iMac G5; Candy To The Eye

Measuring barely 2” thick, this new line of power packed iMacs is set to blow your mind away.

By Geoff Liang • UrbanWire
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It’s finally arrived. After months of anticipation, Apple officially released their new line of iMacs at the Apple Expo 2004 in Paris on Aug 31.

The Machine

Innards of the iMac

Here in Singapore, the machines started shipping in Sep 15. And you can’t help but say to yourself, “This is it, Apple has done it again.” If you thought the iMac G4 was impressive you haven’t seen anything yet. Ironically, there isn’t much of the new iMac G5 to be “seen”. Looking at them for the first time, you’ll be wondering, “Where the *insert expletive* did the computer go?”

Illusionist David Copperfield couldn’t have done better, that’s right; the entire CPU is housed within the display itself. They’ve managed to squeeze an entire desktop into something so small, yet it’s perfectly functional, it works amazingly, and unlike your laptop, it won’t heat up like a toaster.

The new iMac G5, coming in 17” and 20” widescreen models, and like PowerMac G5 and Apple Xserve G5 before it, boasts the fastest processing chip worldwide; the first chip to hit 64-bit processing.

G5 Chip

G5’s 64-bit technology will work your computer so close to the limit – it ran a Photoshop filter almost twice the speed of a Pentium-4 computer – that an extremely advanced cooling system is required to prevent it from blowing up. Apple’s PowerMac G5 processor has honeycombed holes at its front and back, and is equipped with 5, compared with normal PCs running about 1 or 2, cooling fans and a convection system to stop it from overheating.

iMac G5 cooling system

For the iMac G5, the cooling system not only cools the computer, but also the display, all in a nifty thickness of barely 2 inches (5 cm).

Looking at the new iMac G5, you’ll notice the consistency, in terms of design, across all the newly released Apple products. In fact, it looks pretty much like the new Apple Displays, albeit with a wider bottom, which, in turn, resembles the PowerMac G5s.

Left: iMac G5. Right: 30" Apple Display

The Hardware

With a desktop computer occupying so little space, it frees up your tabletop and reduces clutter to give you a better working experience. It’s practically a tablet PC, which falls within the $3000 - $4000 range according to hardwarezone. It’s almost portable, consisting of just the display and computer all built into one. You can even mount it on a wall using a standard VESA mount.

For the perfect desktop set up, install an Airport Extreme Card (Apple’s wireless technology), and a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse for an extra $148, into your new iMac and voila! the only wire you’ll ever see is the power cord.

And don’t even bother about installing speakers; trust us, they’re already there. Where? Just look under the LCD screen and you’ll notice them. They’re strategically placed there to allow the sound to bounce off the table and into your ears.

Whenever you need to read CDs, simply insert them into the slot-loading optical drive situated at the side of the display. The eject key however, is on the keyboard itself; depress it and watch the iMac spit your CDs and DVDs out.

The iMac G5 ships with a whole arsenal of ports; audio in and out, mini-vga, USBs, Ethernet and phone line, and even firewire. You’ve got them all nicely placed at the back of your display.

What UW Says

An extremely gorgeous consumer desktop computer with a wide screen, small footprint, and powerful specs to boot, going at such affordable pricesranging from $2,488 to $3,588 (do remember that Apple is a premium brand), the new iMac G5 is quite a steal.

Now let’s see Bill copy that.

*Pictures courtesy of apple.com.sg