Now that G5 iMacs have been received...

Ripcord

Ripcord

Senior Lurker
Now that folks on this board have received G5 iMacs, any reviews/raves/rants? I'm planning this week to sell off the 1.25Ghz G4 Powermac (oh how I love the styling of that machine, though) and throw in some extra money for the 20" G5 iMac. Can anyone recommend/ward me off?

If all goes well I'm also going to be getting rid of an old worn-out 20" Silicon Graphics CRT (somewhere in the range of 100 kg, I swear they built these things out of raw blocks of steel with plastic on the outsides). I'd been saving up for a 20" Cinema Display, and would still prefer an external monitor, but the iMac just seems like too good of a system/price to pass up =)
 
Here's my annoyance...

I ordered mine very close to launch. The only reason I didn't order at 5am local was so that my rep at Apple could be in charge of the order and get credit for the sale. He promptly put in my order and put it in the priority listings, since I had projects dependent on this machine and since people at my company wanted to see the new iMacs. Its still not here. I'm usually not surprised by these things, but all mine is configured with is 20", 160GB, 512MB on one stick, Bluetooth module and accessories, and AirPort. I mean, nothing seems that outrageous.

Before you sell, find out an good estimate for delivery of the exact machine you want. I've been told they're having trouble keeping up with the demand, despite what they thought. Can't picture Apple having trouble keeping products on the shelves though! ;)

The trials and tribulations of using the coolest stuff on the market! :)
 
Well, I've ordered one.

My G3 iBook (one of the white ones) is getting very old now, and not really designed to be the desktop machine I've been using it as, so I've been waiting for a new Apple for a while.

I was just about to buy a PowerMac when the iMac G5 was leaked, and as I was going to be on holiday for most of the time in between, I thought I'd wait.

Now I just have to wait until the 25th of October (estimated) for it to ship :(


Ah well - it'll give me time to tidy my study ready for it.
 
I got mine the same day they started shipping them to their stores. WEll, I am lucky being in the SF Bay Area since we have 5 stores within 25 mile radius area. I actually called the store in the morning and they placed one 20" iMac on hold for me and I just picked it up in the evening.
I also bought 1Gb of memory and an airport opened box - this was very easy to install.
To me, this machine is super fast since I am used to 1ghz single PowerMac G4. My 3D renders take no time to finish; and macromedia Flash works faster too. I did not get a bluetooth module since I use USB tablet. Speakers suck but I have external ones that I connected to it so it's not a problem for me at all. Love it.
 
I just got mine a couple days ago and let me tell you the speed I feel...well at least coming from a 500Mhz G3 iMac. It seems like a great machine co far and it has a really small footprint. A design flaw that I have noticed and isnt really that big of a flaw is it lacks an audio-out on the side, rather its on the back which makes it a bit more of a hassle to plug in headphones...but hey ya can't have everything you way I guess, even if you do pay $1,600
 
WeeZer51402 said:
A design flaw that I have noticed and isnt really that big of a flaw is it lacks an audio-out on the side, rather its on the back which makes it a bit more of a hassle to plug in headphones...
Click to expand...

what u should realise is that this is not a design flaw, its ur knowledge in the design department thats flawed !!!!
the audio out(plus every other input output) is placed together at the back making the iMac so beautifully simple that any average person doesnt even realize its a computer.. until he sees the mac logo at the back :)
 
This is such an emotional time...

I wake up to see a shipment notice for my iMac! YAY! A week early!

Knowing that the tracking info would probably not be up on FedEx.com yet, I decided to track it anyway (really says something about me, huh? lol). To my surprise, FedEx has tracking info! My machine shipped today, with its estimated delivery to be...... October 20th!??!

I've heard of overnight, second day, ground, but what's 20 day shipping? Three legged mule? Is my iMac taking a year off after graduating high school to travel the world? Is my iMac the one that Apple's using in the products shots and is busy with a three week, whirlwind, global tour to meet and greet its fans? ;)
 
hahah.. if theyve taken ur money from ur bank account i suggest u ringe up apple and complain strictly bout this :)
 
I'm gonna give him a call today. I did a FedEx shipping time thing on their site. According to this, if I shipped something from Shanghai right now, it could arrive in Chicago by tomorrow. I'm assuming that's expensive to do, but there's a large amount of time for them to play with between overnight and sometime towards the end of next month! :)
 
Soulseek - Shouldn't a good design also be a practical one, while the new iMac does look nice and is relatively functional it could be improved upon. if there was an additional audio out on the side or perhaps even the bottom I think it could be more functional though I could be wrong.
 
it is practical, if u buy wireless keyboard and mouse u only have to deal with one cable...
u have any friends with pcs ? go check out how many cables they have and what a mess it becomes behind the tower....

u have to sacrifice some things for the greater cause :p
 
I'm pretty sure I remember reading that they had wanted to keep the front "clean", meaning without connections, ports, buttons, etc. I guess the next question is what type of engineering issues migh come up trying to place a headphone jack on the side of the unit. I guess we should go back and look at the iMac rip apart pictures to see where the mobo ends in comparison to the sides of the casing. That would atleast get us an idea of alignment constraints.
 
This would be another great product to use the fictitious Apple Wireless Speaker idea I had for the PowerBook G5 ;)

Anyway, with optical output, you know what they had in mind for this machine. For those who have received these units, can you confirm if they include an optical cable? It appears they used the same type of jack that the AirPort Express uses.
 
nope, no optical cable... you actually need some sort of an adapter if you want to use it with other optical cable devices.
 
Its probably the same cable that comes with the AirPort Express Stereo Connection Kit then. I wish they had included that, though.
 
soulseek - I actually have the bluetooth kbd, its very nice might I add and I understand the need for a clutter free desktop but apple has always been good at mixing functionality with design and in all of there prior AIO's the headphone jack has been easily accessed I just feel they could have done a slightly better job. It also could have been an engineering issue but it still comes as a minor dissappointment to me.
 
My iMac arrived!

Right off the bat, when I started using it I found out that I seriously need more RAM. In some respects, like application launching and application switching, the app runs out of RAM and has to page to the hard drive. This makes the computer take a major performance hit as the hard disk is slower than most. Sometimes it seems slower to respond than my old iMac, which was 1 GHz slower and a G4! So I'll probably go straight to 1 GB of RAM. However, it's a very nice little gaming machine, as I've found out from some of my tests. Also, Photoshop is extremely quick to respond to anything I do now... I actually feel like it's keeping up with me! And Cinema 4D renders much faster now as well.

The iMac is fairly quiet when you're just browsing the web or typing something up or whatever, but you can really hear the fans kick in when you play Battlefield 1942 or play around in Garageband. I don't know why, but it feels unsettling when the fans have to speed up so much. "My processor is going to melt!!" :p

I love the extra screen real-estate. Having been used to 1024x768 and suddenly getting a ton more space on screen is wonderful. I transferred all my settings from my old iMac to my new one, and when I opened up Konfabulator I could easily see where the screen boundaries were on my old display from where all my Widgets were lined up. I was very constricted on that old display! Having a wide aspect ratio screen is a blast as well, especially in Photoshop. :) And I feel pretty lucky, because this iMac shipped with no bad pixels on the LCD. Nice!

The slot loading drive was a bit confusing at first, because I was used to the way the iMac DV drive worked (you would only have to push it in about halfway for the drive to suck the disc in). It turns out that on the iMac G5, you have to push it in almost all the way to get the computer to draw it in. I got the version with the SuperDrive though, so I guess your mileage may vary. Also, I think the drive is a lot slower to respond to inserted media than I'm used to.

The thing feels monstrous on my desk for some reason. I think it's because I'm used to the size and form factor of my old iMac.

The design is extremely clean and simple. My desk felt messier just by switching out the computers. :p

The AirPort Extreme card seems to be working a lot better than my old AirPort card... Either the antennas are placed in a better location or the card just transmits stronger signals. Either way, it's doing a great job.

The speakers seriously lack bass response. They're very small speakers crammed into the case with a bunch of other stuff. Understandable, but slightly annoying.

Anyway, that's it for my mini-review. Overall I'm very pleased with my purchase... Highly recommended. :)
 
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