27" iMac opinions?

[sphinx99]

I'm a long-time Microsoft type. Yes, I installed PC-DOS on an original IBM PC. I have not interacted with Macs much since grad school. This was a pond I've wanted to jump into for some time and I jumped in deep with the 27" i5 model. Thought I'd throw some thoughts out there, although please interpret these in the context of a new Mac user.

The industrial design is amazing. The i5 model is virtually silent. However, it does get hot. I'm enjoying the new "magic mouse" quite a bit; the side swipes don't work so well as they sometimes move the mouse itself but all the other touch motions are quite effective. I don't know why MacOS by default does not enable the "right button" functionality but it should. The keyboard is less impressive; the engineering is something to behold but the lack of solidity and small size versus the large 27" make it seem... disproportioned. Although I don't know if these are missing from Macs in general, I wish I had Page Up/Down, Home/End and related keys...

The display also is quite amazing. Uniform, bright, color accuracy is amazing out of box - the default profile is not off by more than four delta Es with my puck. Note - this is not a wide gamut display. It covers sRGB but that's about it. I would not recommend this display for wide-gamput color-critical work.

The unit does get extremely hot as the case is basically one large heat sink. It gets hot enough that I would not let small children near it. (Of course that's good advice no matter how hot it ran.)

There are a couple of inexcusable things about this device. One is the ridiculous lack of ports for a computer this expensive. It's form over function: if the port doesn't fit the aesthetic, it is left out. There's no DVI or HDMI, no eSATA, limited USB and firewire, no optical or digital coax out (that I can see) - the iMac is the shy wallflower at the party, unable or unwilling to talk to anyone--in a world of converging devices, the iMac goes out of its way to interface with as little as possible.

The other is the optical drive. I'm not sure what's "super" about this drive except to say that it seems slower than any other new optical drive I've used in the last 3 or 4 years.

It also seems like a terrible media device. You won't be playing much HD on this thing unless you stream it off the net, and if that were your goal a LG390 and a big LCD would give you far more bang for half the bucks. Imagine a 16:9 2560x1440 display that by design is kept as far away from 1080p content as possible. You can't pipe it in over HDMI, you can't play it off a BD. If you are a PC person, these things will detract quite a bit.

As for the performance, it's mostly like my i7 desktop - I can't really find many things to load up all the cores on a day to day basis. Although I am in the minority in saying this, I don't think the i7 model is a good value. The premium is well over the incremental cost to Apple (they are making a killing on that i7) so make sure you really need HT before you upgrade, and keep in mind that the % increase in cost is lower on the Apple (versus say a Dell) only because the cost of the base unit itself is already so high.

On the whole this feels like a good deal. I'd pay $1,000 for the monitor. That makes $1000 for a complete i5 system with incredible aesthetics that's effectively silent, which is not out of line at all. Add $170 for a three year warranty and you have a system that few will have regrets about. If only Apple included a few extra ports and a 2007-era optical drive....

 

[CJRP]

I just bought one of these as well, same i5 model. I work in a hospital, so I did get a discount. I love this thing so far, I agree with your input on it, other than that it does have an optical out shared with the headphone jack.

I have it passing digital audio to my receiver, which is pretty cool.

 

[lurkmcgurk]

I picked up the base model, Core 2 3.06. I have an i7 920 machine and will either pick up a 4890 or wait for the 5800 series issue with target display mode to be fixed.

I'm not a gamer, though my son was able to turn WoW all the way up and go everywhere in the game.

Love the Magic Mouse, and the Display, and the one-wire thing.

There is a computer recycling place near my house. Have been picking up older macs and getting the running for the past six months. I'm always amazed at how well an 8-10 year Mac runs, doing basic tasks.

Have played with the hackintosh off and on for a couple of years (built several, including quad-core and a laptop), which is what pushed me to make the move. Hoping for a real slow-down on the upgrade-sell-upgrade cycle that is part of being a PC hardware enthusiast.

 

[CJRP]

Not an hour after I type in my previous response do I get the black screen and then flickering screen that so many people have complained about. Looks like I'll be taking this one back to the Mac store for either a new machine, or a refund. I don't want them to just open it up and replace some part. I want zero fingerprints on my Mac!!!

 

[Tomahawk]

Although I don't know if these are missing from Macs in general, I wish I had Page Up/Down, Home/End and related keys...

You do.

fn key + Up Arrow = Page Up
fn key + Down Arrow = Page Down
fn key + Left Arrow = Home
fn key + Right Arrow = End

 

[elleana]

You do.

fn key + Up Arrow = Page Up
fn key + Down Arrow = Page Down
fn key + Left Arrow = Home
fn key + Right Arrow = End

I have the wired version of the keyboard and it has all the regular buttons a standard keyboard has, except print screen. I never had the occassion to bring my keyboard anywhere other than my desk, so I don't see the need for a wireless keyboard. YMMV of course.

Regarding the heat issue - would you say it would be a problem to leave the iMac on 24/7? In the corner of a room with little to no ventilation. Does it get real hot even when idle, or only when doing processor intensive tasks?

 

[CJRP]

The back gets warm to the touch, but mine never got really hot.

 

[CJRP]

By the way, this is my first Mac. Should I risk taking it back in the case that I might get another faulty flickering screen unit, or get a refund and wait a few months for their engineers to fix it? I did get 3 year of apple care, so I'm not sure what that entitles me to, but I'm within 14 days right now. Hmmm....I really like this thing, but I won't be stuck with a flickering screen.

Something tells me its a hardware issue too, so no firmware for this. I'm thinking it's probably heat from the video card? Then again, I was just typing an email when it first happened, not exactly GPU intensive.

 

[Terpfen]

If you're within 14 days, you should be able to get a straight exchange.

 

[CJRP]

But I'm wondering what the point is, because I could get stuck with another faulty one. It seems like a lot of iMacs have this issue. I might just a get a full refund and buy a PC. Too bad, I was really enjoying this thing too.

 

[Terpfen]

But I'm wondering what the point is, because I could get stuck with another faulty one.

You're more likely to get a working product than not.

I might just a get a full refund and buy a PC. Too bad, I was really enjoying this thing too.

Contradictory statement. If you're enjoying it, being tempted to get rid of it is a strange reaction.

 

[mere1582]

Doesn't get any more contradictory than that.

 

[isp]

I would be willing to return it 20 times. Only gotta win the lottery once.

 

[CJRP]

You don't get it, never mind.

 

[sphinx99]

I've hit the flickering thing once now, but a reboot solved it so I am not sure whether it's anything other than a glitch. I'm watching more closely now, however.

I'm very pleased with this system otherwise.

 

[odoe]

I was trying out one of these at Frys earlier today and it had that flicker problem. I just figured it was a beat up display model. Hope it's not an ongoing issue and one that can be fixed with an update or something. I'm really considering picking up one of these as a new main rig.

 

[CJRP]

I just got back from my local Apple store where it took me 45 fucking minutes to return my FAULTY iMac for a refund. I did not want it exchanged for another one that will have the flickering start in 14 days, and then be stuck packaging it back up and having someone in the store take it apart. That defeats the purpose of a NEW computer that I paid over $2000 for. Apparently if you want a refund you need a screen shot of the issue on your computer, or you need to able to reproduce the issue in the store. Well this issue you cannot just purposely reproduce, it happens randomly.

Everyone in the store was very nice, but wouldn't give me a goddamn refund for a faulty machine, it felt like I was stuck with a lemon. After 45 minutes the manager finally gave me a refund with no restocking fee.

I like the Mac OS, I like the computer, but fuck that.

 

[isp]

received mine about 5 or 6 hours ago. I like it so far. Will have to wait until monday before the 4890 arrives. Hopefully no flickering...

 

[CTSxViper]

I bought mine Black Friday Core I5 and 8 gig and have not had an issue, thank goodness. I love this system, running Parallels 5 with Windows 7 Ultimate.

 

[Koko56]

You're more likely to get a working product than not.



Contradictory statement. If you're enjoying it, being tempted to get rid of it is a strange reaction.

More likely to get a working product than not from an exchange? And I think he is tempted to return it because he just really doe snot want any issues with it - like getting a new one, and for it to develop some fault/problem.

received mine about 5 or 6 hours ago. I like it so far. Will have to wait until monday before the 4890 arrives. Hopefully no flickering...

So the cards are just like they are for the PCs? I am assuming you are wanting to put the 4890 in to the iMac?

I just got back from my local Apple store where it took me 45 fucking minutes to return my FAULTY iMac for a refund. I did not want it exchanged for another one that will have the flickering start in 14 days, and then be stuck packaging it back up and having someone in the store take it apart. That defeats the purpose of a NEW computer that I paid over $2000 for. Apparently if you want a refund you need a screen shot of the issue on your computer, or you need to able to reproduce the issue in the store. Well this issue you cannot just purposely reproduce, it happens randomly.

Everyone in the store was very nice, but wouldn't give me a goddamn refund for a faulty machine, it felt like I was stuck with a lemon. After 45 minutes the manager finally gave me a refund with no restocking fee.

I like the Mac OS, I like the computer, but fuck that.

Yeah - that's a disappointment, everything about Macs is nice and if you run into issue of that sort I can totaly see how you would just want to do what you have. Though as you mentioned before - you could wait and get it later - it might even cost a bit less and be more developed.

 

[sphinx99]

It's been a couple of weeks now and I'm very much enjoying this Mac. Video playback is amazing - it really is superb.

I'm a little concerned about how hot the top of the device gets under some load... far, far hotter than any other consumer electronics device I've owned.

 

[Koko56]

It's been a couple of weeks now and I'm very much enjoying this Mac. Video playback is amazing - it really is superb.

I'm a little concerned about how hot the top of the device gets under some load... far, far hotter than any other consumer electronics device I've owned.

So what's happened - you got a new one? And just stress test it or something if it fails, then back to the shop again! ;p

Though yeah - it's a pretty high-end computer in a pretty small space...

 

[sphinx99]

No, same one I bought a couple of weeks ago. The flicker was just once and a reboot cleared it, so I took it as a driver glitch and moved on. Since then, it's been flawless. Most impressive (to me) is this amount of compute power with so little noise. It feels like a passively cooled i5/4850/27" - amazing. My only actual complaint to-date remains the general lack of inputs and outputs for what otherwise is one incredible media machine. I've also grown to enjoy the new mouse.

The top sometimes gets so hot that it hurts to touch. While the silence does impress, I wish there were a user setting to ramp up the fans in the interest of component longevity.

 

[Koko56]

No, same one I bought a couple of weeks ago. The flicker was just once and a reboot cleared it, so I took it as a driver glitch and moved on. Since then, it's been flawless. Most impressive (to me) is this amount of compute power with so little noise. It feels like a passively cooled i5/4850/27" - amazing. My only actual complaint to-date remains the general lack of inputs and outputs for what otherwise is one incredible media machine. I've also grown to enjoy the new mouse.

The top sometimes gets so hot that it hurts to touch. While the silence does impress, I wish there were a user setting to ramp up the fans in the interest of component longevity.

Well, you could get a quiet fan and put it to blow at the back - though might dry your eyes a bit!

But yeah, including the display it actually looks like a reasonable deal.

 

[sphinx99]

Well, mine is dead. Screen is dead. Hit the power button and you hear some things whirring, but there is no Mac "dinnnng" sound on startup and the screen is dead black. I don't know how to troubleshoot this yet.

 

[Koko56]

Well, mine is dead. Screen is dead. Hit the power button and you hear some things whirring, but there is no Mac "dinnnng" sound on startup and the screen is dead black. I don't know how to troubleshoot this yet.

Take it to the shop? At least you can demonstrate this one in the store!

 

[aznx]

Oh that sucks. Maybe it overheated. :\ Or bad PSU.

eSATA is nice but FireWire you can daisy chain, much more useful. Also you can get DVI out with an adapter.

 

[sphinx99]

I'm hoping to get someone to come look at it, it's a bit big to fit in my car and cart to the Apple store. The Apple tech support was pretty supportive in confirming that it's not going through POST. Any idea whether it's better to somehow get it to the store versus having them send some local tech to look at it?

 

[Serpico]

The keyboard is less impressive; the engineering is something to behold but the lack of solidity and small size versus the large 27" make it seem... disproportioned. Although I don't know if these are missing from Macs in general, I wish I had Page Up/Down, Home/End and related keys...

The default keyboard is crap. The full-size keyboard is available as a free option.

I use this with both my Mac and my PC, love it. If you're not into short travel keys then nothing will change your mind, but I think they're great for typing and gaming on.

 

[Serpico]

On the whole this feels like a good deal. I'd pay $1,000 for the monitor. That makes $1000 for a complete i5 system with incredible aesthetics that's effectively silent, which is not out of line at all. Add $170 for a three year warranty and you have a system that few will have regrets about. If only Apple included a few extra ports and a 2007-era optical drive....

The monitor is a better deal than you think. Dell's 30" with similar panel specs is $1700 by itself. Based on that you can safely guess at this 27" display costing ~$1500 from Dell. That they throw in a computer on top of all in a clutter-free and silent enclosure is pretty nice.

 

[sphinx99]

The numbers worked out differently for me. A monitor is more than simply a panel. The 27" is a nice panel but otherwise a pretty crappy monitor - it accepts video input from virtually nothing, and as a standalone monitor happens to be perhaps the most power hungry computer display sold at retail in the last decade since you can't use it as a monitor unless you have that loaded computer powered on and running.

A 200W Dell 27" that only accepts mini-DP and only from certain devices, neither you nor I would pay $1,500 for. Neither of us would even buy it. So even if we're only talking about some cheap electronics that Apple neglected to include, the fact that they were stingy about it seriously undercuts its value as an external display. As someone who has owned those Dell displays for many, many years, the fact that I can connect ANY device with video output that I own, to almost ANY of them, adds a lot of value. Whereas I'm not sure anyone in my entire -hometown- owns something that can externally output video to a 27" iMac and actually have it appear on the screen.

So, for me, it's a $1,000 monitor and a $1,000 i5 with mid-range components, bolted together in a quiet and space efficient manner. That makes it a good deal, but not the Deal of the Century.

 

[alamone]

Yeah, I had to go through a lot of hell to get a working 5970, I don't understand what the deal is with the 5870 not working, as I would've been perfectly happy with that card but it still remains incompatible with the iMac.

Also, from what I understand, they cheaped out on the internal ethernet card for the *higher end* core I5/I7 models and this card doesn't support jumbo frames. I figured since I need to have the iMac on all the time to use it as a display, I might as well use it as a server / NAS / download station, but I'm having some problems getting good network performance. Actually, I can read quite fast (60-100MB/sec) from my Windows box after doing some TCP tweaks, but writing to it is still really slow (20-30MB/sec) on a HP procurve gigabit switch. I'm going to try some TCP tweaks on the iMac side to see if that helps any.

That said, I do really like the display, but there's still some minor issues - like if you cold start from a PC for the displayport, you have to command+F2 again because it automatically switches thinking there's no signal if the bios proceeds too slowly, and sometimes I have to reboot the iMac to get the displayport target mode to work again. I really wish these displayport issues were all sorted out ahead of time.

 

[aznx]

Yeah, I had to go through a lot of hell to get a working 5970, I don't understand what the deal is with the 5870 not working, as I would've been perfectly happy with that card but it still remains incompatible with the iMac.

Also, from what I understand, they cheaped out on the internal ethernet card for the *higher end* core I5/I7 models and this card doesn't support jumbo frames. I figured since I need to have the iMac on all the time to use it as a display, I might as well use it as a server / NAS / download station, but I'm having some problems getting good network performance. Actually, I can read quite fast (60-100MB/sec) from my Windows box after doing some TCP tweaks, but writing to it is still really slow (20-30MB/sec) on a HP procurve gigabit switch. I'm going to try some TCP tweaks on the iMac side to see if that helps any.

That said, I do really like the display, but there's still some minor issues - like if you cold start from a PC for the displayport, you have to command+F2 again because it automatically switches thinking there's no signal if the bios proceeds too slowly, and sometimes I have to reboot the iMac to get the displayport target mode to work again. I really wish these displayport issues were all sorted out ahead of time.

You shouldn't need Jumbo Frames to do 100mb/s write. My MBP on gigabit can do 60+ easy.

 

[sphinx99]

So far, Apple support has proven to be a step behind what I'm used to. Last week I had a Dell tech come to my home on a Saturday to replace the wireless minicard. While here, he noticed that the handrest was a bit bent up and the speaker grill a bit dirty and replaced those too. Mileage varies, of course, but my experience with Dell's field support has been stellar.

Apple meanwhile took three calls and six emails over 3 days to confirm that my iMac is dead. (It isn't going through POST.) They have no pick-up support or service at all, and don't have a good story on who supports what since Applecare tells me to call the store and the store tells me to call Applecare. Applecare had me dealing with two reps (one then another) who were the sort to say they need to put me on hold for 3 minutes to research the problem, would go on hold for 6-7, then come back and ask me to reseat the power cord. (It brought back memories of Sprint and Nextel CS transferring me back and forth.) I finally got transferred to someone who had heard of terms like "hard drive seek noise" and POST. Everyone is friendly and well spoken however.

So off I am to the Apple store this evening so that another group can troubleshoot this. I'm a little nervous but hope Apple will fix this by swapping for another unit if they can't fix this on the spot. If they are going to ship this back for weeks of repair and/or won't accept an exchange or refund, then back to being a PC I guess.

As an aside it's true that they cheaped out on the gigabit controller on the i5/i7 models for no apparent reason.

 

[sphinx99]

That said, I do really like the display, but there's still some minor issues - like if you cold start from a PC for the displayport, you have to command+F2 again because it automatically switches thinking there's no signal if the bios proceeds too slowly, and sometimes I have to reboot the iMac to get the displayport target mode to work again. I really wish these displayport issues were all sorted out ahead of time.

My experience is that video connectivity standards simply are held to a bunch lower standard for robustness than data transmission standards and the like.

I don't have a problem being an early adopter of SATA 3.0 or USB 3.0 because I know that frankly, they'll both work pretty well. Whenever PCIe 3.0 slots show up, I'm sure they'll work okay. Some new RAM slot or CPU processor socket? Probably painless.

But DVI? Nope, that didn't work and I own first generation video cards and display devices to prove it. The same thing happened a few years later with HDMI and there STILL are teething problems. And now DP has gone down the same road. It doesn't work that well, isn't going to work all that well until this time next year, and Apple, who is traditionally fairly cautious with connectivity standards, for some crazy reason decided to be an early adopter of the one technology in mainstream computing that you do not WANT to be an early adopter of: video input/output standards. Unfortunately they aren't the only ones going down that road, but at least other OEMs gave us fall-back options of DVI, HDMI or regular old VGA.

 

[Selecter]

you know, the iMac IS still the consumer mid-level grade of mac. Maybe those who needed this or that port for this or that doodad should have gotten a Pro instead.

 

[sphinx99]

you know, the iMac IS still the consumer mid-level grade of mac. Maybe those who needed this or that port for this or that doodad should have gotten a Pro instead.

Didn't realize that HDMI, DVI and VGA are "pro" features and DP is "consumer" but okay.

 

[Koko56]

Hmmm, good luck with your problem. It is a bit ghey how Apple is portraying itself as a saint with CS like that. :/

At least in this case.

EDIT:

Didn't realize that HDMI, DVI and VGA are "pro" features and DP is "consumer" but okay.

The fuck?
_ _
_

 

[sphinx99]

Well in all fairness, every OEM has had their incidents, so by no means would I say that Apple is bringing up the rear on customer service. I might have a better experience once I get to the store. I have a dead $3,000 Qosmio that Toshiba wanted $1,200 to repair when the nVidia GPU went bad two weeks after the warranty went and I won't even start about HP.

I was surprised that Apple does not have field staff to do in-home repairs, or is it just that they do not have this capacity in my neck of the woods?

 

[Koko56]

Well in all fairness, every OEM has had their incidents, so by no means would I say that Apple is bringing up the rear on customer service. I might have a better experience once I get to the store. I have a dead $3,000 Qosmio that Toshiba wanted $1,200 to repair when the nVidia GPU went bad two weeks after the warranty went and I won't even start about HP.

I was surprised that Apple does not have field staff to do in-home repairs, or is it just that they do not have this capacity in my neck of the woods?

Holy shit!! That is terrible with Toshiba, absolutely atrocious!! WTF?!?! Did you get that sorted out though? It's just that Apple does have a tendency to have a bit of a superiority complex.