just one button like a monkey. I switched it out for my old Logitech MouseMan Wheel and was much happier. I downloaded the drivers and instantly found that the MouseMan had less functionality under OS X than it did under Windows. The thumb button could be used to perform only about half of the actions that it does in Windows. I use mine to minimize windows on my desktop, and was not able to set up that functionality under OS X.
Getting used to OSX was a challenge at first. Now I switch back and forth seamlessly from my Windows 2000 box at work, my Windows XP box in our home office and my Apple OS X environment in my office. I was immediately struck by how simple everything is in OS X. I would search high and low for some kind of function, only to realize that hitting the Apple key or the control key and clicking would give me the functionality I wanted.
The one thing that I was not pleased with was that my Airport card seemed not to work. My wireless network uses WEP Encryption, and the Airport card wasn’t able to authenticate onto my network, no matter what I tried. I tried coding the WEP password in hexadecimal, painstakingly typing it out. I tried it in plain text. I could get on my network when I disabled WEP across the network, so I knew the Airport card was working. I just couldn’t authenticate to it.
I called Apple Support about the issue (see below for details on their support) and they couldn’t help me either. I resigned myself to having a non-working Airport card and plugged in my ethernet cable again. I figured it was probably a software issue and hoped that Apple might update their Airport software at some point to correct it.
Sure enough, about five months after I bought my computer, another Airport update came down from the Software Update menu. As I had done many times before, I downloaded the update, removed my Ethernet cable and started tinkering with Airport configuration settings to try to get it to authenticate with my network. Sure enough, I had success! Now my iMac is hooked into my wireless network without any problems.
Applications
One of the strengths of the Apple OS X platform is all of the applications that come standard with the operating system. The three that I use the most are iDVD, iTunes and iPhoto. All of the applications that come with OS X are well-integrated. For instance, you can use music that you have inside of iTunes to provide the background music for your iDVD slideshow.
iDVD 3
Using the iDVD 3 application, you can create home movies and slideshows. The interface is intuitive and you can create DVDs with chapters, using themes that are included with iDVD. You can even create your own custom themes for your DVDs.
iTunes 4
I use iTunes to manage my MP3 collection. I can then burn CDs directly from iTunes, or I can transfer playlists to my MP3 player. With the advent of iTunes 4, users can now connect to Apple directly to purchase music for around 99 cents a song. Be aware, however, that this music is downloaded in a different format from MP3. It will play on your iMac, and on your Apple iPod player, but would not play on my MP3 player, and also would not burn properly to a standard audio CD for me.
iPhoto 2
This is the application that gets the most use on my computer. I have several thousand digital photos stored in libraries within iPhoto. Using keywords, I can manage them easily. I can also create web pages quickly within iPhoto, create Apple linen hardcover photo albums by uploading my photos to Apple, and I can even order photos from Kodak using iPhoto, though more often I just print them directly to my photo printer.
Other Included Software
The iMac also comes bundled with these applications:
- iMovie, for putting together your own home movies
- iCal, a calendar function
- iChat, which integrates with AOL's IM service seamlessly
- Mac OS X Mail, a mail utility
- Quicken 2003 Deluxe
I haven't really used iMovie extensively, as I don't have a digital video camera. I'm much more into still photography. iCal works well, and I found that iChat was actually more fun to use than AIM for Windows because of the voice functionality - you can have the Mac talk to you when someone logs in or out or sends you a message. (For grins I set it to have the female computer voice yell, "Hey you come here!" every time someone sent me an initial IM.)
I also use Quicken 2003 Deluxe to manage my personal Quicken accounts. It imported the data from my Windows version of Quicken 2002 with no trouble.
Really, the only disappointment with the included software was Mac OS X Mail, which I found to be barely functional for my needs. When I purchased a copy of Microsoft Office X, I began using Entourage as my mail application and haven't looked back.
User Support
I called up AppleCare, Apple’s support line when I had issues with the Airport card. They provide 90 days of complimentary phone support for your computer. I reached a customer care representative quickly and he was very proficient and knowledgeable about the iMacs and OS X. He walked me through some configuration settings, but in the end was stumped with why my Airport card would not authenticate on my LinkSys wireless network. He filed a trouble report on it but told me he couldn’t do much besides that.
While we were on the phone he did assist me with a few other questions and give me some tips to help me get more acclimated to OS X. And he tried to sell me on purchasing the extended AppleCare Protection Plan (for $169) that would extend my customer support for up to three years on my iMac. I declined. I haven’t had to use Apple support since that time.
Warranty Details
Apple warranties their iMac hardware for one year against defects in materials and workmanship. You have to deliver your product to an Apple Authorized Service Provider at your expense in order to have warranty repair done.
All of Apple’s service and customer policies can be found at their website at this link:
http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/salespolicies.html
What I Love Most
I love the seamless way the iMac integrates into my office environment. I love that it fits on a small desk and is unobtrusive. When we give people tours of our home, the iMac is something they always stop and look at.
I love having multiple user accounts (something that I couldn’t set up with Windows 98, the OS on my PC before I bought my iMac – now you can have multiple accounts under Windows XP). I love the docking bar at the bottom of the screen, and I love that Apple seems to continually be upgrading their software. Software Update doesn’t just download security patches, etc., it also downloads new functionality and new products such as Safari, Apple’s new web browser.
Basically, I get the feeling with Windows that there’s no real development going on for new and unique products that I can use and download as a part of just being a Windows user. I feel like the Apple team is much more active with their development and software updates.
I love having a Unix environment at my fingertips, for developing or just playing around with code. I love being able to compile Unix programs in the environment. And I love the filesystem in general, because it’s very intuitive to me since I spent many years working under Unix.
Most of all, I love what my iMac has enabled me to do with my photos. I’ve created archival quality photo albums and purchased them using iPhoto. I’ve also created DVDs using pictures from our wedding, and set them to music. Because I had the iMac, and a professional wedding photographer who gave me high resolution digital copies of all of my professional wedding photos, I’ve been able to share our wedding photos with my family and with our extended family who couldn’t make it to the wedding.
The iMac was worth it to me when my father and mother called me the night they got my DVD in the mail. My mom was choked up and my dad himself was near tears after watching our wedding and honeymoon slide show, to sentimental music. My dad said that was the best gift I’d ever given him, and I was able to do it thanks to my iMac.
The iMac is still giving me great things to do. For my nieces first birthday I put together an “Our First Year” DVD photo album for them, set to music. And I plan on doing it for every year as they grow up, just adding chapters to the DVD so that they can select any year of their life and see a slideshow on their television.
Drawbacks
The Apple iMac isn’t a perfect machine. Mine has crashed – this, in spite of what some Apple enthusiasts will tell you. I haven’t yet traced the root cause of the crashes, but they happen about once a month and aren’t highly disastrous at this point. I just come in and find that my Mac, while still on, won’t power up the screen when I move the mouse or hit the keyboard. A hard reboot is required to get everything going again.
Many software programs aren’t written with OS X as their primary environment, so sometimes they don’t work as well as they might in a Windows environment. I still haven’t found a tabbed browser that I like as good as my tabbed Windows browser. Safari, Apple’s “tabbed” browser, is a little too half-baked for my tastes.
But I’ll take my iMac for good or for bad and I’ll continue to enjoy using it. I have archived several thousand digital photos and using shareware and freeware, I’ve even added to iPhoto’s capabilities, creating separate iPhoto instances for each major event I’ve photographed in order to keep everything running fast and smoothly.
Summary
The iMac has done for me exactly what I needed it to do and it continues to perform well. I love using it to give “digital gifts” of photo albums and DVDs to family and friends. If you want a great OS and a lot of flexibility to play with it, the iMac may be for you.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2199
Operating System: Macintosh
Processor speed: over 1000
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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mrs-j
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