Apple New iMac 24″

New to my collection of Computers is the rather new style of iMac, I wish to go over this in a few details to give a sort of review if you like. The model in Question is as follows:

Core 2 Duo 2.8Ghz Extreme
2 GIG Ram
500 GIG Hard Drive
24″ Display (1920 x 1200)
DVD writer (Slot loading)
ATi Radeon HD 2600 Pro

As you can See from the Picture, Its a Very Smart looking all-in-one machine and while it cannot be expanded too much, I think what it has in there would do somebody for quite some time.

Setting it up
It came pre-installed with Mac OS X 10.4.11 which surpsied me as I thought it would already have Leopard on there. There is One Power Plug for the entire system, keyboard (which is what they call Universal English – so not 100% quite UK in Layout) and a Mighty Mouse. There was a CD Inside with the 10.5 Upgrade – slotted this in and left it running for some time while it put the latest OS on there. I have a Wireless router – Set up for WPA2 and protected, the machine could not connect even though I supplied the correct password – Once installed though I connected no problems, so maybe a Install Glitch.

Getting to Grips with MAC OS/X
I have machines running XP Pro, Vista Ultimate and Ubuntu 7.10, So I already have messed with different ways of Working. Expose is similar to Compiz on Linux, showing all the open windows but there is a slight difference and an annoying one. If the application is closed (to the Dock) then Expose does not show this as a list, ALt+TAB does though and even if selected via Alt+tab, the window does not come up, you have to go to the WINDOW menu and display the window, this is quite annoying.

Spaces allow you to have Multiple Desktops and you can press a key (F4 by default) and jump around the Windows, there is also Ky combinations to quickly go to each window. I prefer the way Compiz on Linux does it though, I used the Cube on there and Scrolled the mouse wheel to quickly get to another application, much faster.

The Little things that matter
The scroll on the mouse is active in whatever window you are over, no selecting like Windows before you can scroll. There is a Built in Spell checker across ALL Applications – even though I had selected UK (English) it still had trouble with the word Colour and insisted it was spelt wrong. What about Screen Zooming – CTRL + Scroll Wheel and you can zoom into any part of the screen in real time yo make it easier to read.

Safari comes with web clip – this ties in with the Widgets so that if you had say a Stream (such as UStream) or something that changes a lot, then mark it out and its now a widget you can look at in real time on the widgets screen (F4). Applications are VERY easy to install and un-install, all you do is drag the program to Applications and its installed. Want to get rid of it? Simple, put it to Trash and that’s it gone. Mo registry to hack, no files hanging about.

With various add-ons, you can play just about any Video in Quicktime, there is also VLC to play any format you may have missed of course. The included Applications are the best I have seen such as iPhoto, Garageband to make your very own song and iMovie which beats Movie Maker in Windows any time of the day.

Stability
10.5.1 is not as stable as previous version from my own testing though now its seems fine, I am sure when 10.5.2 and so forth get out, it can only get better.