Apple iMac

The iMac has stimulated more interest in the world outside of the traditional IT press than any other computer system in the 1990s. This is partly because, however badly Apple's fortunes have fared in the last decade, the company and its desktop and notebook systems have never lost their cool image. There's little doubt the iMac outclasses most PCs when it comes to looks. It's petite, colourful and, if you consider the mid-1980s transparent Swatch the height of taste, you'll love it. The grey and blue transparent finish extends to the mouse, keyboard and even the cabling.

The iMac is fundamentally a SoHo PC, and that's central to understanding some of the design choices Apple has made. What we're talking about here are limitations that will seem severe to many PC Pro readers: a sealed case, limited upgrade options, a built-in 15in monitor and, most controversially of all, no floppy drive.

The 15in display makes the iMac relatively compact and lightweight. The sealed case and limited upgrade options are more unusual decisions. You can upgrade system and video RAM, but other additions to the basic model are impossible. Arguably, for the target market, upgrades aren't all that important. iMac users want something that works and, while a basic RAM upgrade is fine, adding drive modules and cards and replacing CPUs isn't part of the plan.

The lack of a floppy drive is more of a concern. Many people use floppies as a cheap way of transporting and safekeeping files. Apple's argument is that the built-in modem and Ethernet adaptor make the floppy disk redundant. If you want to transfer a file from system to system, you can do that via email or across a network. That's true, but some of us still find a floppy disk more convenient. If your network falls down or your modem connection fails, it can be the only way of getting a vital document from one system to another, and it's not as if a floppy drive would have been an expensive addition.

Of course, you could always connect an external removable storage device, and it's here one of the iMac's other peculiarities becomes apparent. On the iMac, USB is the central connection for all outside devices, including the mouse and the keyboard. There aren't many USB devices available at present, but that is changing. Increasingly we're seeing USB printers, scanners and digital cameras, and you can expect most other peripherals to follow.

The keyboard is respectable. It doesn't quite have the positive click that I'd have liked, but there's enough response for most users to feel comfortable working with it. The mouse, on the other hand, is the one great disappointment of the iMac. It looks great but is too small for any period of prolonged use.

The 15in screen is fine at 800 « 600 where it maintains a stable refresh rate and a tight focus. This resolution is strangely more acceptable on MacOS than it is on Windows, so it is still quite usable. The 75Hz refresh rate is acceptable at a resolution of 1,024 « 768, but the crispness of the image suffers. The internal speakers below the screen are capable of some interesting surround effects, but stick in a music CD and you'll soon be disappointed with their limited range and tinny overtones.

It's difficult to compare the iMac to a conventional PC, particularly in terms of performance. With application benchmarks like PC Pro's, comparing a Mac to a PC isn't really fair. What you can do, however, is compare like with like, and on this front the iMac's performance was disappointing. Using the same benchmark procedure as in our Cross-Platform feature (issue 47, p212), the iMac was dramatically slower on every count than the G3 292 PowerBook and G3 233 Desktop we tested.