Watching Apple launch its new iMac is akin to the season’s latest runway fashion show featuring the latest sartorial trends.
The first iMac was iconic. It’s all-in-one, Internet-friendly design marked the resurgence of Apple in the consumer space and ushered in a new phase in computer design.
So, what’s in style this season? Aluminium and glass.
The revamped iMac retains the all-in-one form factor with largely the same aesthetics as its most recent predecessor. But it drops the glossy white and candy-like exterior for a matte aluminium finish and a screen that’s framed in black and laced with a glossy sheen of glass. It reeks of influences from the iPhone, with the glass-covered screen that hints at possible multi-touchscreen capabilities in future models.
With screen sizes of 20 and 24 inches, it’s made from a single sheet of aluminium, with no visible seams or screws, save for a slot at the bottom that provides access for memory upgrades.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs says that the new machines are built from the ground up for recyclability. The company had previously drawn the ire of environmental groups for lagging behind in environmental efforts.
The new iMac runs on Intel’s Core 2 Duo processors ranging in speeds from 2.0GHz to 2.8GHz. All models now feature a more powerful graphics card — the ATI Radeon HD — as opposed to the earlier bread-and-butter graphics chips.
It offers features usually reserved for Apple’s higher-end series of computers: fast Firewire 800 ports, memory capacities of up to 4GB and storage expansion at up to 1TB. It also includes new keyboards, also made out of aluminium, in designs that borrow heavily from the keyboards of Apple’s Macbook laptops.
Available in Singapore later this month, prices for its basic configuration start at S$2,048. A similarly-configured Dell desktop computer running Windows Vista Premium with double the memory and slightly more storage costs S$1,850. The computer-maker also introduced slight upgrades to its wireless routers and Mac mini line of compact computers.
Apple also refreshed its iLife and iWork software suites. Its iLife '08 package lets consumers organise photos, make their own movies, music and websites. It’s priced at S$148 but bundled for free with new Apple computers.
iWork '08, Apple’s version of basic productivity functions, includes Numbers — a new spreadsheet application, which completes the productivity suite. The suite also has word processing and presentation features. Its competition, Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac, has been postponed until next January.
iWork is also compatible with the new file formats that were introduced in the latest version of Microsoft Office on the Windows platform. iWork '08 goes for S$148. By comparison, the current standard edition of Microsoft Office for Mac costs S$763.
Subscribers to Apple’s .Mac online service (S$188 annual subscription fee) will enjoy an online storage increase from 1GB to 10GB and a new web gallery feature that lets the 1.7 million subscribers post and share movies and photos.
Apple’s next big event is the delayed release of Leopard, the next version of its Mac OS X operating system, due in October.
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CNA
