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21.5-inch iMac review
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
‘Bottom rung’ on the Apple iMac ladder has come a long way. It’s pretty high off the ground by late 2009. There’s nothing this thing can’t seem to handle.
Some photographers dislike this shiny screen, and after three weeks or so, much as I love the crisp sharpness, there were times when I found myself trying to cut down reflections by dimming the lights or changing the angle of view. When reflections weren’t a problem (this screen is very bright in its own right), I loved every crisp pixel of the 2,052,000 on offer (at 1920x1080 resolution).
To look at, there’s much less frame below the monitor, giving this much more pleasing proportions and making it look more like ‘just a monitor’ than a complete computer than ever before. And like an attractive monitor, at that, with the distinctive side-to-side glass including about an inch of black surround. With its all-aluminium body, it’s a little heavier than the previous aluminium-front, black plastic-backed model.
But this all-aluminium construction results in green benefits – the new iMac has Arsenic-free display glass, it’s BFR-free, PVC-free, the aluminium and glass enclosures are recyclable and a s a consumer, it meets ENERGY STAR 5.0 requirements. Overall, Apple’s latest is rated with EPEAT Gold status in the US, Canada, France, Germany and the UK.
New keyboardThe keyboard is little, with no numeric keypad. It is aluminium on top and shiny plastic underneath, with the same easy-clean (and easy to keep clean) design as the last couple of generations of flat-tops, which are much more like MacBook keyboards in look and feel. The keys are low-profile slightly matte-finish white plastic. Like MacBook (and MB Pro) keyboards, there’s a Function (fn) key at lower left which you depress to access extra functions of the top row of so-called F keys.
The little, cable-free fits easily on even small desks, and is easy to put aside should you need some desk space for anything else. Connecting via Bluetooth, the new keyboard can be used with any Bluetooth equipped Mac running OS 10.5.8+, if you part with NZ$119. You will need to find the correct software update to install, of course.
The keyboard requires two AA batteries which fit under a coin-rotated cover at top left of the keyboard. The battery compartment is an integral part of the rolled-over rounded rear edge of the keyboard itself, which serves to both strengthen and angle the top plane of the keyboard slightly upwards.
On the right, opposite the battery compartment and in the corresponding place, is a button that, pressed, turns on a tiny green light I didn’t even notice until it lit up. This turns on and ‘connects’ the keyboard to your Mac.If you hold it in for a few seconds, it powers down and turns off (a semi-transparent dialogue turns up on your monitor to tell you so).
It’s not exactly ergonomic, as keyboards go, but it’s comfortable enough, especially if you have a padded wrist rest in front of it. But it’s very handy in its minimalist way. It actually speeds up my typing, probably because the keys are almost flush. You certainly don’t need to bash ’em.
You will need the correct driver for this keyboard if you buy it as an accessory – look for it at http://support.apple.com/en_US/downloads/.
But finally, I must say I prefer the wired version with the built-in numeric keypad and no battery to ever change. This is only NZ$79 but, since the numerals coincide with the Apple Calculator’s layout, it’s perfect for doing my books.
The new Magic MouseThe Magic Mouse is beautiful. It fits the hand very well and feels solid enough for luxury, while being light enough for comfortable mousing.
The Apple logo goes to the palm of your hand, since there’s no obvious rear-front shape to help you orientate the mouse. The base is in aluminium-look plastic, but the top is a curved and gloss-white. Underneath is a power switch and the metallic plastic plate between the two plastic glide-strips pops off when you apply fingernail pressure to the catch to reveal two AA batteries.
Straight away, I just tried to use it like an ordinary mouse and sure enough, that mostly works.
A swipe where a scroll-wheel should be scrolls vertically, except it feels nicer on your finger than a wheel or Apple’s Mighty Mouse scroller-nub. This rather negates the point of two-finger swiping to achieve the same result, since I hold the mouse stationary with my thumb and little finger. Besides, a one-finger side-swipe also scrolls side to side – much easier than the also-available two-finger side-swipe to accomplish the same thing.
A new-look System Preferences>Mouse pane lets you configure it. I found tracking a bit slow, compared to most mice, and had to put it on the fastest to get the kind of speeds I’m used to. I normally have this set at about two-thirds speed for other mice. You can add ‘momentum’ to the scrolling action if you wish, which works a bit the grabber-hand whizz-slide you get when navigating around inside zoomed-in images in Photoshop CS4 using OpenGL.
You will need ‘Mac OS X v10.5.8 or later with Wireless Mouse Software Update 1.0’ to be able to use this mouse with an older Mac, by the way.
Left-handers like myself can also switch the clicks - this might suit new users but older users who are left-handed will be used to the way the buttons work by default.
In fact, the Magic Mouse lets you make circles on the top with a finger to sweep around in circles on a zoomed-in document.
The left- and right-clicks felt natural and performed as expected. The real test will be playing something like Call of Duty 4, but without being able to press the scroll-wheel to lob a grenade, I can see myself swapping back to my trusty old wired Microsoft laptop mouse.
After a day’s work, the battery level indicator was down to 92 per cent. A sticking point may be that the Magic Mouse is said to chew through two AA batteries every hundred hours or so.
Some may also miss the same functionality to launch Exposé with those squeezy side-buttons I always turned off, although I doubt anyone will miss the weird and silly extra side buttons you had to squeeze on the Mighty Mouse. (Most turned these off. I certainly did.)
However, in normal daily use, this mouse is a delight to use and I didn’t find it tiring at all.
The iMac
And what about the iMac itself? Under the hood this baseline iMac has a 7200rpm 500GB hard drive and a 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 9400 video card.
Bluetooth 2.2.3f8 and wireless 802.11 a/b/g/n are built-in, and on the back there’s one FireWire 800 port, 4 USB2 ports and a video-out port for an additional monitor and Ethernet.
The display is bright and crisp and viewable from all sorts of angles thanks to technology called ‘in-plane switching’. This seems very effective. I loved this glossy screen for Photoshop work.
The built-in speakers sound a lot fuller than the older models’. I’m not sure what they are, exactly, but they are each driven by their own internal 17-watt amplifier. I found myself listening to iTunes for hours with these, no problem, whereas on previous models I always pretty quickly plugged in headphones or ran it through my stereo for listenable sound quality.
Speed-wise, the 13-inch MacBook Pro I tested a few weeks prior clocked 2879 in a one-CPU render, 5489 in a two-CPU render and 4661 in Open GL.
This iMac’s figures were: 3474 in a one-CPU render, 6390 in a two-CPU render (a multi-processor advantage of 1.84 %). The figure for OpenGL was 4913. BareFeats now has some comparo figures posted. I note, on this machine, that Photoshop CS4 loads in just five seconds.
One downside, you might imagine, is the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics processor as it ‘shares’ (should that be ‘steals’?) 256MB of RAM from the 4GB DDR3 SDRAM main memory. This might explain why I couldn’t comfortably go full tilt with all graphics settings maxed in Call of Duty 4, but it was fine for everything else. If you specify the version with an ATI Radeon HD 4670 graphics processor, it has its own 256MB of GDDR3 memory to draw on, leaving your 4GBs of RAM purely for CPU use.
Despite that, this iMac simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to a 30-inch display (2560 by 1600 pixels) on an external display like Apple’s Cinema.
Conclusion: this 21.5-inch iMac represents great value for Apple fans. It’s a significant leap in specs for something that’ll handle almost anything you throw at it.
What's Great elegance, speed and power for under NZ$2000, great bundled software, Snow Leopard included
What's Not the screen picks up reflections like it picks up fingermarks
Needs a nice soft cloth for constant buffing ... and it's included in the box!
$1999 for the 21.5-inch base model as reviewed ($2499 for 21.5-inch with ATI Radeon HD 4670; $2899 for 27-inch with 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and ATI Radeon HD 4670, $3399 for 2.66GHz Intel Core i5 27-inch or $3789
2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 version).
Special Deals: It's the after Thanksgiving sale, a traditional US retail event, on Friday 27th November. No promises, but it may be worth waiting till Friday 27th November and checking in the NZ Apple Store (online) on that day in case there are any iMac (and other Apple) discounts.
System ships with Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard including iTunes, Time Machine, Quick Look, Spaces, Spotlight, Dashboard, Mail, iChat, Safari, Address Book, QuickTime, iCal, DVD Player, Photo Booth, Front Row, Xcode Developer Tools, plus iLife (iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb and GarageBand).
