I’ve had a couple of weeks with my new 24″ iMac now, so I thought I’d throw together some thoughts. I was actually surprised by the lack of blog posts about iMacs out there on the internet as I was researching this purchase. Aside from the crazy superfans on the MacRumors forums (Who all seem to be incredibly angry about very minor things) and the occasional review from CNet or whatever, I wasn’t able to find much in the way of helpful impressions. I hope this contributes toward filling that void.

Some thoughts on this computer, in no particular order:

• The best thing about this computer is the screen resolution. I’ve been essentially using a laptop as my main computer since 2001, going from a 15″ Dell Inspiron (1024×768, I think) to a 12″ iBook (ditto) to a 13″ MacBook (1280×800). Even at work — for the fleeting hours I’m in the office — I work off a 17″ LCD with a maximum resolution of 1280×1024. The iMac, then, with a resolution of 1920×1200 is a gigantic improvement. I can actually display multiple windows on screen at once without Exposé juggling. I feel like a whole new level of usability in OS X has opened up to me.
• And the screen itself is gorgeous. I opted for the 24″ iMac partially because I read a lot of whining about the 6-bit screen on the 20″ model. I sincerely doubt I would have really noticed a difference — the MacBook panel is 6-bit too and it doesn’t bother me — but the difference in cost was slight and I figured I might as well get the best screen possible. And it’s a phenomenal screen. I keep downloading High-def trailers from apple’s trailers site just because they look so damn good.
• The only downside to the screen is that it is insanely bright. This is nice to have — and probably necessary if you work with your back to a window (I don’t) — but it does make for some eye strain. Without a lamp on, even with the screen at its lowest brightness setting, I start getting eyestrain quickly — it’s that powerful. And, unlike Apple laptops, turning brightness all the way down does not turn off the iMac’s backlight. It would be nice if it did.
• Speed-wise, this machine is a beast. At 2.4 GHz and with 3GB of RAM (I upgraded from 1 — I’ll jump to 4 at some point in the future.) everything feels incredibly fast. The dedicated graphics card – an ATI Radeon HD 2600 — makes a huge difference from the integrated graphics on the MacBook. OS X was clearly designed with a dedicated graphics card in mind (making the decision to go with integrated graphics on the consumer line after the Intel switch really confusing, but I digress) as everything — all transitions, animations, etc. — look smooth and glitch-free. I ran Call of Duty 4 on it this past weekend just to test it out, and it ran perfectly well with no slowdown at native resolution. I don’t plan to play many games on this computer, but it’s nice to know I could.
• I installed Windows XP through Boot Camp and then grabbed a copy of VMWare Fusion, which lets me use the Boot Camp image as a virtualized machine. Starting up Windows in VMWare taxes the hell out of my MacBook, to the point where I avoid using it unless I absolutely have to, but it works amazingly well on the iMac. Boot time is less than a minute, and it doesn’t slow down OS X programs to any noticeable degree. I was running Internet Explorer 7 (to test some stuff) in Unity mode today (which puts the icon right in the dock and makes it look like a native application) with no issues to report. Very very cool and great for any kind of web development.
• I’ve been using Leopard’s Screen Sharing to go back and forth between the MacBook and the new iMac a lot, and it’s driving me a little crazy. I don’t have a lot of love for Windows these days, but their Remote Desktop client kicks the hell out of OS X’s Screen Sharing. It’s much faster, it adjusts resolution automatically, supports copy and pasting with way less hassle, and just generally works a lot better. I hope Apple has some plans to improve their support for this kind of thing down the road.
• The computer is silent. Unless it’s playing music, you would not be able to tell if it’s been turned on.
• Let’s hear it for Apple’ s Refurbished Macs page. I’ve been extolling the virtues of the Refurb store for a while. It’s a fantastic way to score slightly older models of Mac computers for deep discount prices. The 24″ iMac starts at $1900CDN, I got it for $550 cheaper than that. Sure, the processor is a bit slower (2.8 vs. 2.4) and it came with less RAM standard (2GB vs. 1GB), but aside from that it’s an identical specced machine. Plus, probably due to stock issues or whatever, I got a free upgrade from the standard 320GB hard drive to 500GB. It takes a bit of effort to keep coming back and refreshing the refurb page a bunch of times a day — deals come and go very quickly — but I don’t think I’d ever buy anything BUT a refurbished model going forward.
• Drawing on the screen brightness thing, the one thing I ardently DISLIKE about my iMac is the lack of a ‘turn screen off’ button. Thankfully, they added the Ctrl+shift+Eject shortcut in a recent OS X update. It’d still be nice to just have a little button on the back of the screen, though.
• New Apple keyboard is very nice. I’m not a gigantic fan of The Mighty Mouse, but it hasn’t pissed me off too much at this point. I plan on upgrading to something cordless with a nicer wheel in the future.
• The integrated speakers seem quite nice. I thought about getting some externals, but I kind of feel like they would ruin the aesthetic unless I hid them. Plus, I’ve been using the internal MacBook speakers for so long that any improvement at all is nice.
• I’m satisfied with the purchase. I really think the desktop + small laptop combination is the way to go these days. I considered just getting a MacBook Pro and an external monitor/keyboard/mouse setup, but I really like the “base station” the iMac provides: here’s where I save and back up important files, keep my music and media (and torrent downloads), and do more intensive projects. It frees up the MacBook for what it does best: handle smaller, quicker tasks and travel well. (My MacBook is actually provided by work at this point. The very-very-very long term plan is to eventually get a new-model for myself, hopefully a netbook-sized MacBook Air or similar. It all depends on where Apple goes with the product line.)

More thoughts later! I bet that all sounds very geeky. I’m at peace with that.

I’ve been considering this for a while, but kept finding reasons not to pull the trigger. I’ve essentially been a man-without-a-computer for the last year or so, as my old iBook has seen better days and chokes if used for anything more than a glorified jukebox. I managed to scoop a laptop — a MacBook — from work last summer which has essentially become my primary machine, but it felt weird not to really have a computer I could call “mine.”

This will be my first desktop machine in six years or so and I’m pretty jazzed about it. I’m not expecting that I’ll spend all my time actually sitting in front of it — I’ll probably still spend a chunk of time on the couch with the laptop — but it’ll be nice to have something permanent, where I can store data and back that data up, and maybe even play Spore if I ever get the urge to give my entire life over to a game again.

I bought from the Refurbished section at the Apple store, which is an awesome source for great deals on Apple hardware. Comes in the same packaging as a new model, with the same warranty. You really can’t lose.

So now I’ve spent a chunk of money, throwing my couple of months of fiscal conservatism into shambles. I blame the Democrats.

On my way home, I was reading RSS feeds in the NetNewsWire application, while listening to music, when I got a call from Erin. The music automatically faded out as her call came through. I tapped to accept the call, then spoke to her through the earbud headset — there’s a built-in mic that works flawlessly. Halfway through the conversation with Erin, I got another call from my mom. Thanks to the awesome interface, I was able to put Erin on hold and switch to the incoming call — and then switch back and forth, effectively juggling the calls. This was all incredibly easy to do.

There are obviously things that can improve on the iPhone (battery life, the stability of some programs) but, overall, there’s a hell of a lot to appreciate.

Eight hours. It doesn’t even seem real.

About a hour into my time in line, I realized I did not have my Social Insurance Number on me. And I remembered that they often need that piece of information to activate new contracts. So I made some calls and got the number. While on the phone, I asked the people behind me for a pen so I could write it down. All three of them indicated that they did not have pens, but that they did, in fact, have Blackberry, Palm and WM Mobile devices, all of which could be used to write things down.

It kind of freaked me out. I just wanted a pen. But then, really, I’m becoming one of them.

I’m not really sure how it will change my life. I will most likely use it to look up things on wikipedia when I am out at places, and the use that knowledge to dazzle the people I am with. People will be really goddamned impressed when I announce, as if from memory, the names of BOTH lead actresses from the classic Canadian teen drama Ready Or Not.

I’ll be, in my many ways, a hero.

It’s a lot of money for a phone. More money than I’ve ever spent. I think I’m just going to take it one month at a time. This month, for example, I can basically pay for my bill by selling this extra copy of Wii Fit I accidentally ordered. And, next month, I can pay for my bill by selling drugs to crack-addicts. In September, I’ll sell subscriptions to magazines over the phone or something. There are many roads to success.

Anyway, stay tuned for what will likely be a bunch of posts about my iPhone. And maybe some posted FROM my iPhone. I bet the first one will be like “ahgkhdsgjh gdskghd i cant tyge on thud thong.”

I’m pretty pissed about this as well, especially after the rumours a few weeks back of true unlimited data. I’ve spent a bunch of time (probably way too much time, honestly) reading about it, all in the hopes of learning something that will make my decision on whether to get one of these things easier.

Here are six points I’ve picked up:

1. The Canadian wireless industry really sucks

People are reacting to this as if it’s a singular incident, but the sad truth about it is that these prices are pretty well inline with other plans Rogers offers. Sure, there are a lot of people who have much better plans thanks to calls to the Retention department (most of them seem to post on the howardforums) but Roger’s baseline, publicized plans are just as terrible as the iPhone plan.

Look at the baseline “Mega Time 25″ plan: $25 a month (plus fees) gets you 100 daytime minutes, 1000 evening+weekend minutes. That 100 daytime minutes works out to 5 minutes of talk time per weekday. That’s terrible. (You do get unlimited network-calling, which is a nice bonus, but even that is a recent development.)

2. Even ignoring the plans themselves, Canadian cell service sucks

Here are some things my Canadian friends may not realize about cell service all over the world:

• “Long Distance” only applies to international calls. Calls in-country are considered local.
• Nobody pays for incoming calls anymore.
• We’re the only country that allows all of our cell carriers to impose a $6 “system access fee” for literally no reason.
• Nobody pays for CALL DISPLAY. This is literally something that costs $0 these days to offer to customers. Rogers actually has to turn it off if you don’t pay for it.
• Our one benefit: Americans actually pay for incoming text messages. At least we’ve got one-up on them there.

3. Canadians are way too nice about this

I think most of the high prices are driven by the lack of competition in the marketplace, but there’s something to be said for Canada’s overall tolerance for this sort of thing. Some of that is people who are just ignorant about the cost of cell service — kids who never see their bill are a big factor — and part of it is good old-fashioned Canadian optimism. “It could be worse” is a bit of a national mantra.

4. There is no other phone that’s just as good as the iPhone

With the recent announcement, a lot of people have been championing other phones on other services. And, indeed, with the HTC Touch you can actually get true Unlimited Data on either Bell or Telus. But, jesus, look at the thing. The Windows Mobile interface is an unquestionable pile of crap. And I’m really tired of tolerating awful UIs just to save some money. Call it a vendetta, but this isn’t something I want to support.

5. Rogers may, in fact, change their plans

I don’t think Rogers was counting on the sheer amount of bad press they’ve received over this announcement. They’re put in a really tough spot, at the moment, as I’m sure, even at these rates, the phone will sell, but announcing even a slight reduction in rates in the face of all the backlash would generate enormous goodwill towards the company.

It’ll be interesting to see where they go. Five years ago, I’d say a company changing policy based on a bunch of mad internet people would be an impossibility. But it’s becoming more and more common. Look at Apple lowering the iPhone price last year and then, after some backlash, giving previous owners a rebate. Or things like Netflix keeping User Profiles around after a big internet petition.

That said, I don’t think it’ll be a huge reduction if it happens. My guess would be that they’ll relent and throw in Call Display as part of the main package and/or lower the start time of Evenings to 7 p.m. If they did both those things, things would look a little more palatable.

6. Of the two services offering iPhone in Canada, Fido is probably the better bet

One of the more irritating things about the Canadian cell market recently has been the big three creating or acquiring spin-off companies, wholly controlled by the parent, all in the hopes of creating the illusion of choice for Canadians. Bell has Solo, Telus has Koodo, and Rogers has Fido.

Still, though, it means both Rogers AND Fido are offering the phone, which led me to look at the big differences between the two carriers:

• Fido has per-second billing, which Rogers doesn’t. Rogers just rounds up. So if you make a 15 second call on a Rogers phone, they’ll bill you for a whole minute. Fido will just bill you for 15 seconds.
• On Fido, evenings start at the far-more-reasonable 7 p.m.
• Fido has a slightly smaller coverage area which could be an issue if you spend a lot of time in the woods.

Fido seems like the winner, off hand. But it’s kind of like winning a weightlifting competition in prison. Even with the prize, you’re still in goddamned prison.

If that’s not the iPhone I don’t know what it is. I guess you could take ‘really big’ literally and assume it’s a vending machine, skyscraper or a giant Scooby Doo Mystery Machine van, but I’m still keeping my money on the iPhone.

I am really excited about this. Even though, realistically, the list of things I would do with my iPhone amount to little more than “play with my iPhone”, “show off my iPhone” and “ignore my iPhone when people call me on it.”

Barring the plan on Rogers/Fido being ridiculously expensive — it’ll be insanely expensive, sure, but hopefully not ridiculously so — I’m getting mine on day one.