I know they’ve been out for a while now, but this weekend I got my first face-to-face encounter with one of the 24-inch iMacs.
Wow. I hadn’t appreciated quite how huge these things are. It was displayed alongside its smaller brethren, and made them look like pathetic toys. The scale of the screen made me stop and think hard about my ongoing (and unresolved) plans to buy a new Mac this year.
I had been fixed on a laptop (of which kind, I still haven’t decided). But the enormous size of this 24-inch beastie made me think about the option of buying a desktop for the first time in years.
A quick browse round Flickr later, and I found plenty of other fans of the 24-inch iMac. Among them carpe icthus, whose fantastic homage to the machine is featured above. He describes it pretty simply:
Big is not the word for this … I would use “scares small children.” It’s bright enough that when I have it on and the lights off, I can comfortably read across the room. It’s also extremely fast, especially with the high-end graphics card I had installed. I’m not a gamer, but I’ve been playing a couple games just because I feel it would be wrong not to. My old PowerBook almost feels broken in comparison, especially the dim screen. I keep jabbing at the brightness button to no avail.
I'd love one, combined with EyeTV, decent speakers and maybe a chunky external hard drive, to use as the TV/PVR/Media Centre to rule them all.
I've been using a 20" iMac at work and it is hands down the best dev machine I've ever worked on -- crisp, snappy, quiet, aesthetically a joy to sit down at. I should mention I've been using mostly laptops for several years, but still, I wasn't this delighted even by the delightful swivel-arm iMac.
I too am thinking I want to switch from laptop to desktop as my primary computer mode. If the 24" iMac had a higher RAM limit I would be sorely tempted to buy one. Since I can't really afford to do that, it's probably best that I'm "forced" to live with my MacBook for now.
I have a new 15" MacBook Pro, and a 24" iMac. The MacBook is mine. The 24" iMac is my wife's. despite my love for laptops, and the excellence of the MacBook Pro, that 24" iMac is just an unbelievable dream to use.
I Have one and the reasons were the same. I had presumed i would never own another desktop because the laptops are so great, but the size of it man! I am not currently travelling with my laptop so this has worked out just fine. I use the zoom feature a lot and imagine with the Resolution indepedance of Leopard it will be even better.
I've never understood the popularity of laptops. I suppose for people who travel on business they're handy -- but when I traveled on business, I printed out my contacts and a bit of reference material, and took a pen with me. In general, when I'm not at the computer, I don't won't to use the computer, I want a break. I have a 20-incher, and I'm planning on the 24-incher when I replace it.
I've seen the 24" iMacs in the Apple store. All that I could do was stare. It was so BIG! It made the 17" screen I had at home look like a Toy.
What I consider the ideal set-up, and what I wonderfully have now, is the biggest baddest desktop you can find (in my case a 24" iMac) and the smallest, longest running, and cheapest laptop you can find (in my case a 1.5 GHz 12" Powerbook I bought used for $600). As a moderately high end media user and occasional gamer, having screen real estate and power is very important to me. I find the 24" iMac to be a wonderful compromise between power, size, noise, and price. While I could deck out a Mac Pro with a couple of 30" displays it would be noisey and cost prohibitive. But for about $2000 I can get get an HD screen with enough horse power to keep me satisfied. I custom ordered it with 2GB of RAM and the souped up graphics card (it is a lot better than the standard one), and I have been very happy with the machine's performace. It may not be top of the line but it is close enough. I whole heartedly recommend the machine to anyone with similar computing needs as mine.
For all you MacBook Pro owners out there with 24" iMac envy I have four words for you: -
Thirty inch Cinema Display
Just over 4 glorious megapixels of screen real estate (2560x1600) compared to the 24" iMac's 2.3 megapixels (1920x1200). It truly is a sight to behold.
I've also still got my old 23" Cinema display which is the same res as the 24" iMac (1920x1200) and it's still a great screen (I use it with my work PC laptop), but there is just no comparison with the 30" big brother.
Actually, I refer to the iMac as being a transportable--it can be moved from point-A to point-B relatively easily (compared to a Macintosh Pro or a Windows machine).
So if it's a nice day, you can take it from your desk inside to your patio table outside. You can put it on your table downstairs to watch a movie and move it back to your office desk to get some work done. Assuming you have WiFi & electricity, it's one plug and you're up and running.
So if your portability demands are mostly in-house, I think the iMac is a great solution.
Bought one for Christmas. The first screen i've ever had which i didn't want to run webpages or Word docs or spreadsheets at full-screen size. The screen is too big for them. truly useful for having multiple apps and pages open simultaneously. EyeTV looks AWESOME!! DVDs look incredible. Lay on the couch and use the remote. Unless you need the mobility of a laptop, do yourself a favor and get one of these.
Whoa. Nice Big Mac.
Do you get fries with that?
Oh that's sublime! I just can't wait to get enough money to buy one of these babies!
[Edited to remove spam link - Ed.]