Review: Apple's 27" big screen iMac (late 2009) - Page 2

You need Sun level brightness to offset glare on glass- that's why. Like a plasma TV - they're all under glass.

Manufacturers set their monitors and Tvs at a very high brightness, and tune it towards the blue, to make it look bright and contrasty out of the box, and in the store. When people look at them in a store, the brightest and most contrasty look the best to most people (who don't know any better).

If people leave their monitors that way when they set them up, it's responsible for the eyestrain and headaches people get.

You shouldn't be watching Tv with the lights all the way up on the screen, and the windows open to the sun. All manufacturers tell you that, even though most Tvs are matte. Same thing is true when using monitors.

I'm really excited to get my hands on the new iMac. I ordered the 2.8 GHz i7 w/ 8 GB RAM. And I will be zeroing my current iMac out for use at our office. I'll have them side-by-side on the dining room table for speed tests. My favorite test being converting video clips via VisualHub.

I found it interesting that some people mentioned running their monitors at half or lower brightness. I have always preferred the full brightness during the day and only turn it down at night. I actually wish it would go dimmer for those times when you wake up and find the current levels unbearable.

The review was great and I'm looking forward to seeing and feeling a nice performance difference between the new iMac and the last generation.

you must be joking
pleasae don't make stuff up

what you mean to say is you need diffused light to off set the glare


glass reflects

I think you want Shades for Mac.

Heath

Thanks for the input re: the value in dedicated graphics for 21.5" iMac. Appreciate it.

- Greg

I'm talking underneath the glass- shooting out.

I'd be interested in knowing what you decide.

why not. and if you don't have enough room for it you can store it at my place


all depends on what you are doing on it.

Grandma that is emailing, surfing for knitting patterns and ichatting with the kids, no

someone doing video or photo work where you are shuffling around a zillion toolbars and windows and having to wait for things to render, heck yeah


3 reasons jump right up

1. online petitions are a total fail due to the fact that they are very very easy to pad in this age of folks having several email accounts.

2. the glossy ones sell. and sell a lot

3. much of the "glare" you speak of is actually reflection which can be reduced by users who aren't too lazy to make a few adjustments in where the display is placed in a room related to the lights and windows. sometimes a couple of simple tweaks will eliminate the issue.

as for the whole eye strain issue. i love how many of those folks talk about being at the computer for hours non stop and don't consider that such lengthy times is a factor in the fact that they are having strain issues. as much, if not more than the glare.

I thought the 24" display with native hdmi resolution had hit a sweet spot. The pixel size corresponded well with print font sizes at desktop viewing distances.

Does the same font size appear to be about 15% smaller when viewed on the 27 vs the 24?

Does that mean you are upsizing the default web font size or moving the display closer to your eyes?

Do your friends receive larger font emails from you?

Can I assume the improvements to the 27 display technology outweigh any problems in having to upconvert 1080p material to fill the screen?

The new iMac 27 inch looks breathtaking.

The 'quad core' option with the ati card seems the way to go. £1700 with a free '30' inch Apple LED?

I'd take that bet. If I hadn't bought this rather nice 24 inch 2008 core 2 duo then I'd be all over it like a rash.

So much for not being able to fit a desktop cpu (Nehelem!) into an iMac. Heh.

The display looks out of this world. I can't wait to see a 27 incher in person.

I like glass screens. I don't understand the fascination with crappy plastic screens that make squiggles when you press on them...and scratch easily when kids write on them with their pencils.

Blue Ray may have been nice. But it's far from a critical mass product. Just buy a PS3 and a big sexy LCD tv?

Far cheaper than a low end iMac.

And you can use it with the tablet when it comes early 2010.

Criticisms?

The price for quad core entry is still fairly outrageous compared to the PC side of things.

There's flat out no way we should be paying £1500 to get quad core. The chips are as cheap as chips.

That's flat out greed, tier marketing whore greeding when you're sat on 30 billion.

Quibble 2? The 4850 IS a LOW end card. Nice performer...but why are we STILL having to pay £1500 to get a LOW end card half a year later since it's intro'?

*Shrugs.

I'll await a bump on the 27 incher re: quad i7 and a better gpu in half a year's time. I hope. And I'll look at it again.

A step in the right direction.

But the cpu and gpu? Penny pinching. The i7 should have been standard on the top two models at least.

And the i5? Standard on the entry models.

Lemon Bon Bon.

There are no problems in upscaling. It simply looks a bit better. Very high end video systems have been upscaling for a couple of decades. Even cheap DVD players will upscale to 1080i. It simply isn't a problem.

You may also be interested to know that the next larger video resolution being considered, and that I've seen the prototypes for, are 2560 x 1440. So this will be ready for that when it comes.

The fonts seem about the same tome. The larger screen is bigger than you think.

since this great machine is ~the price of a 30" cinema display (less 150 vertical pixels), but with a computer attached, would anyone know if there is a way to make 2 of these work together as one, perhaps? we know it can be used as display only, but a synch operation will make for a dual monitor, dual quad-core 2.8 GHz, 8 GB RAM, 2 TB powerhouse! (at 1/3 the price of a MP with 2x30" CD) ...

You could take the DP output from one and plug it into the input of the other. It would act as another monitor for the first one. Just set it up in the Monitors panel.

Since the i7 is a BTO option, does that mean other retailers (other than apple) won't sell it? I'm deciding between the i5 and i7. I can get the education discount from apple, but will still have to pay tax (7% for me). So the price difference between the i5 (from online vendors) and i7 (from apple) is $350 for me. Any ideas on whether it is worth it? Any online place I can get the i7 from?

This is the first one I checked, MacMall:

http://www.macmall.com/n/macNavLinks-macNavLinks.224

Scroll down for the listings.

I'm sure others will have them, as well as Apple's online store.

Thanks!! I didn't realize Macmall sold all configs. This is great help

Your 3 statements are not reasonable:

1. What did you do to contribute and change? It least those guys are trying to make things better, make the difference.

2. Cocaine sells even more.
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect)." - Notebook, 1904, Mark Twain"
Additionally, they (Apple) would have made even more money and more sales (simply because I would have bought it ) if thy were offering matte option.

3. This one is totally wrong. Absolutely.
Thank you for educating us that "glare" is a reflection. *cough* When did you learn it? So that you can proudly tell about it in your post.
Laziness have nothing to do with comfort end effective use. How about your working place (think - your table has a fixed position). Think again. Think about at least 10 other situations.

Related to what you are talking about Eye strain issue:
You never start looking for a cause changing many parameters simultaneously. Simply said, those people working long hours do not have eye stain problem on matte screen. This means that long hours is not a significant cause of eye stain.
If you change a parameter - a matte screen to a glossy - you are getting an eye stain in just a friction of the time you are usually have been working without having eye stain issue. This means that glossy option has a significant impact on eye stain (even if you work shorter time than usually).

I am not sure that this logic could be understood by everyone, especially by those who believe that if something sells good than it is good for you.

Additionally, glossy screens are bad for colors adjusting and any decent photo editing. So your efficiency reduces with glossy screens.

Performance wise in CS3 or CS4, is the gap between 27 i7 core still wide with the MacPro ?

Granted, the MacPro will get me around 6000 $, but the performance boost and upgradable capacity might be worth it.

What do you say ?

Maybe I can help as well.

I have the early 2009 Mac Pro. The 2 chip model. Yes, it's faster. But there's also a price/value question.

One major question is the size of the images and files you will be working with.

If they are under 60 MB, in most cases, then the 2.8 GHz i7 iMac will be plenty fast. It's even pretty fast on my daughter's early 2008 3.0.6 GHz 24" iMac.

The 1 TB drive is also adequate. Do you need to Raid two or more drives? Not really. Unless you are a speed freak. An external drive for backup will work well.

The 4850 upgrade graphics card is also fine. Unless you're doing heavy 3D work, then anything faster isn't required.

The new monitors are really good, from what I've seen. The IPS panel is about as good as you're going to get outside of a $2,500 monitor. The glass isn't a problem with a few minor precautions, despite what a small few say, and it gives better blacks contrast, and saturation. There's no 27" display available now that has the high resolution of this one. It's very useful with high rez images, graphics, and publishing, and is tall enough for a full size two page spread.

The Mac Pro has the advantage of two Xeon chips which are somewhat faster. But for the next 18 months or so, CS4 won't be using more than two cores for most functions, and when it uses more, it's not efficient. Even a four core machine will see speed increases when CS5 comes out.

tnx for the answer, mel. however, wouldn't this make one of the machines work as a display only? in such case, one can buy the least expensive 27"-er and use it on and off occasionally, while having another top-ot-the-line use the first as desktop space. this will still require some hassle, use of second keyboard, mouse. one can also add the 24" LED cinema, bit they will look a bit different and perhaps not in line. and that will still be a single imac with an extra display...

nevertheless, would it be possible to somehow make both machinee work as ONE? i.e - turn two quad-cores into a dual-quad core computer with combined ram, HD's, etc? perhaps, wishful thinking, huh?

You pretty much convinced me.
Most of my files are under 60 Mb, except films scans (6*6) which can top 150-200 Mb.
The only thing I notice on my current iMac 3.06 2008 (the same as your daughter's) is
it becomes pretty slouch after a session in Capture 1 Pro or LR3 (not so much with CS3, though).
So much so that I have to PRAM and Onyx it once a week to get it at its snappiest again.
I suspect 4 Mb RAM might be not enough.
My HD is only filled to 20 % and I have no RAID — only 4 external drives of 1 TB each for daily backups of pictures, plus Time Machine 2 Tb constantly running.
I wonder if any machine will get slower after a heavy session with Capture One Pro, for instance.

Sure. The one with the signal being input would be used as a display. But you can toggle that on and off, so that you can switch it over at any time.

Apple does have software to turn two or more Macs into one computing device. But it only runs with software designed to take advantage of it, such as scientific applications, and some graphics rendering apps. It's called Xgrid.

http://www.apple.com/search/?q=XGrid

Am I the only one concerned about the temperature sensor on the hard drive? This is actually the first I've heard about it. Prior to this latest refresh, it was easy enough to replace the hard drive on the iMac either with a larger and/or faster HD or even an SSD, which is not currently available as a BTO option. In doing so, it was easy to simply transfer the temp sensor wire to the new drive.

Unfortunately, if the system now REQUIRES a specific temp sensor interface that can't easily be moved to another drive, it effectively limits the upgrade path. 1TB may quickly become inadequate in the near future, and spinning platters simply don't have anywhere near the random I/O performance as a good SSD.

The lack of flexible upgradeability on the HD significantly reduces the iMac's useful life since the HD will presumably run into a storage capacity/performance barrier much earlier than the Core i5/7 CPU or 16GB of RAM.

Posted from my iPhone.

All computers have these sensors. It only limits you to the same manufacturers drive, and maybe not even that.

Good news! My original iMac intel 20" screen went wonky for a moment. Last time this happened it meant the video card was bad and on the way out!

Now, I can 'justify' getting a new 27.5" one! Yeppeeeee!

Now, if only my original MacBook intel 13" would fail, I could get a new MacBook!

And of course, I would have to get either the Extreme "n" or TimeCapsule with "n"

If only I could push my girlfriend's buttons, like Apple pushes mine!

nice post doorman.

Thanks, myapplelove. Appreciate your feedback.
Have registered only because wanted to reply... I was too emotional

I have the MacBook Pro, and just put a SSD drive in the unit. Loading CS4 used to take around 40 seconds, now 5 seconds. Cost me $600, but will never go back to a plater based drive.

No such an option on iMac, and SD are limited to 500 Gb, isn't it ?

Just be careful as that drive begins to slow down over time.

You wouldn't want to pay for a fast 256 Gb SSD.

I ordered mine from OtherWorldComputing, Crutial 256K. I went back and re-read what your doing. If your working with large'ish files, probably not a good direction. I am an iPhone developer, so don't need that type of space.

There's no reason now for not delivering a 30' LED Cinema Display - get moving, Apple!

Is that graphic wrong in that it says no expansion slots??
That's boy true. Must be a new person. Of course they have slots or to new of a person reviewing and thinks. All apple=no expansion. Lol. Who knows. But that should be fixed.

The 'solution' to reduce glare and reflections, by increasing brigtness (on already over bright displays) creates a huge amount of eye-sore / headaches. I use my professional NEC 2690WUXi on low brightness to combat this.

Adjusting the display position is not always an option for laptops, or for certain office environments - window/desk/light placement is not a free choice for many.

The pictures at the bottom of this review show why I want glossy (scroll over pics to see the problems with glossy screens).
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/mul...=7-10041-10146

Apple should just offer the freaking option.

FWIW our accountant has the new 27" iMAC, reduce the brightness and she can use it as a mirror - for free.

I just purchased this iMac. First Mac in my house. For the first time in my PC life I said to myself that you can not beat this price. I bought the base model 27" straight from Best Buy, $1699. My wife wanted a new desktop and wanted an all in one. We went shopping and compared the HP and Gateway. Both were ok but gimmicky, the Gateway was way cheap but tiny. The 24" HP was $1400 and had the touch screen. Then on a whim I decided to head over to the Mac side and the 27" blew me away, the screen is awesome. To just buy a screen of this magnitude would be $1000 + dollars. Yes it will reflect so I placed it in a good spot in my house and do not have any issues. I have been a windows guy for ever and have always built my PCs so a Mac was never an option. But for what the wife needed and all the iPhones and iTouches in my house, this was a no brainer. I find myself on it all the time now and I love the Magic Mouse. I migrated all the iTunes libraries to this machine with ease and now I can not keep the kids off it and I do not have to worry about them jacking anything up.

AND amazingly, plasma looks better than LCD, hmmm. Would you like a matte windshield on your car too. I'm sitting next to a Sony Trintron 20" under brand new fluorescent lighting, no glare. Glare is a bigger issue on portables not Desktops!

I want a Plasma iMac. Not that 3rd rate technology LCD

Well, plasma is a dead technology. Almost no company is producing them anymore. LCD has caught up in the areas in which it was behind, and is now, with LED backlighting, better in delivering good blacks, an area in which Plasma was always poor. The only plasmas that did deliver good blacks, the last high end, and very expensive Pioneers, were discontinued just 3 months after their introduction, followed shortly after by all of Pioneers plasmas. Pretty much everyone else has followed, or has said they soon will.

Besides, plasma consumes too much power, and gets too hot.