Matt Elliott’s Online

Quick iMac thoughts

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.

From the Mail Bag

I was away this week, as you might remember, in Windsor (birthplace of jazz — read more in a post Erin claims makes no sense), and then pretty damn sick for the remainder of the week. It has not been a fun ride. About the only bright spot has been my continued love affair with Canada’s Worst Driver, which is a tour de force of television the likes of which I’ve rarely seen.

BRIEF ASIDE: I think the thing I like best about Canada’s Worst Driver, and you can actually watch it for free on The Discovery Channel’s website, is that the host — the delightfully named Andrew Younghusband — actually does all the challenges himself, before the contestants do. It’s something I wish more hosts would do.

ASIDE TO AN ASIDE: In fact, it reminds me a little bit of the scenario I hoped would play out during the whole Ken Jennings Jeopardy! thing. Where, after Ken had won 400 games or whatever it was he did, Alex Trebek would start up one episode by saying “You’ve done it Ken! You’ve defeated all the Jeopardy! challengers!” But then he would turn, smile broadly at the camera, pick up his OWN signaling device, and step behind a podium. “Except for one.”

In any case, when I was off watching Discovery Channel reality programming and trying not to vomit, I received a comment to my last post, regarding the Big Shiny Tunes series I wrote about last week.

Luke Adams writes:

i have to take exception with your calling the original big shiny tunes the one that holds up best. oddly, i was also looking at the tracklists of the entire series the other day, and although big shiny tunes 2 was the one i owned and listened to the most when it came out, i was shocked at how strong big shiny tunes 3 was. one or two duds, but it has a bunch of songs i still listen to semi-regularly.

I claimed that Big Shiny Tunes was the best, and looking at the track listings, I’m going to stand by that. Two is undoubtedly a great disc, but it kind of sags during the Blur-Third Eye Blind-Smash Mouth-Sugar Ray section. Bran Van 3000’s awesome “Drinking in LA” snaps it into high gear, and the rest is actually remarkably solid.

To be fair, though, what I actually said was this:

BRIEF ASIDE: I just looked at the tracklists for the Big Shiny Tunes series and it’s amazing how much better the first volume is than every single one that followed it.

And that’s proving disingenuous. I’m issuing a retraction. In fact, the first volume of Big Shiny Tunes is only slightly better than the next few that follow it. I was unfair.

To clear up any and all confusion, I’ve made a graph.

Scientific Graph

I had a pretty rigorous process for defining the metrics here. I took a look at each volume, decided which tracks qualified as “Good” (And I was pretty fair — I gave thumbs up to every Coldplay track and even the Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris” — because it is awesome.), then divided that number by the total number of tracks on the disc. Then I calculated percentages and made a chart. Finally, I realized I had just spent a significant amount of my time making a chart exploring the history of a Canadian rock compilation that nobody really cares about.

Then I got depressed. Then I moved on. Exeunt.

A Brand New Day

Another business trip this week, as I am off to scenic and historic Windsor, ON. Birthplace of… something. I’m not sure. Let’s say “Jazz”. Windsor, ON is the birthplace of jazz music. It was the wartime warblings of one Jackie “Fats” Lobo in the upper-north-side of Windsor that once gave birth to the genre that has literally been said by musical historians to be, quote, important. Unquote.

That’s all fake stuff I just made up. I’m sorry about that. I don’t even know why I did it. There’s no reason to lie about the historical importance of Windsor, especially considering its the birthplace of both the dude who played Wheels on Degrassi and CanCon Rock legends The Tea Party, veterans of Big Shiny Tuneses 2, 4, 6 and 9.

BRIEF ASIDE: I just looked at the tracklists for the Big Shiny Tunes series and it’s amazing how much better the first volume is than every single one that followed it. Aside from the possible exception of “Scooby Snacks”, it all holds up.

So Windsor will take up the brunt of my week. Other things on the docket include a 5:45 a.m. wake-up call on Tuesday, to head to an event in which I must wear a suit, which I hardly ever do. Later in the week things calm down, and I am likely to take some to sit around in the city in public spaces like coffee shops and mall food courts looking introspective, hoping that someone will ask me to pose for an oil painting.

It’s all been good times since I last wrote, guys. I got my computer and it’s pretty fantastic. I am typing on it right now. The screen is so bright and clear and gorgeous that I imagine this is probably pretty much exactly what Jodie Foster saw when she got blasted into space in that one movie she was in. (It was Nell.) They should have sent a poem, is what I’m saying. Instead they sent me.

Big plans for life as a 25 year old are still developing. Mostly they include writing disjointed blog points where paragraphs start out serious but then devolve into bizarre medleys of non-sequiturs and half-jokes. All dosed with healthy detachment.

Also: Need to book a dentist appointment. And call the cable company to see if they will give me a free HD box. And continue organizing things in this file cabinet I bought. And start exercising more. And discover the terrible beauty of truth in our times.

One step at a time.