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Which iMac, large or medium?


NZDavid

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The new Mac arrived, I've set it up and have to say it looks very sleek and stylish indeed! There are aspects of Snow Leopard I prefer to Mountain Lion but I expect I'll get used to it. (One of the most annoying is opening a picture and having to repeat half a dozen steps to open the next one -- must be some trick to it. And the eyeglass in Preview to view pics quickly seems to have gone.) But these are niggles. The processor, fusion drive, and 24GB RAM make the latest iMac a very fast machine. Pictures look brilliant and I can really appreciate the details of Leica glass. The screen also shows up the tiniest flaws in the originals, but these are the photographer's fault. A great looking Mac! Oh and the Trackpad works just fine, very much like a Macbook.

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The new Mac arrived, I've set it up and have to say it looks very sleek and stylish indeed! There are aspects of Snow Leopard I prefer to Mountain Lion but I expect I'll get used to it. (One of the most annoying is opening a picture and having to repeat half a dozen steps to open the next one -- must be some trick to it. And the eyeglass in Preview to view pics quickly seems to have gone.) But these are niggles. The processor, fusion drive, and 24GB RAM make the latest iMac a very fast machine. Pictures look brilliant and I can really appreciate the details of Leica glass. The screen also shows up the tiniest flaws in the originals, but these are the photographer's fault. A great looking Mac! Oh and the Trackpad works just fine, very much like a Macbook.

 

I have always found viewing photos on the Mac cumbersome, so I simply import everything into LR and manage them from the LR interface. With the speed of these new machines you can start viewing even big M9 DNGs in. Matter of seconds.

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I was looking at updating my early 2007 iMac but the absence of a CD/DVD internal drive on the new ones totally puts me off. I use this all the time for loading music from CD's onto my network of Apple devices. Sure I can connect an external drive but the whole point of an iMac is not to have things hanging off it. I know it is very slim and stylish but I do wonder if style has begun to be more important than function. It is also I understand very difficult to do things like upgrading the storage or memory at a later date, which I have done with my current iMac. I suspect I may go for a refurbished previous model with the built in disk drive. In addition, having used the latest keyboard at the Applestore, I am not sure I don't prefer my old "crumb catcher" with numeric keypad. The screen however on the new iMacs looks very good. I don't know if this was an upgrade on the previous model. I think it probably was.

 

Wilson

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..... Sure I can connect an external drive but the whole point of an iMac is not to have things hanging off it. I know it is very slim and stylish but I do wonder if style has begun to be more important than function. ...

Wilson

 

My sentiment exactly. I looked at Imacs on apple uk store .... and although the thin body seems a technological marvel, I'm not sure it meets customers actual computing needs...so....

purchase delayed... and i had the same thought... look for a refurbished last version model.

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Wilson,

 

Have you considered a Mac mini?

I don"t like iMacs either.

 

K-H,

 

I take both my iMac and MBP up and down to France. Having a computer all in one bit apart from the keyboard is very handy. Given the quality of the new iMac screen, it actually looks like a bit of a bargain. For a 22" screen of the quality of the iMac 21.5", you would have to pay around £250 - 300. I have just bought a new NEC AS221WM 22" screen for our PowerMac server. It is not great even after calibrating it with a Spyder 3. It is nothing like as good as the two previous Lacie Electron Blue Mk4 CRT screens I had before but as it has been moved to a much tighter space location, there was no option but to change to an LED screen.

 

Wilson

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I was looking at updating my early 2007 iMac but the absence of a CD/DVD internal drive on the new ones totally puts me off. I use this all the time for loading music from CD's onto my network of Apple devices. Sure I can connect an external drive but the whole point of an iMac is not to have things hanging off it. I know it is very slim and stylish but I do wonder if style has begun to be more important than function.
I was going to say the same thing. This is razor-sharp design taken too far. The whole point of an all-in-one is to have it all in one. I have a previous generation iMac, purchased in January last year. Perhaps they are still available as new-old stock?
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My 27" iMac is now 4 years old and still running Snow Leopard OS.

 

I want to change it this year and whilst I really like the new screen, the thin design doesn't do anything for me and I would have to buy a remote disc writer/player and SD card writer just to give me what I have now.

 

I have costed up the mini with similar processor, 27" Apple screen, cables and remote CD burner/player etc and there is very little in it between the two. Either are portable enough for servicing if required with the mini route offering extra flexibiilty should I need to change screen, processor etc. On the other hand, the iMac gets rid of extra unsightly cables.

 

Decisions, decisions!!

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The current iMac does have a rear SD card slot. But no CD/DVD drive and you'll also need adapters Firewire to Thunderbolt if you have an older backup device with the former. As I posted earlier, you won't be able to try LR5 beta without upgrading from Snow Leopard (which is fine for LR4). I guess the next thing to disappear will be the USB extended keyboard! I found the wireless mouse a disaster with InDesign.......

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I have got my local Mac Man looking out for a late 2011 or early 2012 i7 or high power i5 iMac with 8GB and 1TB minimum. It will be a bit more that buying via Fleabay but I will at least get a warranty and back up. I personally think that Apple should have gone USB3 not Thunderbolt. You can of course get a Thunderbolt to USB 2/3 + FW400/800 dock but they are not cheap.

 

Wilson

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I personally think that Apple should have gone USB3 not Thunderbolt. You can of course get a Thunderbolt to USB 2/3 + FW400/800 dock but they are not cheap

 

The latest Macs come with USB 3 as standard. A Thunderbolt to Fireware adaptor is £25.

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The latest Macs come with USB 3 as standard. A Thunderbolt to Fireware adaptor is £25.

 

Steve,

 

I am just not going to get an iMac without an internal CD drive. I already have one of their horrible external drives that came with our now defunct MacBook Air. It is a useless thing. As often as not it fails to read a CD/DVD, the discs tend to stick in it and as for writing anything - forget it! The USB3 is sensible. I thought they were all going Thunderbolt. I see the new ones have 4 USB sockets, which avoids having to have a dock. The deletion of the CD drive is the usual urban centric view where everyone has a 100mbps internet connection, conveniently forgetting that there are still people limited to dial up or expensive clunky satellite Internet, even on this forum.

 

Wilson

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Wilson, I've used an external drive with my 5 year old iMac since I bought it. Never had any problems - it's a Samsung. Not having a drive in the iMac wouldn't worry me at all, though I realise we are not all the same in this regard.

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Steve,

 

I suppose I might have been lucky, given that the CD drive on my late 2006 iMac is still working well, since many have died. Maybe it is because I use it a lot. Certainly the drive in my 2009 MacBook Pro has been replaced twice and is still fussy as to what it will read from and write to. The best drive I have is the Mitsubishi one in our elderly G5 PowerMac, which will read from any old scratched disc and write to any disc you care to throw in it, CD or DVD.

 

The only thing I might consider for a new iMac, as it is nice to have a warranty and the chance to buy Applecare, is an external USB3 Buffalo Blu-Ray writer. I wonder if anyone does a combined Blu-Ray writer with say 2TB hard disc storage? Then I can use the Blu Ray writer for image archival at 50GB a disc. I have 20 year old CD/R's that I can still read just fine, so I think the scare stories about disappearing data might be overblown.

 

Wilson

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