More iMac experiences
14 Feb 2008 
around evening time 
Matt Winckler
I’ve had a little bit more occasion to use the iMac, and I’ve a few more thoughts to offer.
- The 4GB of RAM arrived the other day and I installed it. Installation was a breeze–there’s a special compartment very similar to a laptop (in fact, it uses laptop-type SO-DIMMs), and the whole job was done in a few minutes. I don’t think the 4GB was wholly worthwhile–2 probably would have been fine. However, I’m hoping the extra memory really pays off when I get back into heavy graphics work in the GIMP.
- OS X is markedly snappier and more responsive than Vista even when it only had 1GB of RAM (Vista downstairs has 2GB). The visuals are cleaner and smoother, and there are far fewer of those tiny momentary pauses that Windows exhibits when doing stuff. (The pauses are the sort of thing that you frequently don’t notice unless you’re looking for them, but they’re persistent enough that you do notice when they’re gone.) Apple unquestionably does UI vastly better than Microsoft, even though they make their own fair share of mistakes. (Admittedly, saying they’re better than Microsoft is not a huge compliment.)
- Font smoothing: I haven’t decided yet whether or not I’m on board with the font smoothing. It does great things for some fonts (Times New Roman is one), but other fonts become a bit too thick for my preferences. Sometimes I think text may be slightly harder to read when rendered the Apple way. However, I agree with them in principle–as a general rule, I would like to be more faithful to the shape of the font than to crispness on a screen. (And when the font is large at all, Apple’s font smoothing is hands-down vastly superior to ClearType rendering.)
- I really like the 3D rotating cube animation that accompanies user switching (it behaves as if each user’s session was on one side of a cube, so when you switch to a different user, the cube zooms back a little, rotates, then zooms back up to the screen.) Yes, I’m easily amused and too fond of eye candy.
- The semi-portability of the iMac is great. Right now I’m sitting in a high-backed overstuffed armchair in my living room, Bluetooth mouse on a side table next to me, Bluetooth keyboard on my lap, and the iMac is on the piano bench in front of me. There’s something really nice about using a computer with a large screen someplace other than the sterile office desk, particularly when that office desk is in the cold basement.
- Aesthetics count. I still have to take pictures and hold my little beauty contest, but suffice it to say that this iMac is easy on the eyes. I am particularly amazed by the fact that the aluminum frame has no seams (with the exception of the door to the RAM compartment on the bottom)–it is forged out of a single piece of aluminum. I like nice touches such as this.
Still haven’t tried getting OpenOffice Aqua running. I’ve mostly just been using Safari to browse the web–there’s a math trade going on at BoardGameGeek right now that I’m involved in. (Math trades are fascinating things.)
By the way, right after I made that post about the Mac not seeing the Vista machine on the network, I came upstairs on my way to bed and there it was, showing up just fine in the Network browser. Has been ever since. However, I just now recall that Mystie complained of being unable to print to the printer shared off the Vista machine that had been working fine previously. There are still networking questions floating about, apparently.