Apple has made much of the ‘5 USB ports’ on the new iMac, which might lead one to believe there are five physical USB ports on the back of the iMac, when imagery on Apple’s site clearly show only three. For those of you who don’t read tech specs closely, you might have missed this explanation from Apple: “Three USB 1.1 ports (shared on two 12-Mbps controllers); two USB 1.1 ports on keyboard.” So in other words, even the old iMac, using this new port calculus, has four USB ports, thanks to the two ports on the Apple Keyboard. And the actual number of USB controllers remains at two, just as on the rest of Apple’s product line.
Thank Apple this time, though, for moving the ports to the back, as opposed to the horrendously bad USB port placement on the Cube. And PowerBook/iBook users who want a second machine: notice the new iMac supports Apple’s fantastic FireWire Target Disk Mode. (Haven’t tried it yet? Plug your FireWire `Book into a desktop machine’s FireWire port, and power it up holding down the ‘T’ key!)
