Product Reviews

It's often said of Apple products that you should wait until at least the first revision of the range before committing yourself financially. That maxim was never more true than when it's referring to the iMac G5.

The original iMac G5, launched more than a year ago, disappointed us. It was a missed opportunity, and while the inclusion of a G5 processor was welcome, the performance gain was almost nullified by the lack of sufficient RAM as standard, the choice of graphics card and its bus speed.

This time, however, Apple has responded to criticism and produced the Mac community's first true home media centre. There are two physical changes to the case of the iMac. The first is functional - the inclusion of an iSight webcam built into the upper bezel of the iMac's LCD. This makes video web chats and conferences using iChat immediately accessible to every new iMac customer. Given the iMac's target market, it's a sensible addition. The other change to the case is purely cosmetic in that it's now noticeably thinner.

In use, one key new feature is the inclusion of a piece of software called Front Row and its accompanying remote control. Front Row is essentially little more than an interface for music, movie, DVD and photo content on your iMac. It displays icons - iTunes for music, iMovie for movies, DVD Player for DVDs and iPhoto for photos - on screen at a size that's large enough to be seen from across a living room. Clicking the music, photo or DVD icons displays menu items from iTunes music content, iPhoto and DVD player respectively. Clicking the iMovie item for movies hooks into your Movies folder and iTunes 6's video content.

The infrared remote control looks like an iPod shuffle and has the same controls, with the addition of a menu button. The control sticks magnetically to the side

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of the iMac when it's not in use - a very neat touch, given how often much larger remote controls are swallowed, never to be seen again, by otherwise well-behaved living rooms, dining rooms and home offices.

There is one other external hardware change: the iMac ships with Apple's Mighty Mouse in a move that indicates Apple will offer the Mighty Mouse as standard.

The iMac has been beefed up inside, too. The range includes just two machines: a 17in LCD model and a 20in LCD model. The 17in iMac has a 1.9GHz G5 processor with 512K of Level 2 cache and a bus speed of 600MHz, 512MB of RAM, a 160GB serial ATA hard drive, an 8x SuperDrive, and ATI Radeon X600 Pro graphics card with 128MB of VRAM in a PCI Express slot. The 20in iMac has a 2.1GHz G5 processor with 512K of Level 2 cache and a bus speed of 700MHz, 512MB of RAM, a 250GB serial ATA hard drive, an 8x SuperDrive, and an ATI Radeon X600 XT graphics card with 128MB of VRAM in a PCI Express slot.

The small fly in the ointment is the way RAM is handled. You can't touch the built-in 512MB, so you're left with one usable RAM slot for memory upgrades. Adding up to 1GB with a single DDR2 memory card is reasonable, but the cost and scarcity of 2GB cards means its maximum RAM capacity of 2.5GB is theoretical rather than practical. Still, 1.5GB of RAM will keep most iMac owners pretty happy. Both models also have built-in Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, AirPort Extreme, and FireWire 400 and USB 2 ports. These specs are now what we would consider an absolute minimum real-world requirement for Mac OS X 10.4.

The results of these improved specifications can be seen in our tests: running heavyweight software such as Photoshop is no longer an issue without upgrading. Across the board, these two G5-based iMacs handled our tests with aplomb.

In use, Front Row and the remote control performed admirably. Unlike with the average media centre PC, browsing content was a simple affair and the whole setup was a delight to use.

Overall, we're impressed with the new iMac G5. It's significantly faster than its predecessor, and the inclusion of the remote control and Front Row makes it an ideal hub for digital entertainment. With the inclusion of a DVB television tuner and Elgato's EyeTV software, it could be your TV, PVR, DVD player, games machine and hi-fi, as well as a very capable Mac. It won't look out of place in your living room, either.