"The new phone books are here!"
As a lot of you may have heard, Apple announced their new iMacs last night at the Apple Expo in Paris.
I've made some spectacularly bad predictions about Apple in the past. I wasn't all that impressed with the initial iMac - I'm not a fan of all-in-one designs, I prefer flexiblity. I also thought the iPod would be a spectacular failure because it had a similar feature set to the then Archos Jukebox while having a significantly higher price. Apple quickly lowered the initial price of the iPod and the rest is history.
So here I find myself looking at the new iMac and being impressed with an Apple computer for the first time in a long time. Sure, it's an all-in-one design, but it's the very definition of svelte and stylish. I could easily see myself buying one of these. I've been harping on the fact that I need a cheap headless Mac for a long time now. This iMac is certainly not that, but neither is it a massive space hog like the eMac. In fact, if it were possible to plug my tower into the iMac and use it as a dummy DVI display (pseudo-headless, as it were), I'd plunk down my cash right now. The 20" iMac is only $600 more than Apple's new 20" Cinema Display, so the value is there. I'd love to see Apple innovate in that direction for the next rev of the iMac, but I suspect the number of people who'd want such a power feature is pretty small.
There's really only one thing wrong with the new iMac as far as I can see. It ships with the woefully underpowered nVidia FX 5200. The thought of Mac gamers being saddled with this GPU for X more years is pretty depressing from a game developer's standpoint. I've started a nightly ritual of prayer and sacrifice to Apple, with the hope that they'll ditch this card for something - anything - else in the next rev. One of the guys here at Aspyr, Michael Marks, did point out that they're using the 5200 Ultra now, instead of the regular 5200. That translates into faster core and memory clock speeds (325MHz vs 250MHz and 325 vs 200, respectively). I'm going to hope that this, combined with the power of the G5, will make things turn out OK.
Interestingly, if you click on the "sizzling graphics" link on Apple's iMac page, you're taken to a new page that features a doctored screenshot of KOTOR running on the iMac, next to the caption "Widescreen wonder." It's ironic, because KOTOR doesn't support true widescreen resolutions (the GUI layout is hardcoded in these KOTOR-specific .lyt files, and we have no tools to generate new ones for the Mac). It does support stretched modes though, so no black bars on the side if you don't want them. :-)
Comments
The iMac is not meant for gaming. Well that what I was told at the Think Secret forum when they posted the specs earlier this month (is there any other use other than games?). I agree completely that the 5200 is way out of date and they could have easily used a 6800LE for not much more (it is an OEM only chip anyway). Think I am going to wait till the next revision before replacing my G4 iMac (got it for EQ when it hit beta) and hopefully they will move up to the 6xxx chipset by then.
Posted by: Dale McLaughlin | August 31, 2004 08:11 PM
The design is superlative. However, I'll wait for a future revision and Mac OS X 10.4!
Posted by: John Hood | September 1, 2004 01:59 AM
Space and heat issues obviously prevented a Radeon 9800 or GeForce 6800 from being used in the new iMac, but Apple really should have used a Radeon 9600 or 9700, especially in the 20" version.
Brad, will the "black bars" be available in KOTOR for those of us who prefer to maintain the proper aspect ratio?
Posted by: Joe | September 1, 2004 12:43 PM
"Space and heat issues obviously prevented a Radeon 9800 or GeForce 6800 from being used in the new iMac, but Apple really should have used a Radeon 9600 or 9700, especially in the 20" version."
Yeah, I would have loved to see them use a 9600 Mobility, but I can only assume it was a matter of cost.
"Brad, will the "black bars" be available in KOTOR for those of us who prefer to maintain the proper aspect ratio?"
Yes, definitely. Stretched mode is available for those who don't know any better and 4:3 modes for the rest of us. :)
Posted by: Brad Oliver | September 1, 2004 01:06 PM
I find your comments about the video cards to be very interesting. However, I can't find any discussion of what beats what when it comes to video cards. Obviously when looking at just ATI you can guess that the higher numbers are better :-) But how do regular video cards compare to the mobility versions ?
If any one knows of a source that shows how different video cards stack up, please let me know.
I ask this because I am currently trying to decide on which PowerBook to buy (or maybe an iBook) and the 12" PB has a GeForceFX Go5200 (64MB) whereas the 15" has a Radeon 9700M (64MB) and the 12" iBook has a Radeon 9200M (32MB). What is the relative merits of these cards ?
Posted by: Nick Beadman | September 1, 2004 05:02 PM
You can't always go by the numbers. For example, the GeForce 4MX was a replacemnet for the low-end GeForce 2MX, so it had less performance than the high-end GeForce 3.
The Radeon 9200 and the GeForceFX 5200 are about the same. Since the 12" PowerBook has twice the VRAM of the 12" iBook, the PowerBook has better graphics performance. That doesn't mean its a game machine, but the 12" PB will give adequate performance. (Call of Duty ran fine on my 12", but TRON 2.0 didn't).
The Radeon 9700 is much, much better than the other two chips. If playing games, or doing 3D work, is important enough to you, then the 15" PowerBook what you should get.
Posted by: Joe | September 1, 2004 06:35 PM
Remember, the Mobility Radeon 9700 is significantly different than the desktop Radeon 9700. The Mobility version is essentially a souped up Mobility Radeon 9600. The desktop version is more beefy (I think more pipelines) and performs significantly better. But both the Mobility 9600 and 9700 are still better than the FX 5200.
Posted by: a2daj | September 2, 2004 09:13 AM
i wished apple would listen to developers next time.
the 5200 Ultra is crap in the PC and it isn't any better in the mac.
if heat's such an issue why not put a Mobile GPU in it a 9600Pro mobility would surly kick a desktop 5200Ultra and it will also require less power ;)
Posted by: mark | September 2, 2004 04:30 PM