The all new iMac
I’ve written before about how difficult it was for me to decide whether to go ahead and buy a PowerMac this Christmas or wait until the highly anticipated Intel-based macs come up. I thought I had made my decision, but Apple’s high publicity press announcement has me again questioning which of their computers to purchase.
The announcement of an all new iMac has me wondering whether I should save a few $$ and pic up an iMac rather than a PowerMac and use the extra cash to start building up my Mac software library.
One important consideration is, of course, money. To purchase the PowerMac system that I’ve been looking at and the 20" Apple Cinema Display would cost over $3,000. However, to get a 20" iMac with some upgrades to make it more of a powerhouse would cost around $2,000, leaving me with some money to purchase more software. So, which is more important, to buy a computer that’s going to last a few years longer and be blazingly fast but not be able to afford any software for it right up front or to have cash for software and get something that’s beautiful good enough but may become obsolete a little sooner? It’s hard for me to figure out as well.
My thinking is that if I upgrade the ram of the iMac and make sure that I get a large enough hard drive that I don’t have to worry about running out of storage space that the iMac should work just fine for the graphics and video stuff that I want to do with it and should work fine for gaming as well. I’m also a big fan of the design of the new iMac, which is amazingly thinner than the previous version . It’s a thing of beauty.
Some of the new features are quiet amazing as well. As much as I didn’t think I would care to have a "media PC" that you could control from around the house, I found myself very excited about Front Row and the idea of being able to skip between songs in my iTunes library from the kitchen and watch a movie from across our office.
One of the biggest new features for me however is the built-in iSight. What a wonderful idea. Photo Booth, the partner app for the iSight is also a new addition which allows you to take photos of yourself using the built in iSight and morph them in many ways. Mostly it’s for fun, but there’s nothing wrong with having a little fun with your computer is there?
Some of the other new features include the Mighty Mouse, which now comes standard with the iMac, upgraded processor options and new, faster video cards.
What would you do? I welcome any feedback that you might have.
