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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."
+1 Geek Factor - For working a "Serenity" quote into a post. :-)
Well yes and no.
There is Download speed, then there is rendering speed, and then there is JavaScript speed.
So in some cases say a large slashdot discussion, with many threads it may take a second or two to get all the data. But then it could take 2 - 3 more seconds for the browser to render the tables and fill the content, put the images in the correct spot. Follow rules for transparencies, If you have many images of the same type then you need to check to make sure you already have the image and only get the ones that you have already had in cache.
Which can take more time then it takes to download the data.
Then there are some sites with complex javascript (Like Ajax enabled pages) that give your more functionality but your CPU does the processing.
Back in dialup days your modem worked so much slower then your browser. So Bandwidth was the major factor but with Speeds like 4mbs for say a cable modem. That is 1 megabyte of data every 2 seconds. which depending on what needs to be done could be a little faster then the CPU can handle.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
no, the MacBook Pro is the replacement for the 15" Powerbook. i guess technically the MacBook is not yet out, and the 15" Powerbook G4 is still available from Apple. i am pretty sure Apple said they have stopped, or will very soon stop, manufacturing the 15" Powerbooks and sell off remaining inventory to people not ready to do the Intel hop.... and i guess stash some for AppleCare replacements?
The only reason the Intel iMac and MacBook Pro can't run Windows, as I understand it, is that they don't have BIOS on the board, but do have 32-bit CPUs.
/is/ going to hack together something that'll load in EFI and pretend to be a BIOS long enough to get Windows loaded. It will not, of course, be a 'driver pack.' ;)
In the existing x86 world, all 32-bit stuff is still stuck on the old legacy BIOS system, whereas all the 64-bit stuff has moved on to EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface). 64-bit versions of Windows will boot out of EFI just fine, but the 32-bit versions only support BIOS. Since the dual-core is a 32-bit CPU...
David Pogue's stuff is pretty hit and miss (I agree that he should be shot for 'Intellese'), but he's right inasmuch as someone probably
--Rachel
Er... PowerBook 100, 140, 170, all the way up to the 540C used 68000 to 68040 processors and were called *POWER* even before the first PowerPC chips had been released.
http://jfin.org/jFin pure java open source financial library
"PowerBook" predates Apple's switch from 68k to PowerPC processors.
This is really just Steve Jobs being, well, Steve Jobs. The original Powerbooks didn't use PowerPC chips. Now that they've jumped ship to Intel, ol' Steve probably thought it would be fun to zing IBM/Motorola a bit. It's somewhat ironic, whereas they originally hated on Intel and promoted the PPC, now they do the opposite.
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.
Having met Mr. Pogue twice, I can say that he is most definitely not an idiot. On the contrary, he's one of the most cogent speakers I've ever heard and his writing style is refreshingly light yet fact-filled.
-Kurt
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
It's a troll like comment, just coz you put a smiley on it doesn't make it funny. David Pogue is a Mac fan, he writes a bunch of Mac books including , he likes Macs, he likes the new Mac. Your comment about him getting paid doesn't further the conversation any and if not funny should be relagated off topic and/or troll.
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.