Product Reviews

With almost indecent haste, Apple has followed up the launch of its new PowerBooks and Power Macs with two new iMacs. The most significant and interesting of the two is the top-of-the-range model, which has a 17in widescreen display and clocks in at 1GHz.

In addition to its 1GHz G4 processor, this iMac features a Nvidia GeForce4 MX graphics processor with 64Mb RAM, 256Mb DDR SDRAM, and an 80Gb 7200rpm ATA/100 hard drive. The whole lot is hooked up via a 133MHz system bus. This iMac is the first to feature support for a proprietary Bluetooth module on the motherboard. However, the Bluetooth module itself is, disappointingly, an optional extra. It is also the first iMac to support Airport Extreme, Apple's implementation of the soon-to-be-ratified 802.11g WiFi protocol. The Airport Extreme card is also an optional extra.

DisadvantageThe optical drive in this iMac is an upgraded version of the SuperDrive which records DVD at 4x and writes to CD at 16x. Connectivity options are the same as in recent iMacs, so there's no support for 800Mbits/sec Firewire as seen on the new Power Macs, nor is there support for USB 2.0. There's no doubt that Apple currently sees 800Mbits/sec FireWire as a professional feature and, like other features which started on Power Macs, it will find its way onto the iMac range eventually. However, Apple's position with regard to USB 2.0 is less clear cut. It seems to be adopting a 'head in the sand' approach to the technology, but that surely can't last. With more and more peripherals supporting USB 2.0, Apple will be putting its users at a serious disadvantage by not incorporating support for it into the Mac OS and future Macs.

Effective tool

The three USB 1.1 ports that are situated on the rear of the iMac's case are accompanied by two FireWire ports, a 56k v.92 modem port, 10/100 Base-T Ethernet interface, and line in, headphone, and Apple Pro Speaker mini-jacks. There are also two USB ports on the keyboard. A proprietary video out port

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allows the iMac's display to be mirrored on either an external monitor or projector, or a television screen. But there's no support for extending desktop space via a second monitor.

This iMac comes pre-installed with Mac OS X 10.2.3 and includes the iLife bundle which has new versions of iPhoto, iMovie and iDVD. The inclusion of these packages is a large part of the new iMac's attraction. Without them it's little more than a good-looking, reasonably powerful computer that runs OS X. With them it's an effective tool for turning your photographs and digital footage into Web content or a DVD with very little effort.

Fulfilled promise

Our test results on the new iMac make for interesting reading. In every one of our tests it was only marginally outperformed by the similarly specified 1GHz Power Mac. For example, in our Photoshop test, it completed a set of Actions in 77 seconds, compared with the Power Mac's 62 seconds. Other tests were even closer; in our FileMaker Pro test, the Power Mac was only 5% faster. The difference in speed can be accounted for by the Power Mac's 1Mb of Level 3 cache, not present in the iMac.

This similarity in performance presents a conundrum to those unsure of whether to go for an iMac or Power Mac. No longer are Apple's so-called consumer machines crippled in performance terms in comparison to its professional line-up. And to add to the confusion, this iMac is £255 more expensive than the least expensive Power Mac. However, for the extra money you get an excellent integrated 17in widescreen display and a SuperDrive. To put this additional cost into perspective, the amount is about what you'd expect to pay for a decent 15in LCD monitor. The catch is that you lose out on internal expandability, you can't add internal hard drives, PCI cards or a new graphics card to an iMac. And of course, you can't swap your display for a larger one at a later date.

These limitations aside, there's very little reason not to choose this iMac over the 1GHz Power Mac. It's a great-looking, powerful machine with all the iMac's famed ease of set-up and use. It runs the new iLife apps like a dream and will be able to cope with any application you can throw at it. The 17in widescreen display makes it ideal for watching DVDs and the 80Gb hard disk will store enough MP3s to keep you going for days on end.

You get the feeling that with this release, the combination of hardware and software finally fulfils all the promise exhibited by the original iMac nearly five years ago. There's never been a better time to buy one.