From the Houston Chronicle, April 27, 2002
By Dwight Silverman
WHEN Apple Computer's new iMac arrived at my home for review, I first set it up on the dining room table. One of my daughter's friends was the first to see it, and her reaction was telling.
"Wow, look!" she said. "It's the moving computer!"
That's a reference to the infectious TV ad that shows a man stopping in a window to admire the iMac, and the machine mimics his movements. My daughter's friend actually hoped that the iMac would play with her, too.
Indeed, "playful" is the perfect word to describe this computer's design. Apple's ad campaign captures its spirit beautifully. And design is the primary thing the new iMac has going for it.
Other computers do what the iMac does -- functionally, it performs in the same way as other Macintoshes and many Windows-based computers do. What makes this different is the way it physically engages the user.
Apple and its often zealous followers have long maintained that the Macintosh is the friendliest computer to use, and in this case they've been referring to the operating system, the Mac OS. But this is the first time that Apple has designed hardware that does as well in communicating that friendliness.
In that spirit, let's add the word "inviting" to its description.
I later moved the iMac up to our guest room, and my in-laws came to visit and stayed in that room. My wife's 85-year-old mother -- who to my knowledge has never touched a Mac -- sat down at it (ignoring a Dell sitting next to it, by the way) and figured out how to sign on to America Online on her own. When she finished, she asked coyly what it would take to bring it back with her.
For those who haven't see the ads or the machine itself, it looks like no other computer you've ever seen, even though its components are familiar. It has a 15-inch flat-panel screen. The screen is mounted on a shiny, polished chrome neck that's about 8 inches long, allowing the screen to move freely. The neck comes out of the center of a milky white hemisphere that's about the size of half a basketball. The computer's lone drive -- which can burn both CD and DVD discs -- pops out of the front of the hemisphere. Various connections are in a row along the back and bottom of the hemisphere -- Ethernet, FireWire, fax modem, USB. Even the speakers are cool -- they're a pair of clear spheres with impressive sound. They are a vast improvement over the speakers found in the original,
wedge-shaped iMac.
The version I tried came with an 800-megahertz PowerPC chip, 256 megabytes of memory and 60-gigabyte hard drive. About the only thing it lacked was an AirPort card, Apple's version of 802.11b wireless networking.
It also has a full-size keyboard and a cool-looking -- if somewhat limited -- clear optical mouse. I've complained about this before, and here it is again: Apple's stubborn adherence to a one-button mouse is a disservice to users. Fortunately, almost any USB mouse will work with this computer, which will give you two or more buttons for better productivity and convenience.
The price for this particular model -- the flagship in the line -- is $1,899. Less expensive models with slower processors and lacking DVD burners are $1,599 and $1,399.
Early reviews made the point that, given the flat-panel display and DVD burner, the iMac was a good value. Windows-based PCs could not match that price at the time, but that has changed since. For example, it's possible to configure a Dell Dimension 4400 with similar specs and pay $1,866.
The iMac comes with Mac OS X 10.1, which can run both native OS X applications as well as programs designed to run on the "Mac Classic" OS. At this point, though, it's possible to go with a pure OS X setup.
The combination of OS X -- with its attractive, intuitive interface -- and the unique physical design of the iMac are what makes this such a joy to use. I suspect even those who sneer at Macs as toys would be won over after an hour or so of use.
The iMac comes with a suite of multimedia applications aimed at making work with music, movies and photographs easy. Both the MP3 player and cataloguer iTunes and the video editing program iMovie, found on earlier Macs, are included. What's new is iPhoto, a basic image-editing and organizing program. Plug a USB-based digital camera into the iMac, and a simple dialog box lets you import the pictures you've taken. If you like, you can have iPhoto launch automatically to do the import. This makes getting digital photos into your computer a snap.
While the image-editing features of iPhoto are limited, they should be enough for most home photographers.
Besides the use of a single mouse button, I have only one small gripe about the hardware here. In most cases, the flat-panel display is beautiful, and is well-matched with an nVidia GeForce2 MX graphics card. But I found that small text on the screen tended to suffer badly from the "jaggies." Settings in the OS X control panel for font smoothing didn't seem to help.
Other than that, this is a great choice if you are shopping for a computer. If you are a Macintosh user and it's time to upgrade, you should snap up one of these.
But what about Windows users? Is this compelling enough to pull market share away from the dominant personal computing platform? I'd say that, for the first time in a long time, it may be. The trick is to convince Windows users to give up their investment in the software they've accumulated. While the iMac comes with just about everything you'd need to do most jobs, longtime computer users have programs they don't easily abandon.
However, this computer is so friendly, stable, easy to use and fun, I think anyone who is in the market -- regardless of what she or he has now -- should take a serious look at it. I know I will the next time I buy a computer. Send e-mail to dwight.silverman@chron.com. His Web site is at www.dwightsilverman.com.
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle