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Blazing Review of the New iMac
boxturtleme writes "Despite the sometimes lackluster reviews of the new Intel iMac over the past several weeks, what with speed tests and hardware bugs, the New York Times sure seemed to like it. And beyond the blazing review, the Times seems fully confident that someone will soon have Windows and OS X dual booting."
Web pages appear startlingly quickly: nytimes.com pops open in about 1 second (versus 2), Amazon is ready in 2 seconds (versus 4) and MSN appears in 6 seconds (versus 8).
*giggles like a little girl*
David Pogue is one of the biggest tech-idiots I've ever read.
He's been technically wrong about the Prius, iPod, HDV cameras, the software that I personally work on, and likely a raft of other things...
A prediction from him isn't worth as much as the (digital) paper it's printed (read: displayed) on.
You people want to complain about all the problems the new IntelMacs have. Did you seriously think Apple/or Any Company. Is going to release a Version 1 of a new system without having some problems. If you don't want to deal with the Glitches of a Version 1 Apple. Wait a year, most apps should be universal, Faster Processor speeds, and Apple will fix all the Generation 1 problems, Also OS X 10.5 should be out. I think the NYT had a fare review. They basically said it is an iMac with what iMacs said to have, and it runs most of the apps currently pretty well, but there are some that don't work yet and others that will never work. If you want an Intel Mac Now go get one. But if you want a good Intel Mac wait next year after some updates and fixes, and a OS that has a stronger focus on the chip.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I might be wrong here but wouldn't the speed that a page comes up have nothing to do with whether your processor is a little faster and more to do with how many people are using broadband in your neighborhood at the time of the test?
Blazing...
I know the new Macs are fast, but does that mean the new CPUs are smoking (i.e., Oh God, oh God, the CPU is on fire and we all gonna die!). That would be bad.
"The next Mac to receive the Intel conversion will be the PowerBook laptop. The new MacBook Pro, as it has been renamed (to widespread befuddlement)"
Did they mean the iBook?
Hi, my name is David Pogue. I obviously have no technological knowlege on this subject, hinted by the use of made-up word "Intellese."
But please take my word, that "someone will write a driver pack" that will make windows boot on this new iMac, since obviously the current drivers dont speak "Intellese."
He suffers from "widespread befuddlement"
Wow, do they like this new iMac! It almost looks like Apple payed for the article :-) I like the term IntelliMac. Is that an ivention of NYT, or did someone else come up with it?
-- Cheers!
the New York Times sure seemed to like it
Can we stop referring to David Pogue columns like they're Supreme Court per curium decisions? At least with regard to Macs, having written for Macworld, he stretches his credibility a bit when he tries to cover an Apple story like the rest of the mainstream Technology press. This is in no way meant in any disrespect to David, but when half of your published work deals with touting the greatness of the Macintosh platform, is it any wonder he's in awe of the new Intel iMac?
Uh, wouldn't broadband in your neighborhood affect all remote sites equally?
Lies about crimes
David Pogue's got forthcoming books to sell.
Bricking a computer by flashing unsupported code into the part of the computer responsible for making it boot is not a hardware bug. It is a user bug.
Or did I miss a memo somewhere?
Here I go talking to myself...
Ah, the fabled list of Core Duo/Solo errata. Given that such a list is typical of every processor, and previous Slashdot discussion has noted that the Core Duo/Solo errata list actually shorter than most, it almost seems irrelevant...
*shrug*
David Pogue, like myself, is a huge Mac geek. I have to treat what he writes with a grain of salt, as he sees the world with a Steve Jobs reality distortion field on him at all times. As much as I love the Macintosh and use one every day, I would never say that David Pogue is an impartial source when it comes to reviewing Macintosh hardware or software.
If the PowerBook has been renamed to the MacBook, does that mean the PowerMac will be renamed the MacMac?
I suspect that the PowerBook was renamed to remove the association with PowerPC that the word "Power" in the name provided. This leads me to beleive that the PowerMac will be renamed once the Intel switch reaches it.
Place your bets on what it will be named!
January 25, 2006
David Pogue
Intel Inside. Huh?!
THE buzzwords for the 2006 technology outlook fly thick and fast in nerd circles: high-definition DVD. À la carte TV shows from the Internet. Windows Vista.
Most of these goodies will take time to reach the masses. One, however, has already arrived, six months ahead of schedule: Apple's switch to Intel chips for its Macintosh computers.
The first such retrofitted model, the iMac, went on sale last week. Like the existing iMac model, which remains available, the new one is a sleek, thin, snow-white flat-panel screen with no actual computer box; the guts of the computer are hidden inside. The new iMac, like the old, is virus-free, spyware-free and gorgeous to behold. It still has a built-in camera for live Internet videoconferences, still can record DVD's, still comes with a remote for controlling music, photo slideshows and DVD playback from across the room, and still has built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi wireless networking. Even the price is the same: $1,300 for the 17-inch model, $1,700 for the 20-incher.
But now there's Intel inside.
Why on earth would Apple abandon the I.B.M.-Freescale processors that have served Mac fans so well for so many years? The official reasons are speed and heat; Intel's newest chip, the Core Duo, offers more of the first with less of the second. That's a big deal, especially in laptops; Apple's existing PowerBook laptops already get so hot, the smell of barbecued meat practically wafts from your thighs.
The switch is also good for Apple because it puts to death the Megahertz Myth. For years, Apple was at a public-perception disadvantage because consumers mistakenly believed you could rate a computer's speed by its chip. "That 3-gigahertz PC must be faster than a 2-gigahertz Mac," they would say. But megahertz comparisons are valid only between two chips of the same family - say, two Pentium 4's.
Now, though, many Macs and PC's will indeed contain the same processor, Intel's new Core Duo chip. As a computer-speed measurement, the chip-speed rating is still bogus - memory, operating system, circuitry, hard drive and other factors also determine a computer's speed - but less bogus than before.
Now, you can't just drop a new chip into a computer and expect it to work. Tens of thousands of software programs run on the Mac - and every one of them expects to find, at the other end, a PowerPC chip (the old Mac kind). Each one, not to mention the operating system itself, must be rewritten in the Intel language.
That's a nightmarish mountain of work, but Apple has pulled it off almost flawlessly. The operating system, Mac OS X 10.4.4, has indeed been rejiggered to speak Intellese, while otherwise remaining 100 percent identical in look, feel and features. The armada of Mac OS X ancillary programs has also been rewritten: Safari (Web browser), Mail (e-mail), Address Book, iCal (calendar), iTunes (music playback), Calculator, Chess, Dictionary, DVD Player and on and on. Even Apple's new iLife '06 suite has also been converted, and is included on all new Macs: iPhoto (for photos), iMovie (for editing your home videos), GarageBand (for podcasting and music composition) and iWeb (a new supersimple Web site-creation program).
For some real fun some Saturday afternoon, set up an Intel iMac and its identical-looking predecessor side by side. Sit there with a stopwatch, perform the same software timing tests on each one, and keep score in a notebook. Invite some friends over to share in the excitement.
What you'll discover is that the new iMac is deliciously fast when it's running Intel-ready software. Just turning the machine on is a joy, because starting up now takes 20 seconds instead of 60, like the previous model; you'll want to do it again and again. Programs open up a lot faster, too: GarageBand, for example, is ready for your musical inspiration in only 9 seconds, rather than 20. Web pages appear startlingly quickly: nytimes.com pops open in about 1 second (versus 2), Ama
will it copy a 17MB file in under 20 minutes?
Is he knowledgeable? Yes. Hugely. Author of several very popular and very well respected Mac books. Knows the technologies, their histories, the players, knows how to write, and knows what folks are interested in reading.
Is he a rah-rah Mac fanboy? No.
He, like Walt Mossberg, has been quite good about calling out Apple on their failures. Any number of times he's pointed out when the emperor has no clothes, that a great-leap-forward ain't necessarily so, that Apple hasn't gotten something right.
Does he claim not to like the Mac platform? No. Does he present himself as some sort of unopinioniated ideal, absolutely agnostic on the subjects he writes about? Not at all. He is completely clear about his appreciation for the Mac and then goes ahead and reports about it rather fairly and honestly.
So, partial or not, he's a damn good source of news and reviews about the Mac platform and certainly a heck of a lot better then either the fanboys and the not-without-a-2-button-mouse cranks.
Read the review, then judge it by it's content, decide for yourself if Pogue's fondness for Macs makes him unsuitable to report on 'em.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Well, for one thing it's not really a review of anything; it's a story about Apple's transition to Intel chips.
He does note that some things are faster on the Intel iMac, and that some software will run natively, some will run with Rosetta, and some won't run at all. Anyway, hardly a review...
My other sig is extremely clever...
From TFA: "Just turning the machine on is a joy, because starting up now takes 20 seconds instead of 60, like the previous model; you'll want to do it again and again." Sounds like we have yet another reviewer who is eager to run Windows on his Mac...
...En að Besta Sem Guð Hefur Skapað Er Nýr Dagur
I don't think you're going to see much in the way of faster processor speeds over the next year. Yes, the Intel chips will still be dual core, and move from 32-bit to 64-bit processing, but don't look for a faster processor to bail you out.
You sound a bit like an Apple Apologist. Apple releases a system that isn't that good, but just wait until the next one arrives. Frankly, Jobs didn't have to release anything at this time. Nothing was promised until June 06. The fact that he released a rather substandard pair of Macs falls strictly on Job's shoulders, and you should be attacking his decision to do this now, rather than defending it by saying the next unit will be better.
That's unless you're one of the Steve Jobs can do no wrong crowd, in which case you have nothing at all useful to say.
The real reason to wait until 2H06 is why get stuck with the last of the 32-bit Intel Macs, when 64-bit lower-heat Intel processors are only a few months away.
And as for web-page loading, it's hard to understand the delays. The processors are already far faster than most broadband connections can deliver the data. It's pretty strange that these new units render pages 25% faster, unless the previous rendering code is really junk.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Not to overly complain (and for the laptop users, this point is moot), but the previous version of the iMac was 64-bit, G5 based. This meant that you could buy an iMac as a development platform, then push the package up to PowerMacs or XServes. The new iMac, while I'm sure quite snappy and all that, can only do that for 32-bit code. I know, you can cross-compile, and test it on the remote system, but that's less convenient than local compiling, testing, and debugging.
In the end, maybe this doesn't matter, but it does seem rather inconvenient. I hope that this trend isn't carried into the xServes (or iServes, or whatever they become).
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
Oh wow! Good thing we have ANOTHER review of the same friggin machine. At least this time it's by a media source, and we know the media is never biased. Those stupid reviews with numbers and benchmarks, what do they know?
...Walt Mossberg rates a shaker. :) If Macs had butts, he'd kiss 'em. Pogue at least writes some books and stuff, too.
(And I'm saying this as someone who's bought 6 Macs in the last 5 years...)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Try to keep up with the times: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/01/11
...and I'm just saying it again
Brings new meaning to the claim that Mac owners are 'flaming homosexuals?'
The comment would be legitiately "Insightful" if Pogue were using web pages as a measure of processor power. However for those who bother to read the article will discover, he doesn't. In fact engagebot's argument is a straw man.
Pogue writes:Pogue is clearly describing how fast the new Intel-Macs feel doing things the the old Power-Macs do, but with the new Intel-based universal applications. No reference to the CPU here, none to megafoofoos-per-second, bajillions-of-fakestones, or other like esoterica. Not even the Intel processor makes these faster. Just that this new Intel Mac boots fast and runs these Intel-compiled apps just as well or better then the older Macs.
In case anyone was too obtuse to clearly understand this the next paragraph makes this absolutely clear by spelling it out:
Pogue writes:"Speed". Not CPU speed, just speed. Indeed later in the article he takes care to point out all of the places where things run slower, and why, and how some won't run at all.
So, the only one "therefore killing any authority he has in the first place" is engagebot for setting up a completely false argument then using it to grind his own axe. And whoever so carelessly moderated his posting as "Insightful".
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
http://www.intellivisionlives.com/bluesky/games/cr edits/colecoint.shtml
Anyone remember the controllers!!!!
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
For things that the intended users of iMacs will use, the performance is fine under emulation. Here's what I've observed, in comparision to my 17" G4 PowerBook, and my 1.8 GHz G5 PowerMac. I've got a Radeon 9800 Pro in the G5, and previously had a GeForce FX 5200 in it.
Word on the iMac feels faster than on the PowerBook, and comparable to the G5. (And Word on the iMac totally kicks the ass of OpenOffice 2 on my Athlon 64 Linux box...).
World of Warcraft on the iMac is faster than on the PowerBook, and faster than on the G5 with the FX 5200, and slower than on the G5 with the Radeon 9800 Pro. It is the video card that is the main factor here, not CPU performance.
As for native apps, such as Safari, Mail, iLife, they are much much much faster than on my PowerMac. X launches in about 1/4 of the time, for example.
Summary: for most non-pro users, the new iMac will be the fastest Mac they've ever seen.
I published an article: "Will Macs run Windows?" That looks at what stands in the way now, and the likely workarounds to come.
. html
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/Jan06.IntelMacsWin1
I always like corrections or comments.
Oh jeez. And I suppose Dan Rather and Nina Totenberg never did this with their party lines and astroturf.
You want astroturf, well let me be the first to tell you about the gold standard: campaign finance reform and the Pew Charitable Trusts. (For which the mainstream media totally whored themselves without shame or hesitation.)
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
It's been mentioned elsewhere but it bears repeating- the PowerBook line was not so named because of the processor. Apple's upper tier laptops were called PowerBooks for some time before Apple decided to migrate to the PPC architecture.
-Cybrex
Boundless Expansion, Self-Transformation, Dynamic Optimism, Intelligent Technology, Spontaneous Order- BEST DO IT SO!
I don't get it. The iMacs are faster than the previous generation seem to work as well as ever, yet they're "substandard?" The new notebook, not that anyone's actually ever USED a PRODUCTION model looks to be a nice machine. Not substandard.
I would be nice to have a 64-bit processor. Hopefully Intel gets on that. I suspect Intel will make faster processors over the next year too. You know, like they (and everyone else) have done since the microprocessor was invented. Those will probably be translated into Macs as they become available. If you want a faster iMac you'll probably have to wait a year until the next update though.
I expect the web page "benchmark" is explained by normal variation. I bet if you used the same machine, same browser to load those pages they'd show 25% differences too. Especially if you're using a corporate connection shared with a thousand of your closest friends.
I know it's useless to whine about moderators but I do it anyway. I find it really pathetic that when you say something here that might be interpreted as perhaps negative about Apple, you get modded Troll. I don'think there is one critical commment that I made that has something to do with Apple that was not modded Troll. The above comment was obviously a joke, I even put a smily in there, $*#*#%!! Grow up, people.
-- Cheers!
The worst thing is that when applications transition to Intel, they're likely to target next models with x86-64/EM64T and won't run on the new Macbook or iMac! This is why I can't recommend the current macs to any of my friends - there isn't a model out that would be guaranteed to run software released next year. It'll be forever stuck using Rosetta for everything. I doubt developers will fatten all binaries with PPC, i386 and x86-64 or stick to i386 and lose speed benefits from 64bit (there are no downsides to it).
I don't think you're going to see much in the way of faster processor speeds over the next year.
And why is that. It's a new product, no reason it doesn't have room to grow.
Apple releases a system that isn't that good
How is it bad.
That's unless you're one of the Steve Jobs can do no wrong crowd, in which case you have nothing at all useful to say.
Much like the Apple Can Do No Right crowd.
The real reason to wait until 2H06 is why get stuck with the last of the 32-bit Intel Macs, when 64-bit lower-heat Intel processors are only a few months away.
The primary reason for going with Intel was to get chips for laptops. And just what percentage of laptops have 4 gigs of ram, much less a need for more?
You sound a bit like an Apple Apologist.
And you an Apple Asshat.
I bought the new 20" Core Duo iMac yesterday, after much searching of the streets of London. My initial thoughts are as follows;
The machine is beautifully constructed, it is very clear a lot of thought went into it. The screen is very, very nice, the latest Sony machines seem a little nicer but it is better than I am used to from flat screens. It took about 4 minutes to get from opening the box to up and running which is very impressive. However, one point to note, it is much heavier than you might expect. I had visions of moving it round to watch movies on, use in the living room etc and I am now having doubts about the practicallity of this.
Start up is fast, as notes in other reviews. Safari is blazingly fast. However, Safari seem to be an earlier build, my version doesn't seem to have any tabs. The build reports as 2.05, has anyone else noted this about the Intel build, I couldn't find anything on the Web.
A bought an Airport base station and it was up and running with my broadband router in about 10 minutes (would have been sooner apart from a basic mistake on my part). I was very impressed with the Airport integration, there are cheaper solutions but this was very impressive.
I downloaded and installed Firefox without any issues. I don't think this is a universal binary yet, start time was much slower than Safari but once up and running it seemed at least as fast at page rendering and it has tabs.
There seems to be a shortage of media players at present. No Windows Media Player for the mac and the flip4mac plugin for Quicktime explicitly states that it isn't ready for Intel Macs yet. I tried to get Real Player but was fustrated by their awful web site, again it wasn't clear if I ever found the free version if it would work on an Intel iMac.
Installing dashboard widgets was also a little hit and miss. Some worked perfectly, others didn't respond as you might expect (I think the main issue was those with embedded Flash).
I installed Google Earth and this was a revelation. Again, I don't think this is a universal binary but it is hard to tell if it is running under emulation. This proved superb, if you want a single application to demonstrate the quality of the screen combined with the data provided by a decent network connection this is it. I was completely hooked and spend the next few hours simply playing with this.
Overall the machine feels superb in terms of hardware construction, after 5 hours it was barely warmer than a standard flat screen monitor and the fan(s) are very quiet, hard to hear in normal usage. The OS feels fast and responsive and I like the new Mighty Mouse. However, the OS also feels like a work in progress, it feels sparse compared to my previous G4 Mac with Tiger and a number of tools and utilities simply aren't there yet.
However, I feel I made the right choice, after just 5 hours I am hooked in a way I didn't expect to be working with computers day in day out. The machine has a real "WOW" factor as you put it through its paces and I have yet to find an app (Office, Mail, Web etc.) which feels less snappy than its Windows equivelent.
-- I speak only for myself
What is this? [outrage] You actually like the people you work with???
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You miss the point, as expected. The issue is 64-bit software regardless of the amount of memory installed. Can every company afford to support a 32-bit port of their flagship products simply to run on the few iMacs and MacBooks sold in the first half of this year? Consider that the window of 32-bit Intel Macs is only 6 months wide, which isn't much of a market to support.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Don't get me started on the people I work with. I mentioned the other day to a couple of elementary school teacher friends that I worked with a bunch of children. They didn't believe me until I described some of the shenanigans. Then they agreed.
:)
Hi everybody!
Find the application file, either by browsing /Applications or doing a click-and-hold on an application's Dock icon and selecting "Show in Finder" from the menu that appears.
Do a "Get Info" on the application by either:
-Ctrl-clicking on its icon and selecting "Get Info" from the context menu.
-Clicking on it once to select it and then doing Command-I on the keyboard or File -> Get Info in the menu bar.
If the application is a Universal Binary, it will say "Application (Universal)" in the "Kind" field in the Get Info window.
I assume the legacy apps will say something like "Application (PowerPC)", and that Intel-only apps not compiled for PowerPC would say "Application (Intel)" (but I don't know why anyone would compile only for Intel just yet, seems to me that'd be limiting your audience just a tad).
~Philly
Sounds like we have yet another reviewer who is eager to run Windows on his Mac...
Also sounds like Steve Jobs was on his startup time hobby horse again, hectoring the engineers about startup time. He's had a thing about that since 1984; one of the "insanely great" traits of the first Macs was their startup time, from an OS on a single floppy no less.
(It's interesting that anyone notices, really, given how stable OS X is. I haven't rebooted since we painted around the outlet our kitchen iMac is plugged into.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
And the more obvious point you missed is that it DOESN'T MATTER. It wouldn't change a thing if Apple had used 64 bit chips because no Mactel system is going to take advantage of 64 bit addressing until the towers or Xserves switch over from using G5's. So either way developers would be readying 64 bit apps in advance, and unless Apple or Intel have thrown up roadblocks to prevent you from doing so, there is no reason you can't develop 64 bit apps on a 32 bit machine.
Just do us a favor: go back under your bridge and resume plotting to steal Christmas from Whoville.