[shuttertalk]

Call me crazy, but I'm thinking of buying one of those shiny new imacs...
http://www.apple.com/au/imac/

Must... resist... tempation...


p.s. on a serious note, has anyone been following the launch of the new imacs and mac minis? anyone considering buying one?

[Wedding Shooter]

ST - As a Mac user for over 20 years I am confident that you would love your new iMac. We have the last generation iMac in our office at work and it is a beautiful machine.

[Paul.R.Lindqvist]

Why shouldnt you ?

OSX is a joy to work with!

Go get one!

/Paul L.

[adam]

It certainly is tempting.
I have no real reason.

Just a temptation, perhaps a "grass is greener" thing

[byrt_001]

hi
Im waiting for december will move to mac pro.

[matthew]

I've been planning on buying an iMac for six months. First I waited because I was moving, and then because I was travelling, and then I wanted to wait for back-to-school or christmas to see what promotions they have...

With the new machines, I doubt there'll be much discount or promotions in the near future, so I don't think I'll wait. If my bank manager agrees, there'll be a 24" iMac in my near future. My iBook, while fairly recent, isn't cut out for the photo editing jobs I ask it to do.

[shuttertalk]

Hehe, thanks for the encouragement guys. I heard OSX Leopard is coming out in October, and most people recommend that you wait till then to buy, so that it comes preinstalled for free. Otherwise you'll need to shell out another 129US / 199AUD to upgrade at a later stage...

Aaah, I hate waiting!

[wulinka]

makes me think....... i've been pondering on buying a new pc for yeeeeeeeeeears, but always put it off until we stay in one place (will that ever happen?). might reconsider
sounds fun definitely.

uli

[matthew]

Back in the day I migrated to OSX before it was officially released. Now that I'm older and wiser, I try not to get operating systems when they first hit the shelf. There's too much chance for it to break things.

Brand-new computers are another thing -- I found a little store that still had its shipment in stock, so I'm now the proud owner of a 24" 2.4GHz iMac.

[shuttertalk]

Ooo ooooo *jealous*

How is it?

[matthew]

I can sum up the initial iMac experience:

H U G E !

The 24" screen is just massive. My TV is "only" a 23" widescreen, and I watch DVDs on it from across the room. My MacBook has a 13" screen. My biggest complaint is that the screen is very glossy, and when combined with the higher viewing angle, reflects a lot more than my laptop ever did. (Does. I'm using it now.) I will probably re-arrange my workspace to put the computer against the window.

As expected, it's significantly faster than my dual 2GHz MacBook, even though I haven't swapped out the extra ram into the new iMac. Working in Lightroom is significantly faster, and it's great to finally have a hard drive big enough to handle the entire library. I've also added a Kensington trackball, which is one of the biggest things I missed when I moved from my beige G3 to my old iBook. I have all three USB ports in the back occupied (keyboard, trackball, and a hub with a printer, slide scanner, and multi-card reader) and the firewire port is spoken for too (a hub with two hard drives and a compact flash reader). That may sound like a bad thing, but for me it's fantastic -- after a year of shuffling ports every time I move my laptop, now it can all stay put!

And the transition was easy. Using a firewire cable to connect the two, the new machine mirrored my old drive and copied over all of my data, applications, network settings, and preferences. It took a couple of hours to run (36GB to transfer) but I hardly had to do anything. Wirelessly networking the two computers takes nothing more than typing in the names and a password. The new computer's less than ten hours old, but it's fully set up, completely networked, and even has all of my vacation photos on it.

I'm very happy.

[shuttertalk]

Cool thanks for the writeup. I've been hearing mixed opinions about the glossy screen - it's a preference thing for me, but many seem to see it as a deal breaker.

For me, my home laptop has a glossy screen and I love how the colours appear more vibrant; my work one is matte and I don't mind it either.

24" screen - how cool! I find using image editing on a laptop quite a bit of a chore because the viewport is quite small on my 14" screen... mmm..... 24 inches. :d

[Wedding Shooter]

I love the ease of use when I transfer files from Mac to Mac. Very cool Matt - congrats.

[matthew]

Here's a picture of my personal digital hub. It says more than any description about the difference in screen real estate:



I did have to move my desk to get rid of the window reflection. I actually prefer it positioned like this, but had to move it so that the window was behind me when I was using the laptop as my work computer. The window was simply too bright and distracting to let me get any work done. The iMac is so big that it completely blocks out my view of the window, so that problem's solved.

WS, I've never tried having two computers at once, so the Mac's networking is a nice surprise. It's just like having a second hard drive with a simple ID/password routine. I just used my laptop to upload a photo that's on my desktop, all while sitting on my couchtop. Not too shabby.

[Wedding Shooter]

What's the new keyboard like?

[matthew]

I really like the new keyboard, but haven't used the Apple Extended keyboard in a couple of years. This new design is very familiar to me, since it's essentially an extended version of the keyboard on my MacBook. (I still want to call it an iBook.) The low profile makes it very easy to use without needing a wrist rest / support. It's also very quiet, but not quite silent.

Most importantly, it looks cool.

[wulinka]

matthew, did you say a firewire hub!!? do they exist?

[matthew]

Uli, they do exist, but they're rare and much more expensive than USB hubs. I think I paid about $100 (Canadian) for mine, but I've seen a cheaper model for about half that.

They're great for stacking hard drives without daisy-chaining them, or for devices that don't have a pass-through. I couldn't live without mine. (Well, I could, but it'd be more complicated. )

[wulinka]

I just bought my second ext hd, right now it doesn't work anyway and it's difficult to get help in china....but once it's running it would be neat to have a hub, since both my ext use firewire, I don't have USB2

[matthew]

If your drives take firewire, see if they have two ports. If they do you can just cable them together. The only catch is that the first drive in the chain has to be on for the second one to be accessible.

USB ports are a bad way to use hard drives. Firewire is much faster, even compared to USB2.

[shuttertalk]

Hey all, guess what? I finally got the approval from the boss and bought a 24" 2.4 GHz iMac!! It'll be replacing my aging desktop computer, and will be my primary hub for photos and media as well. Yay! Picked it up on discount on the Black Friday sale (Nov 30 in Oz).

It arrives Mon/Tue next week, I can hardly wait!!

[matthew]

Congratulations! You'll love it, I hope -- I've been very happy with mine. Just make sure you connect the monitor securely to the big ugly box that all of us Apple users hide underneath our desks.

[Wedding Shooter]

Wonderful ST - I know you are going to love it.

[adam]

wow cool
What black friday sale?
What is black friday? how come I didn't know about saleS! I missed out oh noez!

[shuttertalk]

Christmas came early for me! My brother just upgraded the memory on his wife's Sony Vaio laptop, replacing the 1GB memory stick with a 2GB one. He was going to toss it out when I thought - hey maybe I could use that in my new iMac...

I checked and it's the exact same manufacturer and model that's in there already, so guess what? I just doubled my memory from 1GB to 2GB! Yay!