leyton.org

Wow.

This is a seriously nice piece of kit. But you probably expected me to say that, given what I’ve written before about the G5 iMac.

But please try and bear with me. There are some stunning features in the new iMac G5 that make this one of the best computer experiences I’ve had. Initial impressions

The box is heavy. Somehow - bizarrely - I expected it to be quite a lot lighter than it actually is. Frances refused to lift it at all when it arrived. But there’s a lot of kit packed into what looks ‘just’ like a flat-screen monitor. A 20″ one at that.

Everything was well laid out, even when unpacking it. The first thing that you see are the batteries. Batteries? Bluetooth keyboard + mouse - without wires, you need some sort of power source, and keystroke-power is an as yet untapped (aha!) resource. The wires? Is that a plural I just used? Well, yes. They thoughtfully included a modem cable too.

Unpack the mouse and keyboard from it’s wrapping, plug in the batteries (four for the keyboard; two for the mouse), and lift out a couple of CD’s and docs. Pull off the polystyrene lid, and lift out the iMac. It’s already attached to it’s stand, which was a bit of a surprise (and relief). Plug it into the power, and switch it on.

Done. The system boots straight up (once I’d worked out the power button was at the rear) - no need for installation CD’s - and it smoothly searches for the keyboard and mouse, which are paired up after an easy confirmation phrase is displayed to be entered.

The only minor glitch - and I suspect this may be the case in any OS X install - it did seem to want to connect up to Apple before I had had a chance to enable the wireless network.

Surprises

Sound is one of the most impressive aspects. It’s got speakers mounted under the display, so you don’t see them on the front. The sound is reflected off of the desk surface, and the quality is simply superb. I’m no audiophile, but it’s very crisp and clear.

The display itself - which makes up most of what is the G5 iMac - is lovely and crisp. I use two 17″ Samsung LCD’s at work, and the Apple display looks decidedly sharper. Certainly the 20″ size makes this the widest display I’ve ever had, and it’s remarkably easy to find yourself running two windows in view - BBC news on one side, and e-mail composition on the other.

I like the Apple keyboard a lot, although the solid and pre-angled base is possibly new (I don’t think it features on the dome iMacs) means that there is no way to adjust the height of the keyboard. Not in itself a problem, I’d just like to choice.

The mouse sits to the keyboards right, minding it’s own business. Frances was quick to point out that the biggest problem is “you’ll loose it”, which is possibly true: I don’t exactly keep a tidy desk policy, so the mouse getting buried and lost is a distinct policy. In the past I’ve always been able to follow the cable back from the computer to locate the beast. No more. At least until directional blue-tooth sensors are available!

The need for speed

The G5 iMac packs (in my case) a 1.8Ghz G5 PowerPC chip. It has 512Mb of RAM (and will get another 1Gb in due course: Apple supplied RAM was just too expensive to be a realistic option). It really doesn’t have any trouble processing the sort of work I throw at it. A good example is that of importing a DVD (for backup purposes: I have to at least make an attempt to fill this 160Gb hard disk!), it takes about 2.5-3 hours (using Handbrake). Pretty wizzy in my view (given my 850Mhz G4 Powerbook struggled to do anything like this in less than 8 hours).

Of course, most of the CPU power is wasted on a user like me. I don’t edit movies, I don’t produce high-resolution graphics, but I do want and need a responsive system. This sort of power, with this sort of RAM, and today’s memory-intensive operating system and applications, gives me a delightfully responsive experience. I can run pretty much everything I’m likely to need, and expect it to get things done without the spinning beach-ball of death.

Other uses

A 20″ LCD monitor like this makes it almost as big as my main wide-screen TV, so it’s most likely I’ll be making use of the Mac to watch the odd film or program that I can’t watch on the main system. It’s been commented elsewhere that the lack of a TV-tuner add-in for the iMac means the iMac can’t take over in the living room.

Until there’s a freeview USB TV Tuner, I suppose I’ll just have to make do with uknova…

Update 7/Feb/05: Check out my Elgato EyeTV review, which does just that!

What’s not to like?

There’s not much to be honest. What can you - honestly - aesthetically hate about an LCD screen, a keyboard and a mouse? Perhaps the 3″ of white space at the base filled with a grey apple Logo? Perhaps, but without that you’d see the stand (and singular cable).

It’s dimensions? It’s a couple of inches thick, perhaps larger than people expect. But, well, as adam put it, they “do have to put the gubbins somewhere :)”. Indeed.

Still undecided about the noise. It’s very quiet. Quieter than most other computers I’ve used. The test is whether I’ll be allowed to leave it on overnight… But then there is always the pulsing white light to deal with…

Probably the only serious negative is that the shipment process got screwed up in my case. My order tracking was broken from the outset, and when the box finally showed up, it was an address of “Richard Leyton, Mosspark, Glasgow”. They’d somehow not included my street and building number. Go figure. It’s there on my invoice. Just not on the packaging. Handy.

Oh, and Apple would have got more marks if they’d shipped a firewire connector cable. I’d have saved a lot of time if I had realised I could plug my old powerbook up and migrate accounts across. Would have saved all that messing about with samba mounts and tarballs… Or should I have just worked that out myself… sigh Sometimes Macs are too easy.

So, what’s not to like? Really not very much. It is “just” a screen, keyboard, mouse and (savour this) a single cable, but with lots of Apple’s design expertise to make you realise, from the moment you open the box, that you’re using something much more special than just a few pieces of plastic and metal.

In summary

It’s got everything I wanted:

In a word: It’s everything I’d hoped for, plus some.