Apple’s new iMacs feature “a quad-core refresh across the board and a new set of AMD Radeon graphics chips to match,” Vincent Nguyen reports for SlashGear. “Still, no aesthetic change – bar the addition of a Thunderbolt port on the back – and no Blu-ray or touchscreen. Has the iMac kept pace with the rest of the market?”
“Thunderbolt – née Intel Light Peak in partnership with Apple – made its debut on the MacBook Pro earlier this year, a high-speed connectivity standard hoping to replace not only USB 2.0/3.0, FireWire and eSATA, but display connections too,” Nguyen reports. “Using the same connector as Mini DisplayPort – meaning you can plug in either a Thunderbolt peripheral or an external display – it supports daisy-chaining of up to six devices per port, with enough bandwidth for simultaneous display of six uncompressed HD videos. Hardware using Thunderbolt is still in short supply – high-performance storage and multimedia interfaces are expected later this year – but the iMac 27′s twin ports does mean that, for the first time, you can hook up two external displays and spread your OS X desktop across three screens.”
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Apple’s new iMac “offers a compelling combination of performance, style and convenience,” Nguyen reports. “It’s hard not to be charmed by the 2011 iMac’s combination of swift processors and capable graphics. The aesthetic may not have changed in a generation or two but is still arguably well ahead of the plastic PC pack, and the price – although in the premium space – reflects the components, the quality of the display and, yes, the Apple cachet… the 2011 iMac is a polished update to one of the best machines on the market today.”
Read the full review here.
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Apple’s new 27-inch iMacs support dual-monitor out via dual Thunderbolt ports – May 3, 2011
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