Apple Introduces New G5 iMac

peatbakke writes "Well, here it is. Looks like the rumors of computer+monitor combined into a sleek little case were true." It's mostly what you'd expect both design-wise and specwise. And I want it.

Comments

Re:Compare Apples and dells

[BorgDrone]

Yes the price is competitive against a comparable system from another A-brand.

However,
I can get a new Athlon XP system for under 400 euro, sure the specs are nowhere near the iMac, and sure it doesn't look as good as the Mac, Who cares ? My desktop system is still a Duron 700, and I don't really feel the need to upgrade it, it gets the job done. I use it to read my mail, surf the web and listen to my music.
Right now, I'm running Debian Linux with KDE, I would love to run OS X, but I'd have to buy a designer machine with specs I don't need for a price 3 times as high as a generic x86 with the 'right' specs.

What I would love, is a 400 euro solution that will allow me to read my mail, surf the web and play my music, while running OS X.

Re:Unlikely

[Nonoche]

the first Macintosh had 128 MB of RAM.

Re:new imac

[babbage]

Actually, on a recent-ish (past five years?) PC with a 104-key keyboard, the bottom row of the keyboard should have a context-menu key somewhere to the right of the spacebar. This key will attempt to bring up a context menu for whatever onscreen object currently has the focus, and in most cases you can move the focus around with the tab or arrow keys. In this way, not only can a Windows PC be fully (if maybe confusingly) functional with a single-button mouse, but you can even get by without using a mouse at all.

To be clear, I'm generally on your side in advocating that the Apple single button mouse is perfectly usable for working with a Mac. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do" and all that. But on the other hand, I realize that this is the minority opinion: of about a dozen Mac users at the company I work for, many of whom have been using Macs for years and years, I am the only one that actually likes using an Apple mouse -- everyone else wants a two button scroll mouse within their first ten minutes on the job, and they can't stand having to work at a machine that has the default mouse.

Moreover, I think Microsoft has done a better job of making their operating system usable for people that cannot or prefer not to use a mouse at all. I have full keyboard access turned on in OSX, but there are still cases where the only way I can perform a necessary action -- browse through menus, select interface widgets, select the non-default button on a alert window, etc -- is to reach for the mouse. With Windows, on the other hand, it's nearly always possible to reach every interface widget from the keyboard, and in most cases, most of the elements you would want to reach have clearly labelled shortcuts where you can hit [alt]+[letter] to interact with whatever widget you're interested in. Granted, these labels are turned off by default, but they're easy to activate, and once they're on then everything is always visible to you, which is unlike the full keyboard access in OSX 10.3, where there are no obvious hints showing how to access "inaccessible" parts of the GUI with the keyboard.

Note that I'm saying this with great reluctance & sadness. In most ways I think the OSX GUI runs circles around Windows (nevermind Gnome, KDE, etc which might as well not even be trying), but there are some cases -- and keyboard access is the most obvious one I know of -- where the PC is actually easier to deal with. Maybe Tiger will fix this, but for now, this is one of the few areas where Microsoft has clearly done a better job than Apple...