Apple quietly refreshes iMac line, now up to 3.06GHz - Page 9

Damn right. I bought her a Canon 40D with 28 to 135 IS, and the 18 to 85 IS lenses.

I currently use a Canon 5D.

Nikon has problems with all software other than its own. I've used several Nikon models for testing purposes, and their own software does give slightly better resultsif you are using the straight results. But they can be made equal with a bit of touching up, which can then be saved to the camera profiles.

I have a Canon IPF5100 printer. In all my years of experience in this, I've never used a printer, at any price, including the Iris, that can give a print, even using canned profiles, that exactly matches my screen when looking at the print with my GraphicLite D50 box.

I'm amazed because even B$W comes out incredibly well. I can make slightly better profiles for some materials, but they're not much better.

This is in opposition to the Epsons, which are so nonlinear, that without good profiles, have terrible, muddy shadows, without detail, and lost highlights.

Depending on the paper used, the print prices aren't too bad, but the quality will be higher than Costco's. I just bought a roll of 17" x 100' f Canon Saten Photo paper for $50. This is a good paper, but medium weight at 100gm/M.

Better paper can cost $1.70 for 8.5 x 11. Harman is very good, and so is Ilford Galerie, which is a bit less expensive.

I just had a guy on FredMiranda ask for help with Costco. Without using their profiles, which is something I know where to get, it can be very variable. they use sRGB, as do most labs of that type, and some will throw the profiles away if their machine isn't set up properly.

I went through this with my own Agfa mini labs, the last of which was the D Lab.

no one gotten their hand on new iMacs yet?

where is the tear down photos? very quiet indeed....

A number of us have gotten them. No tear down photos yet, or at least, none that have been publicized.

I don't imagine there is too much difference.

Give us the rundown on your two new iMacs.

My new iMac finally arrived... (not sure if the extra shipping cost was worth it.... it still took 6 days)

But anyway.... it is a really nice machine, great colours and brightness. I find that I have to turn the brightness down in my florescent lit office... Very very bright screen

Too early to say much more about the iMAC...

And for me... the glossy screen is not an issue.
(If there was light behind me (a window) then that would create a lot of glare.)

I have a glossy macbook pro as well... all is grand

Cheers

Other than a few driver problems, and a hiccup with my wife's iTunes account, all seems to have went well.

I used Firewire drive mode to bring all the stuff from their startup drives over, and except for those above problems, that went like a charm. Passwords, everything, moved over smoothly.

The machines (24" 3.06 GHz) are fast. faster than many people seem to think an iMac can be. I changed out the 2 GB RAM from Apple to 4 GB from OWC, and that was easy. OWC gives a rebate for the old Apple RAM up to 60 days after you buy from them, but I don't know how much.

CS3 works very well. PS is very fast. I mean very fast. 200 MB files are very smooth.

The monitors are beautiful. I saw none of the problems some others are complaining about. One monitor is perfect, and the other almost, but better than most other good monitors. Saturation is excellent, and the color gamut is very good. I calibrated them today with my Xrite i1 PhotoUV, and it worked without any problems.

As with my own machine, prints off my daughters looks exactly like the screen, as viewed under my Graphiclite D50 print box. My wife doesn't do that work, so I didn't check, but it would seem as though hers would be as well.

The machines are DEAD silent, even after being on for hours.

It does take some getting used to putting a disk in a sideways, vertical DVD slot, but that's not a fault, just different.

There are reflections, but with a bit of vertical adjustment, they can't be seen when the machine is on. I notice that the old monitors, which are sitting near these machines (until I'm sure everything is ok, the old machines are still hooked up), and are matte, have terrible reflections, but they are spread over the entire screen face, so you might be fooled into thinking that they aren't there, but they are, lightening up all of the colors, esp. the blacks. These iMacs are much more saturated than the older matte screens. Much more.

The camera and mic works well. If you have the screen too high, as many people do, then you have to look up, which is funky, but these are at the proper level.

Movies look great. The sharpness, and saturation help a good deal. The old monitors always presented a bland view.

There is too much brightness and contrast out of the box, and I advise people to turn both down a fair amount. But the color is closer than I would have expected.

My daughter had a half dozen friends over this evening, and those not used to iMacs, either at home, or in school, were asking where the tower was. I explained, and they had that shocked look on their faces.

My daughter was overwhelmed by the size of the monitor at first (they use the 20" models at school) but quickly became enthused.

The speakers sound much better than expected, though they do need a sub. I haven't looked to see if the H-K iSub works with this. If not, I'll have to get them something else.

Other than that, my daughter needed ten minuted to get used to the new keyboard, but then all was well, she, as all her friends, types very quickly, and the flat keys threw her for a bit at first.

She has been using the M Mouse since it came out, and likes it, but my wife prefers her Logitec trackball. I'm a trackball user as well.

The finish on the machines is impeccable!

The remotes don't stick to the sides of the machine like they used to. I suppose the new models don't have the magnet. Too bad, as my daughter will surely lose hers.

So far, very impressed.

Thanks, you covered the bases very well. It does not look like backlighting is an issue.

If it was me Dept. I'd keep the Apple supplied RAM. I don't know what OWC pays for it, but I can't imagine it's very much. My reasoning is that if you ever have to take your machine in, or send it in for service, and RAM is part of the issue, Apple will not even touch it. They will return the machine to you, and tell you that you need to replace the RAM because they do not deal with 3rd party RAM. So, if the machine ever needs service, I just pop in the RAM that came with the machine, and Apple does their service work on it.

I've had that problem, so I know first hand. My old G5 PPC iMac has been to the Apple Store a couple of times.

Am I askign too much for Apple to make a Windows app that assists switchers in migrating the bookmarks, contracts, saved email and folders, and stores files over a Mac? I found this to be a real chore. For example, I had to install Thunderbird on the Windows machine to import the contacts from Outlook and then export to and send to the Apple's AddressBook.


The 2.4GHz iMac for $1,100 up from 2.0GHz is a great speed bump for the price if you are looking for something cheaper.


That is something most PC users never consider when purchasing a machine. It makes a big difference if you jeep your machine on and it's in your bedroom.


I have an issue that I am not sure there is a resolution for. I can't use the native reolution for the 20" iMac because everything is too small for aging eyes to read. So I had to use a non-native resolution, but that blurs everything, especially text with Font Smoothing on. With it off it looks even worse. Any ideas on how to keep the crispness but increase the size of everything would be great.


That is an issue with the 20" iMac too. until they can put the camera behind the screen there is solution for this that I can see.

I do wish the iChat A/V background effects worked better and that the resolution of the camera was higher. There was also some annoying reverb when using the the internal mic and speakers for an audio chat. Though I'm not sure if this can be helped without headphones, though we had software that could fix it on the fly.


For those that don't know, you can adjust the contrast by holding down the Control+Option+Command keys and pressing comma ( , ) or period ( . ).


Viral marketing at its best. I expect that several more Macs will be purchased by friends or my parents this year because of the one I set up for them. I expect my stock to double over the next year.


They 20" iMac speakers sounded "tinny" to me. I'd expect the 24" iMac uses better speakers than the 20".


The keyboards seem to be loved or hated, but a little time spent on it seems to change most people's mind about them. I'm guessing you got the BT model.


This was a chore to teach a Windows user how to use the MM.


I understand that they wouldn't want to put a hole in the aluminium on the side for the remote to attach, but I think they could have allowed it to stick underneath. I may try to rig something up.

Since I've never had need for a remote for my desktop Macs, and none of my Macs ever came with a remote, not knowing what to do with it, I'd probably stick it in a drawer.

I had an issue with bad 3rd-party RAM a few back with a 12" PB. Though it works for months and then started having issues right after a point update so I never considered taking out the RAM and checking the system. Long story short, I sent it to Apple with the 3rd-arty in place, they sent it back to me with the 3rd-party RAM removed, the OS reinstalled and a note saying that the RAM was bad. I was impressed with that service and thanks to .Mac getting my system back the way i like it was a an username and password away.

Since I don't use .Mac, I have a cloned copy of my internal iMac drive on an external eSATA drive with a FW interface.

My RAM issues were with RAM from 1800memory. They sent me replacement RAM, and it was also bad. Rather than wait for more mail order RAM, I went to Fry's and got Kingston RAM. That way I was back in business immediately. If I wasn't in a hurry for the RAM, I'd buy from OWC, or more likely from http://www.datamemorysystems.com/, because they usually have better prices.

The RAM that had an issue with so many years ago was from CompUSA (rookie mistake ).I flip between OWC and Crucial. for pricing. Newegg is a good store, but the prices do tend to be higher.

•

http://eshop.macsales.com/MyOWC/Upgr...=Show+Upgrades
• http://www.crucial.com/store/listpar...29%20MB323LL/A
• http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...For+Apple+iMac

Hmmmm, I just checked, and OWC is $7 cheaper than DMS for 2-2GB modules for the new 24" iMac. Too bad I don't have a new iMac in my immediate future. \

With RAM as low as it is these days they are all fine prices.

BTW, I don;t how long they've had but Crucial now has a scanner for Macs so you don't have to walk friends and family through the sometimes painful task of System Profiler to find out their RAM and limits

http://www.crucial.com/systemscanner/MacOS.aspx

I look forward to the day that Apple puts their built-in iSights inside the monitor. Not sure how feasible it is, but it's a dream to look forward to!

Quite feasible. The IR receiver, camera and mic already work over a USB bus in the notebook and iMac line, and Apple has USB and FireWire in the Cinema Display cable bundle. I think we all shocked that they haven't been updated in so long and will be even more shocked if they don't come with those 3 additions when they are refreshed.

I think he meant "in" the monitor, as in actually within the LCD, not a feature of the cinema displays.

They filed a patent for that very thing but we have no idea if or when they will be coming out with such a product. With as secret as Apple is, I would expect we'd see prototype devices from other manufacturers first as a proof-of-concept, but I don't recall reading about any such device.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...tos_video.html

Right, that's what I was dreaming of. Except instead of looking at yourself, you're looking at the other person. The camera is split between a bunch of pixels behind the screen, so when you're looking at the other person's eyes, it is capturing your eyes so that the other person sees you looking at them instead of looking away.

Thanks, I was trying to Google the article but was unable to find it. (Rather, I wasn't determined enough to keep looking!)

As far as I know, they really didn't develop any kind of a process that would make that possible. It looks like they only filed the idea which really isn't useful in itself.

Wish I knew what to say about that, but I would guess that Apple would have to know about as much about Windows, in its various incarnations, as they do about OS X, for them to be able to duplicate that service.

There's no real (here it comes, be ready!) resolution for that issue, sorry. This is an LCD problem. Once Apple turns Rez independence on for good, your problem will be solved.


The only solution is to make sure one adheres to the guidelines. The top of the screen is supposed to be even with one's eyes.


I don't know if they are the same speakers, but the larger machines have more of a chamber inside the machine, so this would lead to somewhat better bass.


Actually no. If Apple offered full keyboards with BT, as they did with the previous generation of white keys, transparent keyboards, than, yes, I would have ordered two. But, both my wife, and daughter, use the extra keys. Don't understand why they did this, they could have offered both. I do have a BT keyboard from the previous generation.

But, one other disadvantage to them is that there are no USB connectors. That's sometimes inconvenient.


I tried with my wife as well. No go.


Don't forget that at the ends are the speaker grills, and in the middle is the memory slot. It's still aluminum.

They could have done something on one side, on the back. A flattened area, with a magnet behind, say, on the right side, bottom.

I did read an article somewhere about how it would be done.

The idea was to put sensors, each with its own tiny lens BETWEEN the pixels on the screen.

The lenses and sensors, would be spread out on the screen. The rez would determine just how spread out. 640 sensors would be spread between 1280 pixels. The camera, therefore, would be almost the size of the screen, more, if the rez of the camera was higher.

Then software would stitch the information from each sensor together to form a single high rez image. As the camera would be so large, it wouldn't be seeing from one spot. In other words, it would be looking at you from different angles. How they could fix this odd perspective problem, I'm not sure.

This is how insect eyes work, with their one "sensor" per lens, on their multi faceted eyes.

What I can't determine about this ingenious concept,is how this would affect the monitor itself. Right now, there is NO room between the pixels on an LCD. So, as I "see" it, those pixels would have to be moved apart somewhat. What this would do to the quality of the image, I can only imagine.

It could be used to create a semi-3D image from a 2D image so the viewer could potentially rotate the image on their end to see a varying angle without having the "viewee" move. Though the farther you turn the more on the side you get the less detail you'd have as the image would have to compressed and there would missing segments that were out of line or sight, like behind the ears.

This could be a real problem. It would be a semi 3D camera, without the advantage of having cameras at different angles, at the same distance. The cameras at the edge would be further away than the cameras at the center. this means that the center parts of the image would be larger than the images progressively further out. software would have to correct that as well, though that would be the easy part, IF the camera knew just how far away from the subject each sensor was. That's a killer.

All cameras would also be facing straight forwards, unless they could figure out a way to tilt them inwards. But, again, unless they knew the distance, they wouldn't get the angles correct. this would mean some sort of distance measurment in real time, and moving sensors and lenses.

Whoa! Too much!

And none of that accounts for the angular differences from the distance from the center. If you turn sideways just a bit so that your nose is facing the cameras on the left, but the right side of your nose is hidden from those cameras, but can be seen by the cameras at the right, we have "hidden views" problems to take care of.

In a 3D mdel, the software removes those views, as does game software. But they know what is hidden, because it's a file where that information is known.

But, can this camera tell what it's looking at to make that determination? I don't think so.

The Developer Tools has a Resolution Independence app in /Developer/Applications/Graphics Tools/Quartz Debug.app that does the trick, but there are plenty of quirks with the way things like the Finder are displayed. I'll have to do some testing before determining if it's the best solution.

I've been informed that it won't hold the settings on startup so I'll probably have to write an AppleScript that starts the app, sets it correctly and then restarts Finder and other apps so the changes take place across the system. Unfortunately I don't see a way to get it to run in the background. Perhaps I can do it all with the command line.


edit: There is terminal command that writes to a file that initiates the new resolution when you log in. Though, you'll have to do some math to get the settings right. There are certainly some issues, but it looks to be close enough to be a feature of 10.6.

There are still problems with this, as well as a lack of support from app developers. While we may still have hope that sometime during 105's lifetime Apple will turn this on by default, I'm not so sure that will happen.

I think Apple included this for exactly the purpose it looks to be, a technology demonstration for those third party (and Apple's own developers) developers to understand, and prepare themselves for, in the 10.6 release.

I'd love to see it earlier, but it's increasingly looking as though it's not to be. I hope that's wrong.

If the switcher is also an iphone user, there might be a workaround for contacts, calendar and bookmarks. Sync the items via itunes to the iphone from the PC, and then resync to the new mac with itunes again and hopefully those items will be imported.

If done this with my own PC after a couple of random self destructs. This might also work with a new enough ipod (calendar and contacts, anyway).

I didn't think about using my iPhone for the transfer. That is certainly a doable solution.

Though perhaps more importantly, it proves that Apple has an understanding of Outllook contacts, calenders and email accounts. A well as IE favorites. It shouldn't be too hard to make an app that facilitates the process without an iPhone. Since it's iTunes doing the conversion having a simple option to save as ZIP or DMG that could be emailed or sent over the network would be fine.

This is in Mac Tutorials on moving from a PC to a Mac. It might work for you: http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/#tutorial=move

I have to agree with you there, converting my partner's address book, calendar and emails. I had to jump through some ridiculous hoops to do it, including as you say, installing Thunderbird just to get the files into a readable format.

That video wasn't too helpful in and of itself but it gave me an idea of what to search for (though I'm sure how I came across it). This link uses Eudora instead of Thunderbird to grab the data and then uses an app on the Mac to convert the mail from Eudora to Apple Mail.

I'll try this out this weekend to see if it works. I wish i were a consummate programmer that could make a program that could make this a one step process for the customer. This certainly is an issue that should be dealt with if Apple really wants to make switching simple.

Apple do offer a data transfer service in their retail stores for people moving from PC to Mac.

There's also Move2Mac and Outlook2Mac, which together seem to cover most of the bases.

I've seen Move2Mca before, but the specialized one-time use cable seems pointless and it doesn't do OUtlook. But you also posted a link for that, too.

I need to call the retail stores to verification, but I have a feeling they only move normal data. That theya re concened with moving OUtlook mail and calenders.

iTunes can already parse most of the information like Outlook, calendars, favorites, contacts, photos and music. The rest, like documents, is easily searched and parsed and would be an important aspect to helping people switch. Hell, build the few remaining parts into iTunes for Windows as a "backup tool" that copies to a ZIP/ISO/DMG file.

Enough on that, I am sounding like a broken record now and I have plenty of workarounds to try out. Thank the assistance, everyone.

Well, I got my new 24" 3.06Ghz iMac.

I think it was about 24 hours before the gradient from left to right started to drive me mad - then I noticed a stuck red pixel just off centre, and 2 dead ones in the bottom right.

Needless to say - it's gone back. I just hope the replacement is better. I'd read about the gradient issue before, but my 24" work iMac at work seemed to be free of this. It is totally unacceptable for a £1300 machine to have these kinds of faults.

very disappointed with Apple.

Interesting. Neither of the two I just bought have those problems.

I would suggest you ignore the advice below. Never buy the first line of anything from Apple including operating systems. Much better off with a tried and tested machine. Let some other idiots be the guinea pigs!!