“The new iMac still looks great, and it’s even faster,”Michael deAgonia reports for Computerworld. “Apple left unchanged the minimalist aluminum-and-glass design while switching to Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors, AMD graphics chips and adding the new Thunderbolt port for high-speed connections with peripherals.”
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“All of the changes Apple made to the lineup match the company’s past practice of beefing up hardware while leaving prices intact, yielding a thoroughly modern all-in-one computer, with a sharp, bright screen that’s perfect for editing movies, organizing/editing photos, watching streaming video or making your own presentations,” deAgonia reports. “Best of all, the iMacs come with Apple’s iLife suite of apps — iMovie, iPhoto, GarageBand, iDVD and iWeb. I still haven’t found any software quite as intuitive — or as easy to use — on the Windows side that beats the iLife suite.”
“The best way to describe the benefits of Thunderbolt is to compare its theoretical speed with current standards: USB 2.0 tops out at 480Mbps, FireWire 800 tops out at 800Mbps, USB 3.0 hits 5Gbps and Thunderbolt maxxes out at a theoretical 10,240Mbps, or 10Gbps. For every connection, there are two bidirectional channels that carry data over a 10Gbps pipe — each way — which means you can transfer a lot of data fast,” deAgonia reports. “You can connect a wide variety of peripherals to a Thunderbolt port, from hard drives to displays, daisy-chaining up to six peripherals per port. In fact, it’s possible to take a 27-in. iMac and flank it with two 30-in. displays, streaming multiple 1080p hi-def videos from connected RAID enclosures, without hiccups in the data stream.”
deAgonia reports, “Thunderbolt performance aside, this iMac performs very well under everyday, and even extenuating, circumstances. In a month’s worth of use, the iMac I tested never crashed… Apple has delivered a solid update to what was already a popular and successful line. The Sandy Bridge chips add a speed boost, Thunderbolt offers the promise of peripheral heaven in a few months, and the iMac design itself remains current. It’s equally at home in the boardroom or the living room, and the range of sizes, prices and build-to-order options means it should be easy for most buyers to get exactly the machine they want.”
Much more in the full review – recommended – here.
This is what Windows users are used to. Monthly crashes. Monthly virus battles. Monthly botnet battles. Monthly malware battles…. poor saps. hahaha
Macs crash?
Rarely but they do.
My mini continually crashed when the screensaver kicked in. Or tried to open certain cd’s. (I bought it that way)
A total wipe and reinstall of leopard fixed it.
Yes they do, my Mac 6100 crashed by in 1998. Still bugs me that it happened! You would think you could get by for 15 years without a crash. Oh, well. Even with this crash I stick with Mac and if I have a second one before 30 years I jumping ship!!!!
My Partner’s iMac is always giving him trouble but then he has a third party keyboard and mouse and runs every antivirus and Mac repair program available …..
Mine never crashes but I kstay with original everything and no virus stuff or any Norton type utilities, I do use Apple’s disk utility occasionally to do the preference cleanup thingie and cleanup desktop every now and then and the darn thing runs just fine …..
Retired our 1998 Mac server, which we only had Filemaker Server running on, in 2009 and it ran 11 years straight with only a few shut downs …. Only reason we changed was to go from 9.3 to 10.5 ….. Darn thing went into recycle bin with life left ….
I think I’ll wait till a real upgrade comes around!
The constant ‘fixing’ of my windows computer at home and work is the reason I switched a three-and-a-half years ago…my iMac still runs, almost, as fast as the day a bought it. I’m only now even considering upgrading the ram.
I think your machine is new enough for Lion, nice. you’re probably still running only a gig, right? A couple of 2 gigs sticks in there, and whoa. Have fun.
I got one and this machine is simply amazing !!!
This what make Apple the crown jewel of computerdom!!!
What a funny comment. My iMac (2 years old) only restarts when I do a software update.
It just amazes me that people put up with PCs that crash, or get taken over by malware on a monthly basis.
Heck, my son’s iMac G4 800 MHz which I hacked to install Leopard on doesn’t even crash!
My Windows 7 Ultimate machine does not crash per se. However, the “Explorer” process (not to be confused with “Internet Explorer) which is responsible for task switching and file system browsing does die regularly.
Also, there is concept of so-called “descriptors”, quantity of which with extensive use grows until the system gets barely responsive. And GUI just starts to fall apart, leaving blank unrendered windows, which usually show some content, UI elements.
Forgot to mention:
1) my W7U always has all of latest updates;
2) I am so-called “power user” — most of people do not strain the system that much, so they might see these resource limits more rarely.
My gaming machine sitting next to the iMac.. Explorer has crashed like 30 times in the past week.
And all that I do with it is games.
Last set of crashes.. I tried to delete an old setup of some program I download a long ass time ago.
Had to restart the pc to fix it.
Annoying.
IMac, only restart is the updates and the airport problem I still have from time to time.
The biggest problem with Windows, in my experience, is the degradation of performance over time. Windows suffers from entropy much more than OS X does, enough to make me want to do a fresh install at least ever 1.5 years.
I have Windows 7 installed in Boot Camp partition basically to run a couple of obscure programs that are Windows compatible only as well as occasionally fire up IE9 to look at IE only compatible websites (yes, they exist).
When I left Windows I was still on the superfragelistic XP. 7 is just a pathetic shadow of OS X. But by God the thing I hate most about it is the constant updates. You can spend a full 30 minutes updating (and restarting) Windows and/or antivirus every time you boot in. Immediate dampener, time waster and complete suckage.
I hate Windows with a passion. That bald headed bastard ought to be taken out to the backyard and shot.
+1
I use the ie tab addon in firefox.
Works 99% ofthe time with those old archaic loser websites that “require” ie.
Hate ie… I don’t bootcamp, one reason you just cited… Always needing an update and all the bs that goes with it.
I’ll just keep the game machine for useless crap that I need windblows for.
I have double core 3 GHz CPU with 4 GB RAM and the system feels responsive only until you try to give it some work.
Hell yeah it does.
You can largely “restore” performance by rebuilding the SYSTEM and SOFTWARE registry hives but really why should this need to be done?
I havent had to reinstall os x before due to OS problems
Why do you have to rebuild your permissions? No other *nix requires that.
One kernel panic in 6 years. I’ll take it.
Remember the little black bomb that would appear when it did crash? Even when they do, they do it with more style than Windows
Ah yes, the little black bordered white box with a cartoony bomb in it, sure does bring back memories. Thanks for that. 🙂
Classic wasn’t indeed free from crashes, but IIRC with macosx I only had once a kernel panic, during 10.1 I think.
I’ve had my 24″ Intel iMac 3.06 GHz for two years running 24/7/365 and the only time it crashed was when I accidentally pulled the power plug by mistake. It rebooted when I plugged it back in like nothing happened. I only reboot it to do OSX updates or to put Windows updates on my BootCamp partition and that’s it.
Snow Leopard is probably the finest and most stable Mac OS I’ve used since my first Mac 128 in 1984. My iMac is loaded with all sorts of applications and even when unruly applications crash, that’s as far as it goes. Snow Leopard doesn’t even care. Why businesses don’t like using Macs, I don’t understand. Macs I’ve owned rarely ever required maintenance. They just ran for years and years without protest.
I always crowed about IMac stability , mine has lasted 5 years with no failures , thank god for ONYX.
I recommended a friend to buy one and he has regretted it ever since.
Hard disk crashed , screen flickering , then they somehow managed to place the motherboard askew, till all the jacks at the back cannot be used.
He regrets it royally and all I can say is , once everything is fixed , it is amazing .
The worst part is they have replaced the iMac 3X.
I really have no idea what to tell him
Next.
Resellers sucks and being in a country without a direct Apple store shows a difference !
Hi Zulkifli, I’m not understanding what you’re saying. If your friend’s iMac crashed that badly Apple will take it back and replace it with a new one. There’s a 14 day return/exchange policy.
I’ve never been disappointed with Apple hardware. Everything’s worked as advertised straight out of the box. Then there’s Apple Care which should take care of any manufacturing defects for 3 years.
I’m not understanding why the motherboard was replaced askew. If the defect were that bad Apple will replace it with a brand new unit, no questions asked.
Their customer support is second to none. They bend over backwards to satisfy customers. I’ve had no complaints of the way they treat me – always with respect and understanding.
I’ve stated as much in the feedback forms that they occasionally send me to fill.
Yep I agree , My Mac is amazing ! And so are all te other apple products.
But maybe it is just his rotten luck .
Here we do not deal with Apple direct an even if we do the repair service are outsourced . So maybe reliability is the question.
So I sincerely hope Apple would open a shop here !!
Please ask your friend to call Apple Support at this toll free number: 800-MY-APPLE (800-692-7753).
Alternatively he can write in with support issues by visiting the Apple website at apple.com/support.
He bought it online and as such other resellers won’t entertain his complaints . Our call to Apple was directed to an Australian branch. All done thru the phone . Delivery and pickup and so on.
Perhaps it is due to that , miscommunication , but for me personally it does
Not excuse the shoddy work nor QC.
Luckily I had told him
To buy apple care .
There’s a new iMac??
I bought my iMac early last December, switching from a very old Dell workstation running Win XP. To be fair, I can count the times that old machine crashed on one hand in 8 years but, as noted in an earlier comment, it’s the endless updates and reboots that drive you insane with Windows. Due to my work (web development), I need Windows for one thing: the various flavours of IE purely for testing sites for javascript/ CSS bugs (which are bountiful on those piece-of-crap browsers), but using Mac as my main development platform is bliss, and infinitely more productive; Parallels is there for whenever I need the dreaded Windows.
My girlfriend also made the switch and has a 21″ iMac (the more basic config) and despite the fact that she’s not what you’d call your typical ‘creative type’, she’s astonishing EVERYONE with the quality of some of the stuff her iMac is enabling her to do with the iLife suite, whilst all her Windows chums can only watch on in envy :-]
Get a Mac: basically, it’s not only much more fun and a productive use of your time, but also saves shed loads of wasted energy and frustration!