New iMac Announced

MrGHemp writes "The new iMac with a flat panel has been offically announced, and can be seen on the Apple website. According to Steve Jobs the top 3 things we asked for were put into this new design. 1. Flat Panel screen 2. G4 processor 3. Superdrive (DVD burner on one of 3 models)... Apple also announced other new products like a 14' display on some iBooks, and iPhoto - the iTunes of digital photos." It's definitely unique looking ;) Update: Slashdot author ChrisD was there and has a report too. Linux and the Macintosh are very different things. I don't want to bore anyone with poor analogies, but when Macintosh has glitz, Linux has power. This isn't about Linux though, it just kept on striking me how much Linux lacks in the desire department.

Steve Jobs is terrific at just that, Creating Desire. This is no surprise to us, for sure, but nothing drives it home as much as sitting in the audience and watching him speak. I could tell you how wonderful an orator he is, and how groovy his products are, but I really want to hear what the Slashdot user communtiy has to say about that. I want to talk about what Apple is doing technically.

First: The new iMac is very attractive. It's cool, it's neat. It will be a very popular machine. It's got a good price/feature spectrum and it looks like a pretty decent machine for the consumer. It isn't, in the end, a machine for the linux die-hard, but that's okay. It's slick, it ships with a bunch of very decent apps to manage your digital media. I want one, it's a cool machine. I don't know what I'd do with it (which is the problem), but it's cool looking. It's not particularly a good deal, I mean, you can pick up 200$ 15" tft displays at Fry's and lets get real, the G4 (Excepting the velocity engine stuff) isn't that fast of a chip at any available speed compared to the x86 world. But boy, this is one slick machine. But we know that already from the previous story. I do worry about it overheating, as I did flash back to the cube's cracking problems a bit.

Second: Photoshop for OS X will be coming out "soon". That was the big news. They had a very impressive working demo, I hope to learn more tomorrow on the expo floor.

Third: iPhoto is a decent cataloging program, and one designed to be used easily and generate more revenue streams for apple in the form of booklets and print costs. But it looks very polished and useful.

Superdrive: You'll see the superdrive in the new imac finally, which is nice. Note that this is not the superdrive that everyone remembers from the 80s' :-)

That's about all. The keynote was terrific, but in the end, not so outstanding. I'll post pictures soon. I'm sure a lot of /. regulars will be doing the same. More Tomorrow!