• Recommend:
• 0 Comments

Apple iMac Seems a Solid Product

Apple's new all-in-one Mac remarkably free of design and manufacturing flaws.

By Dan Littman, PCWorld   

The best advice when shopping for any electronic device--especially a computer--is: Don't buy the first model off the assembly line. But smart shopping went out the window last month when Apple shipped the peculiar-looking, translucent teal iMac. In the six weeks since it arrived, the $1299 iMac has by all accounts been wildly successful, and market-research firm International Data Corporation predicts iMac sales will approach a million units by the end of this year.

Macworld contributing editor Ted Landau is no Apple apologist. The author of Sad Macs, Bombs, and Other Disasters runs the MacFixIt site, where he posted this comment: "I have so far gotten far less problem reports than would be expected ... [Reality may] set in over the next few weeks. But for now, the iMac has all the signs of being one of the most solid, problem-free computers Apple has ever made."

And iMac problems that have been identified have been easily resolved.

Tom Santos, owner of the popular MacAdam sales and repair shop in San Francisco, says the iMac CD-ROM drive's tendency to make noise and occasionally malfunction is due to uneven distribution of ink on CDs, which sends the CD out of alignment when spinning at high speeds in the very light CD tray. A flash-ROM upgrade available from Apple compensates with "spin management," although graphic designers who produce CD-ROM labels could prevent problems by avoiding lopsided designs, he adds.

Epson printer owners also complained that their printers didn't work when attached to the iMac's USB port, but Epson released new drivers that fixed the problem.

Likewise, reported failures of iMac internal modems is due to some iMac owners incorrectly reconfiguring the modem settings, says Santos.

Other complaints voiced by iMac buyers and would-be buyers include a lack of peripherals and inflated performance claims. Online techies are hotly debating Apple's claim that the $1299 iMac can "toast" a $3000 Windows system running a 400-MHz Pentium II. Apparently the iMac's G3 processor does beat the high-speed Pentium on certain technical benchmarks, but that doesn't mean real-world performance is superior when bogged down with buses, an operating system, and application software.

The lack of peripherals is nothing new for Mac users: Apple has often adopted new technologies such as SCSI and PCI before the larger Windows market, which cautious peripheral vendors often wait for before committing resources. As USB spreads through the Wintel world, the iMac peripherals crunch should ease.

Overall, the iMac seems to have emerged victorious from the jaws of defeat that were so recently closing around a demoralized and discredited Apple. But only time will tell if the company can maintain its new momentum.