(by Lucius Kwok)
One of most impressive features is the lack of a cooling fan on the unit. It’s a welcome change and makes the iMac even more like a consumer item, so that you can have the iMac sit in your home without sounding like an industrial-sounding machine.
Another welcome upgrade is that Apple upped the system bus to 100 MHz. The system bus is becoming the biggest bottleneck in computer speed, now that processor speeds are so fast. A faster system bus speed will improve overall performance of the computer, not just computation intensive tasks.
The smaller case and 15″ screen may be too small for some users, but most consumers want an unobtrusive computer. It will fit into a college student’s dorm room better and he/she can bring it home easily because of its all-in-one design.
I can’t really find any fault with the new iMac from what Steve Jobs said today. It’s a refinement of the latest revison iMac, with more features and a better design.
What wasn’t said, however, was one key issue. The iMac keyboard and mouse, which many users dislike, are still the same. Many have clamored for a full-size keyboard and a more ergonomic mouse, but they’ll have to look to third parties once again.
It looks like Apple has made many refinements to the iMac with this revision, none of which were bad. Only there’s one thing they haven’t touched, the keyboard and mouse. Other than this one missing refinement, the new iMac is the next level of consumer desktop computers.
