iMac Impressions

[Martin]

iMac, Days 1 and 2

So, Tuesday after work Epson finally gave me money and I quickly spent it on a new iMac. 152,800 yen.

17" Monitor, 1.9GHz G5, 512MB ram (yuck, but like hell I'm buying Apple ram), 160GB HD, 128MB x600 pro, mighty mouse (yuck), Apple keyboard, built in iSight, Apple remote.

Unpacking it was a treat. I've got some pictures which I'll post later. Very cool. Speaking of which, I've also got a ton of pictures of Japan which I'll put up too.

Anyway, on to my impressions.

Out of the box
Setting this computer up was almost too easy. Take it out of the box, put it on the table, plug the cord in, plug the keyboard/mouse in, plug the modem in. Done. I was somewhat worried that the iMac only has 3 USB ports, but the keyboard has an additional 2, so it's fine.

The computer feels very solid. It also balances incredibly well, mostly due to the fact that the stand probably weighs as much as the rest of the computer. The same goes for the peripherals. Very solid and not cheap feeling at all. The remote just magnets onto the right side of the computer. Also very nifty.

Pressed the power button. Oddly, it's located on the back left of the computer. I think it'd be better on the front (maybe on the Apple logo?) but it's not a big deal.

I was greeted with a bell sound and a black screen ... for almost a minute. Then it took me through some stylish registration screens asking me who I was, where I was. It set up an account and my (50 mbps...cough...cough) ADSL connection and I then it loaded up OSX.

There was an intro video and it dropped me right into OSX.

The display
No dead pixels. Bright colours. Looks great. Can't complain. Not the highest resolution (a little less than that of a 17" LCD), but it's not bad. Widescreen. Excellent viewing angle.

OSX
So I started exploring. Fortunately, with the setup all of the language changes were made so I didn't have to worry about that. The interface is very intuitive. Some things I like a lot more than Windows, some stuff not so much, and most of it is just different.

Apple included some cool (albeit somewhat gimmicky) software to play with, such as Photo Booth. Although I can't claim to have much experience with web-cams, the iSight is really nice and viewing angle isn't a problem, at least for a single person sitting at the computer. I could see there being difficulties with more than 2 people, but I doubt that would really happen very much.

Some of the default settings were also kind of strange. The mighty mouse, for example, is initially set to one button mode (as in left and right click are the same). Also, Safari is initially set to have tabbed browsing and popup blocking disabled. Easy enough to change, but the mouse one took me a while to figure out (why can't I right click... on anything?!). I imagine the mouse thing is just for previous mac users, but I'm not sure about Safari. Again, not a big deal.

Ctrl and caps lock are switched positions. This might be a Japanese thing though.

I updated everything (took three restarts, you can never escape!). And all was good.

The dock is incredibly cool, although alone not nearly as useful as Windows' task-bar. Fortunately, for that they have Expose. Magnification was fun at first, but after a while it got annoying so I turned it back off.

And now we have Expose and the Dashboard. They get their own section.

Expose and Dashboard
I said that alone the dock isn't as useful as the Windows task-bar. Expose levels everything out.

F9 - F12 are special keys replacing alt tab in Windows.

F9 zooms out all of the open Windows so you can select and switch between them. The most useful of all of the keys I think.
F10 zooms out showing only open windows of the same type (such as MSN conversations, or open web pages.
F11 brings all of the windows to the side, showing your desktop.

Finally, F12 brings up the Dashboard. The Dashboard is a collection of widgets, such as a clock, calendar, calculator, translator, etc. There are tons to download off of Apple's site. I haven't used it that much, but it's still cool.

Pressing any of the keys again brings things back to normal. Incredibly useful, and just really cool to look at.

Finder
Here's where I was very disappointed. I really can't say that I like the Finder at all. Here's why.
1. Doesn't show paths. I really have no idea where my files are on the computer.
2. Doesn't show image previews. Again, very annoying. Come on Apple, get up to speed.

It looks fine and works fine, but it's not nearly powerful enough.

Front Row
Front Row is cool and gimmicky. You press the menu button and the screen zooms out in a very stylish transition and you're given the choice of DVD's, movies, music and pictures. Selecting one you're thrown into an iPod like menu where you can navigate. It can be kind of clumsy, but it works. There's a movie trailers section where you can stream movie trailers.

There are a lot of issues with it though. First, navigation is very clumsy, and you have to move back and forth between menus too much I think. Secondly, fast forwarding through a movie goes at an incredible 1.5x speed, which is useless. Pressing the menu button stops instead of pauses the movie.

All and all, Front Row is a far cry from Windows Media Center.

Strangeness
For all its cool, there have been some quirks, mostly involving the dock. The dock half-locked up on me once, and had to be restarted. Another time it didn't show that one of my applications was open. I'll go more into this later.

Also, home and end apparently don't go to the beginning and end of a line in a text file. Not sure what the Apple equivalent is.

Conclusions
I've had it for two days. Don't take this too seriously. I'll add to it. Stay tuned.

So far I'm very impressed. I do need to replace this stupid mighty mouse though.

As a side note, I don't see this being the Windows killer that a lot of people seem to think. It's great, but nothing that can't be caught up to.

[Naveg]

Martin wrote:

Finder
Here's where I was very disappointed. I really can't say that I like the Finder at all. Here's why.
1. Doesn't show paths. I really have no idea where my files are on the computer.
2. Doesn't show image previews. Again, very annoying. Come on Apple, get up to speed.

Use column view

[rizzix]

Martin wrote:

Finder
Here's where I was very disappointed. I really can't say that I like the Finder at all. Here's why.
1. Doesn't show paths. I really have no idea where my files are on the computer.
2. Doesn't show image previews. Again, very annoying. Come on Apple, get up to speed.

It looks fine and works fine, but it's not nearly powerful enough.

Well first of all.. that image previews thing is present.. u need to turn it on.. here's how: In the finder.. got to View -> View Options.. check the "Show icon preview"

Second.. yes it does not show paths (by default anyways,, there could be some internal setting though) but Cmd+Click the title of any finder window gives u the entire tree to the current folder as a drop-down-list.
(this feature is actually present in most application.. not just in the Finder.. like i know for sure M$ Word does support it.. Safari too.. quite a few actually hmm.)

[wtd]

A Dock tip that might make you appreciate it more:

Drag a folder into the Dock. Now, when you right-click on it, you'll get a menu showing it's contents. Since most folders have the same ion, and the Dock doesn't show names except on mouse over, select the icon of the folder you're placing into the Dock, then File -> Get Info (if memory serves) and you can select the old icon and paste a new one on top of it.

Oh, and use the Services menu. It contains things like the summarize function that automatically creates a summary for a piece of text, or a function which can take a bit of highlighted text, run it as a shell command, and insert the returned text in it's place.

Imagine you're e-mailing to a friend and want to give them a list of files involved in a project. Just type "ls yada", select it, run that service, and it's done.

[Martin]

Switched my processor speed from 'automatic' to 'highest' and everything runs at a decent speed now. Temperature is good too.

[goomba]

Quote:

F9 - F12 are special keys replacing alt tab in Windows.

Exposé does not replace alt-tab. OS X has cmd-tab which works very similar to the one in Windows, but it supports keyboard shortcuts - so you can cmd-tab through your open apps and press 'Q' to close them without leaving the cmd-tab window.

You can also map Dashboard/Exposé to any keys or mouse buttons, or even the corners of the screen. I have 'Show all Windows' to activate when I drag my mouse into the bottom right corner. It's much more natural than pecking for function keys. Check the Expose/Dashboard prefs.

Quote:

Here's where I was very disappointed. I really can't say that I like the Finder at all. Here's why.
1. Doesn't show paths. I really have no idea where my files are on the computer.
2. Doesn't show image previews. Again, very annoying. Come on Apple, get up to speed.

I'm not one to stick up for Finder because I agree that it's not up to the quality of the rest of the OS. However column mode is a nice feature and lets you get image and movie previews. Spring loaded browsing is also a great feature that no other file manager has. (Try dragging and holding a file over the Macintosh HD icon or any folder, you can move files anywhere without letting go.)

Quote:

As a side note, I don't see this being the Windows killer that a lot of people seem to think. It's great, but nothing that can't be caught up to.

Sure, it can be caught up to, but nothing has so far. Also, there is so much more you can learn to be ultra-productive in OS X. It's an easy newbie OS, but there is a learning curve to use it effectively. Try learning the common keyboard shortcuts and using drag-and-drop when you normally wouldn't. You'll be surprised at how well it's implemented. Whenever I use Windows these days I get frustrated because I try to drag a seemingly relevant piece of data between 2 applications and nothing happens!

[Martin]

A quick evaluation of the iMac hardware

The iMac is beautiful. It balances as well (maybe even a bit better) as any LCD monitor and looks very sharp.

It feels solid and well made. There's no creaking when I push on it, and although it's not very heavy, it is very densely packed.

The screen has an excellent viewing angle, and can be adjusted in angle quite easily.

Some complaints -
The power button is in the back. It should be on the front. Same goes for the headphones jack.
The DVD drive doesn't have any indicaiton as to which way inserted dvd's should be facing (although it's easy to figure out).
The keyboard USB jacks are only USB 1.1, which means I can't charge my iPod shuffle with them. The back ones are fine for this though.