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"Fast, BEAUTIFUL All-in-One. Ergonomics Need Improvement"
4.0 starson by ecualegacyPros: Gorgeous Hi-Def Built-in display. Wi-fi for cordless keyboard & touch only mouse with cool intertial scrolling. Good built-in speakers and microphone. Runs quiet. Fully functional with 2 cords: the power cord and a USB-to-iPod cable. BEAUTIFUL!
Cons: Keyboard and mouse gave wrist pain week 1. Magic Mouse tracking fine but not as snappy as a wired mouse. Keyboard needs a 9 key numeric pad. Machine can run a bit hot. Snow Leapord firewall glitches (Allow/Deny Popup). Choppy camera movie capture.
Summary: The Good:
Update: Nearing end of week 2 as a new Mac owner. Still dazzled by the screen clarity. Now used to the keyboard and magic mouse. *Love* the touch scrolling: very responsive. Sometimes clicking gives a right click when I want a left click. I've run into some minor Mac limitations that bother many Windows switchers like myself. 1) Finder (Mac's equiv of Windows Explorer) won't cut and paste files/folders. Instead you must drag and drop files/folders in order to move them. 2) There is no merging of folders in Finder as well (i.e. you can't just combine contents of two folders by dragging one folder on top of the other). 3) Can only resize windows at the bottom right corner. 4) No "minimize all programs" equiv like "Show Desktop" button in Windows. Instead, use Expose and Spaces to keep things organized. 5) Numbers won't find/replace only the contents in a highlighted column like in Excel. 6) Need 3rd party software to write to NTFS format. No deal breakers here, but they're annoying.
This is my first Mac and it is BEAUTIFUL. Couldn't be happier with the display. I didn't think I would warm up to the glossy, but I don't notice it because the backlight is so bright. Love the ability to have only 2 wires connected to it (assuming you have a router) and still be fully functional: 1 USB cable for my iPod and 1 power cord.
The Bad:
The keyboard and mouse are cute and functional, but ergnonomically unliveable without either some habit changing effort or wrist supports. I already work 2 previously pain-free pc intensive jobs on a 70 hr week ... no coinicidence. Still wish I had a number key pad on the wireless, but for my purposes, I'm fine without it. Built-in camera Camera movie isn't smooth.
The Ugly:
Firewall flashes Allow/Deny popup for 1 sec on 3rd party progs. 2 months since 10.6 release and still waiting on a fix. Safari takes 1 min to open secure banking & credit card sites. I worry about the machine running hot.
Final Word: I love my mac. I've waited a long time for it and it is a great thing to have. The ergonomics of the keyboard and mouse have dampened things though, but I'm finding solutions. Mac OS X is taking some time to learn, but overall a positive experience. Truth be told I could get everything I wanted done on a Windows 7 platform with higher specs at half the price but then again it wouldn't be with half the style or promise of long term performance. Windows 7 might deliver on that, but Mac OS has a proven track record . Definitely recommend this computer.
Updated on Dec 4, 2009
Updated on Dec 14, 2009Addressing my biggest annoyance: No cut in Finder - possible solution is to setup two Finder windows, one on the left side for navigation, and one on the right to act as a holding pen for files to be moved. Find the folders/files you want in the left window, drag and drop them to the right window, then navigate to the destination in the left, then moved the files back from the right window. Not as efficient as cutting, navigating, and pasting all in one window, but it works. Spring loading the folders, using column views, and copying, pasting, then deleting the duplicates are all options too. A solution program called Pathfinder is out there for $40 and it is supposed to be very good. I'm not sure I'll even try it or else I might buy it ;-) I still enjoy my Mac but I can say that I definitely miss certain Windows features that measureably cut down on the time it takes to do some everyday tasks.
Updated on Mar 6, 20103+ months later, still *loving* my iMac despite the growing pains. Had to take it in to repair a hgih-pitched noise (like an old CRT whining) associated with screen brightness. Occassionally, I can still hear it , but the repair made it much better. Changed my ethernet settings to manual full duplex which fixed my slow page loading. Got used to most of Finder's peculiarities. iWork needs to be able to simply "Save As" instead of adding the step of going through Export (Note: Mac OS X seems to excel at adding a few extra steps here and there to get the same thing done that Windows would do in 1 step). I'll update again later down the road.
Updated on Mar 27, 2010Installed Windows 7 through boot camp for that odd Windows-only program. Seems nice & snappy in boot camp, but doesn't quite outpace Snow Leopard :-) For lightweight Windows tasks, I run Win7 alongside Snow Leopard using Parallels 5.0 in Crystal Mode. This does max out the RAM fast and slows things down, but it's still faster than my Win XP eMachine. Definitely more convenient than rebooting if the program isn't resource intensive.
Took the iMac in again to remove a screen smudge caused by the earlier screen noise repair for. This new blotch took several cleanining attempts to resolve.
Updated on Mar 27, 2010The iLife 09 and iWork 09 suites continue to impress. I use iPhoto to make professional quality photo montages & convert them into movie format. Pages had some great templates that I used to create an invoice and personal journal. Keynote even helped me build a neat little company logo.
Bought a copy of MS Office for Mac 2008 for $10 through my employer. Entourage (Outlook for Mac) replaces programs that might otherwise take up dock space (MacMail, Address Book, iCal, etc.). It's also nice to have Excel, Word, & PowerPoint if I need them. Autosaves are included. BTW, to autosave an iWork document, get ForeverSave for about $15 (look for promos!) What else? Disco 1.0 is a must for disk spanning backups. Just drop any size folder into the program let her rip (literally). Huge timesave. I'll write more when I have something
to say.
- 3 replies to this review
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Thanks for the detailed follow up. My sons own MAcbooks and as a musician, I've been tempted to go iMac because all musicians swear by them...but I was concerned about some of the little issues you mentioned.
On my son's Mac it drives me crazy that I can't simply expand a browser to fill the screen - I hate having to manually drag it larger. Your comments helped a lot. -
"No cut in Finder - possible solution is to setup two Finder windows, one on the left side for navigation, and one on the right to act as a holding pen for files to be moved."
Never having used Windows, I'm not quite sure what you're talking about. But you can always copy a file or folder; paste it where you want it to go; then delete (trash) the original. -
Macs handle drag&drop better than PCs -- lots of possibilities, check them out. Merge two folders by going inside the first, select all, then drag into the destination. Folders spring open to show their contents if you pause on top of them. Avoid NTFS if at all possible. Use FAT32 on thumb drives that need to be shared and reformat any external drives you will be using only on the Mac. Sharing an NTFS drive on a PC over a LAN works fine, though.
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