My latest Mac is an iMac. It replaces my 6-year-old PowerMac, as well as the 10-year-old, original Apple Cinema Display. Yes, I’m very pleased.
I bought the Cinema Display back in 1999. Apple had just announced the G4 “graphite” PowerMac along with the then-stunning 21-inch Cinema, all-digital LCD display. It was one of the first widescreen LCDs ever.
Back then, that monitor cost me over $2,000. Still, it was impressive.
If I recall, the PowerMac cost about the same. Anyway, I needed the system as a tool for doing graphics and web design. That system worked well, until I replaced it in 2004 with a G5 PowerMac.
Originally I was going to replace the G5 last year, in August. But I had the misfortune to read the MacRumors web site, which claimed that a new Mac Pro (the PowerMac’s replacement) would be coming any month now. So I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
By the way, in my Buying A Computer For Dummies book, I remind readers not to wait for new technology. But the more I waited for the new MacPro to come out, the older the current model became. Apple didn’t lower the price, and I’m stubborn enough not to pay a two-year-old price for two-year-old technology. So I waited some more.
Eventually they announced the new MacPros (now on sale), but the price didn’t drop, and what you get for the price isn’t worth the mark-up. So I opted instead for a high-end iMac to replace my 6-year-old PowerMac.
Here’s what I got:
27″ iMac, Intel Core i7 processor zooming along at 2.93 GHz.
8 GB RAM
1 TB hard drive (the spinny kind, not an SDD)
I opted for the wireless keyboard, even though it’s lacking a numeric keypad. I miss the numeric keypad, so I may end up ordering the full-sized keyboard. Still, I like the dearth of wires.
I also ordered the Magic Touchpad, which I’m enjoying much more than a mouse.
The iMac is gorgeous, of course.
The migration process involved my restoring the original files and programs from a Time Machine backup. That worked well for the most part; I would say 95 precent of my settings were copied over. There were only a few items I needed to adjust after the update.
I did have to re-register my copy of Final Cut Express with Apple. That was painless.
Adobe’s stuff caused problems, but eventually their tech support pulled through and I was able to get things to run.
Copy-protected software. Don’t get me started . . .
Anyway, I’m happy with the new beast. I’m adjusting well to the Magic Trackpad, but the 2560-by-1440 screen resolution is huge. That’s a lot of pixel real estate to fling a mouse pointer through. I think I’ll learn to adjust.
So you have a laptop keyboard and aluminum slate mouse?
I’m not really sure what to think about OS X. I have an old G3 with 10.4 on it, it’s alright.
The issue I see most is security. The Mac was the first to be hacked in the pwn2own contest. Apparently Apple also used a vulnerable version of Flash in some OS X update, maybe to force it on the Mac users that “FLASH IS BAD, HTML5 IS TOP TIER”?
Another thing: When a Mac with OS X on it crashes, you get “You need to restart your computer.”
If Windows crashes, you get “*** STOP: Hexadecimal codes here” making the problem easy to look up.
Just enjoy your new Mac and install Boot Camp on it 😛
Comment by linuxlove — August 11, 2010 @ 5:51 am
I’ve never had an OS X Mac utterly crash on me. The old PowerMac would freeze when it got too hot in the office, or when I let the computer run for more than 24 days, but that was toward the end of its life cycle. I expect that kind of behavior from an older computer.
Safari still crashes on the iMac when I exit GoDaddy. Last night Word 2008 crashed when I pasted in some info from a web page. So the Mac isn’t perfect, but I was able to deal with both crashes without restarting the system.
With the percentage of Macs on college campuses nearing the 50% mark, my bet is that you’ll see a lot more Mac malware. It’s human engineering that gets the bad software on the machine, though you’re correct that OS X does have its vulnerabilities just like every other OS out there.
Comment by admin — August 11, 2010 @ 6:36 am
You should really buy Creative Suite 5, its a marvelous upgrade. Now you have a computer perfect for it. Wait never mind, I think I see Dreamweaver and InDesign on the dock there. And Photoshop and Illustrator correct?
Comment by gamerguy473 — August 11, 2010 @ 8:49 am
Yep. CS5 was the first software upgrade I purchased for the new machine — and a big motivation to update to the Intel platform Mac. I also plan on getting Office 2011 when it comes out later next month.
You’ll also see a terminal window on the screen, which I use quite a bit!
Comment by admin — August 11, 2010 @ 8:52 am
Your I MAC looks great I love the keyboards such a pleasure to use, it actually makes me spell better!
I can’t afford a MAC but I saw a program called parallels that lets you run XP inside OS X seamlessly it looked very impressive indeed, that would get round the whole compatibility issue for good.
Comment by chiefnoobie — August 17, 2010 @ 11:22 am
Thank you.
I’m not a big fan of the keyboard. I’d still like a numeric keypad, but they don’t make a wireless keyboard with numeric keypad. Still, there have only been a few times I’ve seriously missed the keypad.
Comment by admin — August 17, 2010 @ 11:28 am
I suppose you could commit sacrilege and just plug in a PC keyboard, not sure if a wireless one would work though, you are right the numeric keypad is useful especially if you do a lot of on line banking.
Comment by chiefnoobie — August 18, 2010 @ 6:27 am