First Impressions of Intel iMac Core Duo

[Gee4orce]

I know I'm preaching to the choir here, as some of you have already received your iMacs, but I had a chance to use one of them yesterday. I was underwhelmed, but in a good way - it was a Mac, and felt like a Mac. If someone had hacked the 'About this Mac' box to say 'G5' instead of Inte Core Duo, I wouldn't have been able to tell.

As far as speed goes - well, I run a Dual 1.8 G5 at home, and initial impressions were that the 2.0 GHz iMac felt as fast or faster. Certainly, I've never seen window resizing this smooth on Mac OS X before - it's even better than Windows PC's I've used. That's a far cry from the embarassing state of affairs from a couple of years ago when you had a 1/2 a second lag when resizing a window !

Beyond that, I didn't really get a chance to push the machine. Safari felt plenty fast, but I think the bottleneck was definitely the network connection, not the application or hardware. MS Word opened as quickly (quicker in fact) than on my home machine, and felt perfectly useable.

I'm thinking that the reason the iMac were update so soon after the recent refresh is that the performance is pretty much on a par with the old ones, except graphics performance which is leaps and bounds ahead (I wouldn't argue with the 2x faster claim there). It's pretty much a straight switch from the G5 to the Core Duo - for the same money you get a much more future proof machine, and a real but modest improvement in performance.

 

[skunkworks]

Hands down there's no question that the 17 inch model is a good deal while the 20" I feel is overpriced when you put in the extra memory and options.

The most important aspect of this whole thing to me is adobe. I really don't think adobe will be out with universal apps till end of year, Why? These new machines are for consumers and not pros, adobe caters mostly to pros so there is not incentive yet to switch, not to mention apple is treading in adobe's water with aperture. Secondly, still a lot of work to be done with software especially the fact that autodesk hasn't announced any universal libraries as well. Having said all of this I think the best 'deal' is the powerbook, having two cpus has got to rock!

 

[robg3176]

Why would hard drives spin continously when the computer's not being actively used?

Most modern OSs default to putting the drive to sleep after XX minutes of inactivity, no?

You are correct, and I have energy saver put mine to sleep after running processes if I have to be away for awhile or asleep. It's a statement, not literally. Yet some people do have to have their computers on constantly whether sharing or server.

My point is just that more usage 'may decrease' lifespan. Agreed that today most hardware is rock solid.

No problems against people running their computer 24 hours a day, except some do not utilize energy saver/sleep and consume more unecessary wattage while utilities usage goes up.

By the way, my old Digital Audio hard drive is still running 6 years strong in my brother's possesion. Knock on wood. My PC hard drive died after 4 years of hard usage, and attacks . That's why my PC is temporarily sedentary; and why I'm humming along with my g5 and 10.4.4.

Good Day.

 

[johnnybluejeans]

Have you noticed how much Rosetta is using?

Here is the best example I can come up with. I ran DeerPark (the Universal Binary beta version of Firefox 1.5) and then I ran Firefox for PPC:

Directly after launch, here are the memory usage stats from Activity Monitor:

Firefox (PPC) -- Real Mem: 59.71MB Virt Mem: 416.71MB
Deerpark (Intel) -- Real Mem: 32.51MB Virt Mem: 239.66MB

As you can see, the Universal binary uses just about half the memory as a PPC app because of Rosetta.

Photoshop really eats up memory. Photoshop 7 with 4 1.2Mb images open was using about 170Mb of Real Memory and over 700Mb of Virtual Memory.

 

[Peace]

The Rosetta "app" ( which it really isn't.More of a framework kinda sorta )under Intel OS X is called oach I think.Or something to that effect..You can see it in Activity Monitor on the new Intel Macs.

 

[BigHat]

cnx'd

 

[BigHat]

I expect I won't be the only person to receive the following e-mail from the Apple Store, which just arrived:

* * *

We appreciate your recent purchase through the online Apple Store.

The following is an update regarding the status of your order
W186xxxxx.

Due to an unexpected delay, we were unable to ship your product(s) by
the date originally quoted to you. We now anticipate shipping the
following item(s) as follows:

Z0CY, IMAC 20/2.0/SD CTO
will now ship by Jan 25, 2006
and deliver by Jan 30, 2006

We regret any inconvenience this delay may cause.

A shipment notification, with tracking information, will be emailed to
you as soon as your order is shipped. You may check the status
of your order any time by visiting our online order status website
at http://www.apple.com/orderstatus.

If you prefer, you may change or cancel your order anytime before it
is shipped. If you choose to cancel your order, Apple will issue a
prompt refund.

We are happy to answer questions or provide further status regarding
your order. You may reach us by calling 1-800-676-2775 ext-55150,
Mon-Fri 8am-6pm (Central).

If we do not hear from you, we will continue processing your order.

We appreciate your business and your patience. Thank you for shopping
at the Apple Store!

* * *

I had placed my order (iMac Core Duo 2.0, 1G RAM) an hour after the keynote on Jan. 10. Original shipping date had been Jan. 18.

Be glad you didn't order the 500GB option. 4 week delay. 15 Feb delivery...for now. We'll see if I get a "love note" like yours as we get closer.

Anyone know what gives on the 500GB HDs? Didn't think they were anything special.

 

[Photorun]

The most important aspect of this whole thing to me is adobe. I really don't think adobe will be out with universal apps till end of year, Why? These new machines are for consumers and not pros, adobe caters mostly to pros so there is not incentive yet to switch, not to mention apple is treading in adobe's water with aperture. Secondly, still a lot of work to be done with software especially the fact that autodesk hasn't announced any universal libraries as well. Having said all of this I think the best 'deal' is the powerbook, having two cpus has got to rock!

As an ex-Adobe employee very much still in their beta program with engineering peeps on Adobe's inside you'll be happy to know you're quite wrong, the next version of CS will have a simultaneous release for OS X and Windoze and it's due tentatively by 4Q 2006... this year.

What they may not be, however, is coded very well, then again, many people grouse that Adobe hasn't been coding it's software well for years.

PS Even with some Adobe loyalty I'm getting kinda tired of how fast Adobe's upgrade cycles are but CS3 for those with Intel Macs will wind up most likely being a must, unless you're willing to deal with the Rosetta hit.