My opinion (and no more): it is as attractive and appealing as every new Apple product proves to be. These folks are past masters at design. Note the intentional mimicry of the iPhone with the black bezel around the screen. Quite beautiful.

But here is my interior monologue when I see the iMac: okay, pat your wallet gently and let it sit, because this iMac will never hold more than 4GB, which someday will be a hindrance to you. Not now. Not a year from now. But eventually, and well within the life you may reasonably expect from a new computer, you're going to bump your head against the ceiling of 4GB *even* if it's a secondary machine.

Secondly, a dual processor will (within the year) be considered the slowest configuration on the market (Mac Mini aside).

The new iMac price point is not competing with a Mac Pro, but it competes directly with a higher-powered, used G5, which can be maxed to 8G, has slots for expansion and accomodates more drive space. You would also get Firewire options. And yes, a used G5 is not one fifth as exciting as a new iMac. But the goal is making music. I'm concerned that the iMac, for lack of interface, sits in its own private Idaho. And for a virtual orchestra farm, that is of no little consequence.

As a postscript, I'd find it goading to buy a computer in August, knowing that I'll probably shell out a fresh 100 dollars for Leopard in a couple of months.

hmmm ... a G5 (PPC) is not as performant than an INTEL core2duo overall ...
4 GB would be something i actually could live with ... but i'd assume also here the FW400 and FW800 sits on a single controller (of course we'd have to wait unltil someone looks inside) and this would limit extending with devices. again no eSATA, no PCI expansion slot. finally: glossy screens are not to my taste ... very personal opinion because i don't want to look at myself all day long [;)]

IMO this is a nice homecomputer for emailing, video chatting and watching DVDs, possibly for making music from time to time - but not a workstation for professional production.

btw: i had to learn lately that CPU increased significantly when display resolution went up from 1280x1024 to 1920x1200 - anyone else made this experience too?
christian

Oy, mistakes. iMac has Firewire (or course). I was reading the communications specs. Ports were under Peripheral Connections. Sorry. cm asked the more pertinent question of controllers under the hood.

And I mis-remembered that there were used quads out there under the name G5. But it had been re-branded by then as a Mac Pro. So no, I doubt that there's any G5 is as fast as this iMac.

Is it fair to judge the price of an old computer on eBay? Not always. But I see that my present G5 1.8 dual is going for a paltry 420 dollars. Fair enough, then, I could buy three for the price of a new iMac. I won't do that, but KNOWING it is enough to put my wallet away.

It's up to you to gauge the value of the iMac's concise footprint and your needs for a large palette of articulations pre-loaded. iMacs stir in me the decades-long desire to consolidate and simplify. But no one listens to my music with that in mind.

I understand that the iMac doesn't represent the same depth as the Mac Pro but recognize that some of us are making pretty decent music on them at the moment. Do they have as much room to grow? Heck no. But they do offer the semi-pro like myself a way of getting a hi-res display and a faster processor with greater RAM capacity than I have now withouth breaking my bank account (which in turn would lead my wife to break my neck).

Obviously if my freelance work picks up where I need that kind of power, yeah, it would be Mac Pro time with a 30" Cinema Display. But in the interum, I think the new iMac 24" would more than do well for me. I usually don't use more than 16 tracks anyhow. I try to work with counterpoint to create dense passages rather than going tutti-crazy. Also, I'm into using smaller groupings of instruments so I don't have to go nuts.

But I do appreciate the opinions and respect the knowledge base that they come from. Very informative and it has certainly made me think a little harder at what I should get.

Thanks kindly!

@cm said:

btw: i had to learn lately that CPU increased significantly when display resolution went up from 1280x1024 to 1920x1200 - anyone else made this experience too?
christian

Is this possible?


Rob

I'm going to buy a new PC with a 22" wide (16/10) video monitor.
Shouldn't the graphic card take care of it?
Some ideas about graphic cards that don't eat CPU power?
If I'll use 2 monitors that as well is going to increase CPU usage?
Ciao
Sergino

My guess is that it's possible if it doesn't have a graphics card and the higher resolution doesn't require scaling, Rob, although I'd be surprised if it were really true that there's a noticeable difference.

I personally wouldn't buy an iMac to use as a DAW, though. There's not any advantage that I can see.

...that is, I doubted that the resolution would make a difference until I re-read that it was cm who said it does.

Yeah, I already have an iMac 17" and I've kinda outgrown it. I'll just keep saving my pennies and perhaps might trade in the iMac for credit at my local music store since they are Apple dealers.

in the meantime, I've loaded up my E-Machine (PC) with RAM and have ported over most of my libs to that. Thanks God all of my libs are x-platform as is Cubase 4 (although I will miss Logic while I'm waiting for the Mac Pro).

i have been rather perplexed since it is a radeon 9800 pro (256 MB RAM) which is really top notch - my first asumption the card might not fully support openGL 2.0 and therefore leave too much work to the OS was wrong. so i've been wondering if this is related to just this computer (IIRC a dual G5 2.5 GHz) or a more general effect.
christian