Notes on the new iMac

  • It’s fast. It’s really flipping fast. I mean, like, ninja fast.
  • It’s also surprisingly quiet. I haven’t worked on something this silent since my old G3 iBook. I can feel a fair amount of heat from the top vent so, like those scalding-hot MacBooks, this thing’s cooling system may be geared for silence over really cool temperatures.
  • The processor hardly ever breaks into a sweat. I ran a fairly CPU-intensive video conversion program yesterday as a test, and neither core was maxed out, even with other apps running as well.
  • We ordered this thing with 1 GB of RAM, which is an improvement over the 768 MB installed in the G4 iMac, but OS X took it all and wanted more. Yesterday I was staring at a 2-GB swap file. It was still reasonably responsive — that new SATA drive is also flipping fast, and hard to hear — but it will still not be difficult to justify getting that second gigabyte of RAM.
  • The Migration Assistant only worked partially well. It moved over my applications without a hitch, but choked on my user data. After a couple of attempts, I simply brought it over manually via FireWire Target Disk mode. It seems to work — certainly my apps recognize my data, including user settings and registration codes — but doing it this way might, I suspect, be the reason for a couple of the glitches I’ve encountered.
  • My .Mac/iDisk setup got a little wonky at the outset, and I had to unregister and reregister the computer. Nothing got hosed in the process, but I had to sync everything all over again.
  • Printing got strange yesterday: the printer’s output was just plain off, with line heights and vertical spacing a real hash. I wonder if the driver is hiccuping with the Intel setup. In any event, using the open-source GIMP-print driver for 900-series HP inkjets solved the issue.
  • The scanner works just fine. I’m waiting until I install The Missing Sync before trying to sync up the Palm again.
  • While I had to remove two incompatible System Preferences panes manually, all apps tested so far work properly, even using Rosetta. It’s a pleasant surprise that just about all the apps I use are already Universal.
  • Let’s talk about the Mighty Mouse. Meh. I can handle the scroll nipple; squeezing the sides is a bit more of a pain. I had to disable right-clicking because my fingers keep resting on the right side of the mouse, triggering a right-click even when I’m trying to left-click.
  • The new keyboard, ostensibly the same as the one on the G4 iMac, has a much softer, much less pleasant key action. I may have to break down and buy one of these after all.
  • Did I mention that this computer is really flipping fast?