Yesterday Apple unveiled a range of new products for the holiday season. One of the products was a redesigned and updated iMac, which we will tell you something about.
The design
You can’t say iMac without mentioning its unique design and the new model is no exception. The very first iMac, iMac G3 was released in 1998 and became famous because it encompassed both the monitor and the central processing unit in a single closure, and it was a desktop computer, not a laptop.
Today the design is totally different, but the concept of a single closure remains and it just gets thinner and thinner, but due to the technological development, it is possible to improve the performance and also make the hardware smaller, and it allows the iMac to contain display, processor, graphics card, hard drive, optical drive, memory, and more inside the closure.
All the ports you need to plug something in to, is on the back of the iMac, which is one continuous aluminum surface, and on the side you’ll find the SuperDrive just above the SD card slot.
The speakers have of course been improved too, and they are now louder, clearer and delivers better bass response.
The inside
Both models offers Intel Core 2 Duo processors up to 3.33GHz, and for the 27 inch iMac you can choose a Quad-core processor with a 2.66GHz Intel Core i5 processor or 2.8GHz Intel Core i7 processor. The graphic is improved, and as standard in the 21.5 inch model you have a NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, with possibility to upgrade to ATI Radeon HD4670, which offers 4x faster performance than the NVIDIA card. The ATI Radeon HD4670 is standard in the 27 inch model, but with the 27 inch model you can upgrade to an ATI Radeon HD 4850 graphic card, which is up to 1.8x faster than the standard graphic card.
The new iMac comes with 4GB of 1066MHz DDR3 memory, but there is space in the four SO-DIMM slots for up to 16GB memory, and the hard drives are available from 500GB up to 2TB of storage, and as in any others of Apple’s computers, there is a built-in iSight camera, hidden behind the glass display at the top
The display
The new iMac comes with an LED-backlit widescreen display, perfect for HD video as Apple describes it. You can choose between a 21.5 or 27 inch model and both model have edge-to-edge glass, which covers almost the entire front.
When all you see is the display, nothing gets between you and what’s onscreen. Movies, TV shows, websites, photos — everything looks stunning on the new 16:9 widescreen iMac display.
With the 21.5-inch iMac your resolution can be up to 1920 by 1080 which is the standard of HD, but what about the 27 inch model? Have they just stretched the resolution? No. What they did was to take the resolution beyond HD with 2560 by 1440 pixels, which is 78 percent more pixels than the 21.5 inch model. The view experience has been improved too, with the display technology called in-plane switching (IPS) and it gives the viewer a brighter picture, even if you are viewing from the side.
“Accessories”
Unfortunately the new iMac has no touchscreen, so you need something to navigate on the screen, if you want to go beyond the welcome screen. The new iMac comes with the new wireless Magic Mouse that was introduced yesterday too, and it’s the world’s first Multi-Touch mouse and it has no scroll balls or wheels, nor any cords of visible buttons, but it has Multi-Touch technology which allows you to use gestures as you do on MacBook’s and MacBook Pro’s trackpads.
If you have friends and want to write to them via the new iMac, you can active on-screen keyboard, but you must find it first…. Just kidding, there is of course a keyboard included in the package, and it’s actually wireless too, so if someone hides it for you, you’ll need to find the on-screen keyboard anyway. The keyboard included with the iMac is not new, but it takes less desk space than other normal beyboards because the numeric keypad has been cut out. Both the keyboard and the mouse connects to iMac with built-in Bluetooth. And then of course Snow Leopard, iLife 09 and the compulsory cleaning cloth is included.
“The iMac is widely praised as the best desktop computer in the world and today we are making it even better,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “With brilliant LED displays and the revolutionary Magic Mouse, the new iMac delivers an amazing desktop experience that we think customers will love.”
The new iMacs are available on Apple Online Store, but the Quad-core model is not available before November.
