Since I was determined to spend the day not doing much of use, I headed over to the UVillage Apple Store to see all the toys. Although they’ve been out for a bit, I hadn’t actually played with an iPod Nano previously. Man, those things are small. That’s quite a bit of compute packed in there, and soooo light. I thought the mini’s were impressive. For just sheer technical shrink and packaging, the nano has it beat.
Then I went and played with the new iMac G5‘s. Oh my lord, are those pretty. And those larger screens – oooh… it’s enough to make me think that this whole laptop thing is just silly, because that screen real estate was just beautiful. I’ve not given up on my trusty iBook, not yet…
But I’m beginning to really see the age. Since I used the iBook daily (it’s the 533Mhz G3 white iBook), firing up Safari and browsing to a page on that iMac was amazingly fast. Of course I had to play with the built-in camera thing too, which was amusing. And the remote for it. Wow – that’s really quite the punch towards moving into the living room. Add some built-in PVR software to that set – and you’ve got yourself one killer setup. And if you do it – go for the 20″ display. It’s so obviously worth it.
The only downside was the cable setup. Although it’s a really clean look, the cable setup is not conducive to a clean layout. I foresee cables spewing out from behind the right side of this critter in no time at my desk. I wish they’d done that a little better – and at least put one USB connect on the side – or the front. That would make using the camera or thumb drive SO much easier than having to twist all that crap around to get to the port.
Of course the G5’s with the 30″ monitor sort of took the cake. That amount of visual real estate in front of you is – just awesome. Wow.
Sooner or later, I know I’m going to need to upgrade my Mac. At least one of them. And I use the laptop FAR more than the desktop. But the powerbooks just don’t even seem to compare to the G5 iMacs, so its a darn hard choice. And I’m not at “that point” yet, so I’m waiting. Maybe the intel based macs will hit the streets in the near future and make the choices even more difficult.
Rhonabwy 