Hard Cider Index

by William Tell

Call me cheap, but I always buy a computer at the end of its life cycle. What I mean by this is that when a manufacturer is coming out with new models and the prices are dropping on the remaining inventory of old models, I buy one of the old models. This means I am usually buying a computer that is 6 months or so out of date, saving about a 1/3 of the cost if I had bought it when it first came out.

Well the iMac revision B falls into my "buy now" category. Apple has come out with a revision C version of the machine and the price on the remaining inventory of B machines has fallen quite substantially. So I went out and bought a revision B machine for my parents - well that's not entirely accurate, but more about that later. The machine cost me about $1,000, which seems to be the going price at most places for remaining inventory (the actual advertised price was $999.00 - see how much better that looks? Those people in the marketing deptments have their heads screwed on straight).

So this will be a review of the revision B machine which is really very little different in technology from the C version. The main benefit of the C version is that you can get it in anyone of five dramatic colors. It also has a slight speed bump ( 5% to 10% in processor and floating point performance [ pretty insignificant in my opinion] ) and 2 more GB of hard disk space. The revision C iMac has also lost a couple of technological benefits that the B revision retains; the Mezzanine slot, which might prove useful for expansion options (it has been removed in the C machine which has no expansion options other than RAM), and the infrared port (also removed from the next iMac version). So the revision B is a good buy in my opinion and may have some advantages over the C version for some buyers. My guess is that there is only limited inventory of the remaining B machines and that these machines will go fast - I don't expect much more of a price drop on the remaining B machines.

But now onto the review!

Buying the Machine

I said above that I went out and bought an iMac. This is quaint phraseology, but becoming outmoded in the new dawning age of online commerce, which I moved forcefully into with the purchase of this machine. I went to no "brick and mortar" store, dialed no phone numbers and perused no catalogues. The process took all of 15 minutes and was done from the comfort of my own home. I went to the online vendor's web site, picked out the products I was interested in, plunked down my credit card number and address and I was off to the races. By mid-morning the next day the brand-new iMac in its shiny box was delivered to my doorstep - I was duly impressed as I had ordered the machine late at night the day before. In the package was a USB Zip drive which I had ordered to be able to transfer information from other computers in the house into the iMac. I also purchased an extended 4 year warranty.

I know most consumer groups do not suggest spending the extra money on an extended warranty for electronic gear because anything that usually goes wrong should do so in the initial phase of its life cycle, but I swear that there have been chips in the electronic equipment I have bought over the years that knows exactly when the manufacturer's warranty is up and say to the gear "time to see how high we can push this saps blood pressure" and I end up with a large repair bill.

Many places online will offer you free shipping. This usually means that they will put your equipment on the back of an elephant and send it off to you. If you want the item(s) faster you will pay for shipping. Overnight delivery on my iMac package came to $20 - quite reasonable I thought. You have to take into account too, that if you buy your equipment out of state you will pay no sales tax, which depending on the size of your purchase and the state you live in, can be quite substantial. Also you cut out all the hassel that going "traditional shopping" entails. All in all my online shopping experience was quite pleasant and convenient - I plan to do more of it.

The Setup

As I said I bought the iMac for my parents and I decided it was up to them to set it up - without my help. Steve Jobs had said that the iMac setup was so simple that a child could set it up so I decided that we would see how a couple of people from the generation for which the motorized vehicle was the new technology of the day, would do. Job's was right and they had no problem (other than the standard bickering that occurs whenever they work on a project together). It took them about 45 minutes and they were able to hook it all up and boot the machine. We already have an Internet account so they needed some help with the settings for that (if they had logged on to the included Earthlink account they would have been able to manage on their own) and they needed a little help installing the software for the Zip drive, other than that they managed very well despite being the technophobes that they are.     

Looks and Functionality

The iMac is without question one of the most aesthetically pleasing Macs ever made - in the same league as the 20th Anniversary Macintosh (we have one of these as well). The machine oozes quality, elegance and excellent engineering. Although futuristic in design, looking at the front the of the machine, there is also a little bit of retro to it - harking back to the early days of the television when the TVs of the day were set into luxurious wooden casings. The machine is very solid , compact and uncluttered - perfect for the home desktop environment. Some people have complained about the compact keyboard. I have no problems with it, though it will take a little getting used to for those who usually do their keyboarding on full sized keyboards.

The mouse on the other hand is a problem. There have been a lot of complaints about the mouse and I think that they are justified. Aesthetically it fits in with the rest of the iMac's looks and for kids with small hands who just do basic pointing and clicking it will be fine. However for adults the mouse is really too small and its round design does not lend itself well to intricate mousing. There are many inexpensive third party options for replacing the mouse but it might serve Apple well to rethink the design of the mouse.

The speakers reproduce a better sound than on previous Macs I have owned (other than the TAM) but if you want full bodied sound you will really need to add external speakers which can be plugged into the provided sound output jack. There are also two headphone jacks provided on the front of the machine.

To open the CD ROM drive you click it partway open and then pull it out the rest of the way. It must have been a cost saving measure not to motorize the drawer but I don't think that this is a big deal. The machine comes with sound input and output jacks, base 10/100 Ethernet, a phonejack for the internal 56K modem and two USB jacks, all recessed into the side of the iMac and hidden behind a small compartment door.In addition the keyboard also acts as a USB hub giving you 2 more USB ports.

USB is just great. I love to be able to hot plug and unplug. People that want to stick with serial and SCSI instead of USB and Firewire are in my opinion Luddites. It will be interesting to see if manufacturers start building USB hubs into peripherals like the Zip drive etc. as a matter of course. Currently there is only one port on the USB Zip drive.

The built in monitor that comes with the machine is bright, sharp and capable of millions of colors (24-bit) at all its resolutions (up to 1024 x 768). Monitor setting that you used to find on the monitor itself and manipulate through dials (geometry settings) are now adjusted through the Monitors & Sounds Control Panel.

With OS 8.5 the user interface experience is as tight and as enjoyable as the machine itself. The Mac OS continues to mature and evolve with every new release. Whether it's the convenience of the Power Strip, easy access to internet and email, extensive on board help, the default setting that reads alert messages to you or the addition of themes and sound sets that let you personalize your machine, the current OS has what it takes to delight, intrigue and comfort the new user and at the same time reinforce for old users their wise decision to stick with the cleverness, convenience and aesthetics of the Mac OS rather than switch to Windows (which has all the delight, intrigue and comfort of two day old oatmeal!).

Performance

This machine is fast. I do most of my work on a machine with a 250Mhz 603e chip and the iMac's G3/233Mhz chip easily laps that machine many times over. Whether it is throwing up graphics onto the screen with the ATI RAGE PRO TURBO accelerated 2D/3D graphics controller and 6MB of VRAM or spinning up data from the fast 4GB hard drive or doing raw processor crunching, the iMac makes my main work machine look like a tortoise compared to its hare-like agility. Below I have some benchmark comparisons showing how the G3/233 iMac performance compares with the G3/300 Desktop PowerMac (not the new G3/300 Yosemite PowerMac announce at Macworld). the new 266Mhz iMac will be slightly faster in processing power. MacSpeedZone has a lot more benchmarks comparing the iMac to other Macintoshes and I suggest that you visit their site especially this page which compares the iMac's performance to 64 previous non-G3 Macintoshes.

MacBench 5.0 Results

Longer bars are better

(Copied 50MB folder with 1,000 items)

(Scrolled 600 page AppleWorks document from top to bottom)

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(Opened 10MB file)

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Having an iMac on the desk in front of me, it is easy to see why it has been such a hit. It is an excellent machine. Probably one of the best that Apple has ever manufactured, definitely one of the best thought out. It is stylish, attractive, innovative, fast, tightly engineered and has an OS installed that matches it to a T. All this is wrapped up in a neat consumer friendly package. In all things except price it is the sports car of the computing world. In price it is the best computer bargain around. In the realm of aesthetics, user-friendliness and all around enjoyability Apple has always been way ahead of the competition. The company has an artistic soul which is once again coming out forcefully in its products and intentions, leaving the rest of the computer industry chagrined and scrambling to catch up. The iMac is the first machine from Apple in a long time that has blended all the innate impulses of the company, almost perfectly, into a consumer product that is significantly more than sum of its parts.

The functionality of the mouse is a bit of a problem and may be an area where aesthetics over-road practicality. The lack of an easy method for getting data into the machine other than the CD ROM was perhaps one step too far in forward thinking. Eventually many of us will probably be networked together though high-speed Internet connections, both within the home and to other locations, so transferring data between computers will be quite easy. But for the moment we are still wedded somewhat to the floppy and other drives for inputting and out-putting data and the iMac provides for no transitional phase, though there are third-party solutions that fill in this gap.

The iMac is the kind of computer that makes you want to go out and buy one for everyone you know, especially those unfamiliar with the Macintosh experience or computing in general. While most of us cannot afford to do that, if you are in the market for a computer I suggest you consider one for yourself. The iMac is not the high-end machine for professionals that need expansion options and the best performance money can buy. It will be interesting to see if, with the continued miniaturization of components, such as hard drives, Apple can fit a professional machine into the iMac form factor. But for now, in my opinion, it is the best overall consumer machine on the market Mac or Windows.

William works for a large Internet company and divides his time between Silicon Valley and Bern Switzerland. He feels qualified to comment on all things Macintosh because he often takes potshots at his son's Apple.