Apple Updates iMac, iLife, .Mac 528
Apple just announced new iMacs. They are aluminum and come in 20" (two models) and 24". There's a new view called "Events" in iPhoto that should make it easier to deal with large photo libraries. Apple's .Mac service is enhanced with .Mac Web Gallery, which integrates with the new iTunes and also the iPhone. It's a Web 2.0 app now. And iMovie is being replaced by a completely new app of the same name. Steve Jobs claimed that with it you can put together a 5-minute movie in 30 minutes, and he demo'ed that from the stage. iWeb, iDVD, and GarageBand get new features too. And .Mac subscribers get 10 GB of storage. Here is Engadget's blow-by-blow coverage, and Wired's.
Apple's website not updated? (Score:2)
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Finally (Score:5, Funny)
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They stillmissed it by an order of magnitude. Maybe next year.
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http://www.idrive.com/pricing.htm [idrive.com]
Re:Finally (Score:4, Interesting)
The wireless keyboard IS FOR the Apple TV. They just haven't announced it yet.
The wired keyboard is for when you're sitting right in front of your iMac.
That time of the year again (Score:5, Funny)
(from the Apple Product Life Cycle) [misterbg.org]
Geez (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously. (Score:2)
"Didn't mention Mac mini today, how is it doing?" [engadget.com]
Tim: "We're refreshing the Mac mini today."
Re:Geez (Score:4, Funny)
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It's possible that CNBC made a mistake though, but I believe they had a correspondant at the press event. In any case, at the time this article was posted the event wasn't over, so it's still a little strange that it got posted.
Re:Geez (Score:5, Funny)
Goths.
Software's the name of the game (Score:2, Interesting)
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It pains me to see a company so concerned with aesthetics put together a graph like the one Engadget has a photo of. I'd think the Apple Corporation could afford a Tufte book.
Apple knows about Tufte (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a Web 2.0 app now... (Score:5, Funny)
Some of us Luddites are a bit slow to upgrade.
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iphone update? (Score:2)
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I got a small chuckle from.... (Score:4, Funny)
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"There are some people who still want to make DVDs" I guess these's a fringe movement of people who want to cater to the 100 million or so DVD players out there! ;) Someone tell these people that DVD is soooooooooooo last year! Other than that everything looked pretty solid.
Earlier this year I wanted to get an iMovie of the littlest Otter sent to my grandmother...since they thoughtlessly did not include iVHS to their media suite, I was forced to hook it up myself. Thank goodness for the analog hole!
Yeah, I think there'll be a market for iDVD for a while. Hell, there's a market for GarageBand. ;P
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DVD's are just will dealing with the old foggies you know that haven't moved on to ipods or MythTV.
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I've yet to see a better way to get widescreen standard definition video to my family. If there's one I'm missing, I hope Steve Jobs will enlighten us.
Video Coverage? (Score:2)
Mac mini refreshed today too (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Mac mini refreshed today too (Score:5, Informative)
1.83GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
1GB memory
80GB hard drive1
Ships: Within 24 hours
Free Shipping
$599.00
---------
2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
1GB memory
120GB hard drive1
Ships: Within 24 hours
Free Shipping
$799.00
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Ugh. I was really hoping that the Mini would return to $499. Oh well.
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Wow, does he really talk like that? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wow, does he really talk like that? (Score:4, Informative)
Unless, of course, you can read/write stenographer's shorthand. Otherwise, I see no other way of of relaying the Stevenote, given that live audio and video wasn't an option.
A few thoughts (Score:4, Interesting)
Steve: "We use Intel chips"
hehehe, sounded a li'l like the intel chip implanted into his head kicked in there.
second, why is the imac so underpowered in the RAM department, I mean the specs in one of the pictures showed the iMacs, all the way up to the biggest $1800 version only has 1gig- with all the RAM you get in normal PCs now days (4gigabytes not unusual) is this not a little strange?
Finally, is it just me, or have they slighyl repackaged everything, made no huge advances, like for example, why did they bother to minimize a keyboard, which for someone like me, would just be annoying. iLife? It's had nothing added, they just repackaged every single feature, and when asked why
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Where are you buying your computers? Even the $6000 gaming system from dell comes with 2GB by default.
Re:A few thoughts (Score:4, Insightful)
Complicated as in disassembling the shell, depending on the model, but not complicated as in having to use special equipment, as all you need are a screwdriver (preferably magnetic), maybe a Leatherman toolkit (specifically the pincers), precautions to avoid static electricity, as well as a visual guide: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/ [xlr8yourmac.com].
Going one notch further, when I upgraded the hard disk on my Indigo G3 http://www.faqintosh.com/risorse/en/guides/hw/ima
As for RAM chips and the new Macs? I'd guess it takes less than five minutes to do it, just open a little hatch, fit the chip in the slot and you're good to go!
Re:A few thoughts (Score:4, Interesting)
Then I found out third-party companies were selling it for the same absurd price.
So I told myself I'd wait a few months for the price to drop, since it would inevitably fall like a rock when more companies started shipping the Core 2 Extreme with chipsets requiring FB-DIMMs. Then it was announced that the FB-DIMM wasn't going to be on Intel's future roadmap.. d'oh!
Prices haven't dropped like a rock, but slowly declined instead.. now I can get 4GB for around $300.
But the thing is, the system doesn't really need it. I admit that it's already total overkill for what I use it for, but I was rewarding myself for using my 600Mhz iBook G3 for 5 years, including all thru college, and that maxed out at 640MB. With Tiger, and a bunch of widgets running, yeah, I can feel when it starts swapping -- usually at about the 15th Safari window or so. However, the system is so damn fast -- and I'm running RAID 0 on my main volume -- that the swapping is really just a minor annoyance. I keep finding better things to spend money on than more memory for my already blazing fast computer.
So, to make a long story short, 1GB is plenty for a "desktop" Mac. Most users would be much better served by 2GB, but most users would ALSO be much better served by Apple bundling as little possible so that the buyer can choose whether they want to install the RAM themselves, or have Apple do it.
Re:A few thoughts (Score:5, Informative)
AFAIK, Window's PC manaufacturers usually put in 1 GB now with an option to get 2 GB or more. Usually 2GB costs you an extra $100-200 and 4GB cost you an extra arm, leg, and testicle.
Even if you give up a 'nad for the 4GB, Windows PC's will only use 3 GB when 4 GB is installed unless you're willing to do a lot of extra configuration and you buy the correct hardware. We got a bunch of new Dells at work a couple months ago. All of them came with 4 GB. But when you boot into Windows XP Pro, only 3 GB is visible. I tried all the hacks to get more -- with certain MB and hardware configs, it is possible to get up to 3.5GB with a bit of hacking your OS configuration but 3GB is the most you can get unless you know all your hardware components will memory map into the top 0.5 GB (and unfortunately the Dells we got only do 3GB on 32-bit Windows). There is no way to get an ACTUAL USABLE 4GB in Windows without going to one of the 64-bit versions of Windows and with all the memory and driver issues there, you're not gaining anything on a consumer machine.
The Dumbest Question I've Ever Heard (Score:4, Interesting)
Apropos Intel, via Daringfireball.net [daringfireball.net]:
"We like our own stickers better," Jobs said. "Don't get me wrong. We love working with Intel. We're proud to ship Intel products in Macs. They're screamers, and combined with our OS, we've tuned them well. It's just that everyone knows we use Intel processors. We'd rather not tell them about the product that's inside the box."
Re:The Dumbest Question I've Ever Heard (Score:5, Insightful)
"Because we want our computers to look classy and not like a cheap whore".
Brushed metal (Score:2, Interesting)
I like the change, but...how? Some auto-negation bug in the intra-office memo software? "!brushed_metal = brushed_metal....SENT"
Can we please kill off "Web X.Y"? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a Web 2.0 app now
No it's not, because there's no such thing as a "version" of the Internet OR the World Wide Web.
Just because O'Reilly and a bunch of bloggers like it, doesn't mean you should use it.
BUMMER! "You can't be to thin ... (Score:2)
But your integrated screen can still be to high!
This is what annoys me the most about the iMac and they didn't fix it. I'm using a 20" iMac at my current client and the screen is about 8-10cm to high for my tast. And you can only pivot it on the iMacs, not raise or lower it. I'd've thought they'd've fixed that with this release. Shame they didn't.
Not offtopic because of parent's sig (Score:2)
iWork - Numbers! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:iWork - Numbers! (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed. The feature list and Excel compatibility are a big win for some of us. I'm tired of using MS Office for the Mac, because it is slow and bloated, and prone to crash. A lighter, more nimble competitor is very welcome for my light spreadsheet needs. I avoid OpenOffice on the Mac as well, since it is likewise not really there yet.
The improvements to Pages also seem significant, with some real layout power (and separate layout and word processing modes). Hopefully this will make for a lightweight Framemaker/InDesign replacement for smaller jobs. In fact, the main thing missing from iWork for my needs is ODF support.
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Too bad iWork is also slow and bloated.
In my experience Pages loads faster than Word and is much more responsive and uses a lot fewer resources than Word. I just opened a .doc file in both programs and it took Word approximately 50% more time to open it and it is consuming twice as much RAM. When opening a native file for each program, Pages loads about 300% faster than Word.
You can claim both are bloated, but one is clearly better than the other. What word processor would you consider to be not bloated?
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Then again, MS Office is not (yet) a universal binary, so it's still running under Rosetta on new Macs, so the comparison isn't fair.
Fair?!? It is a comparison of the available options. I don't care if one company is slow to release new version, I just care about what is available. Currently, Word is slow, unresponsive, and resource intensive. I'd rather use something that is the opposite of that. I don't care if it is a new version of MS Office or iWork, although I also care about usability and feature set.
Re:iWork - Numbers! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:iWork - Numbers! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Finally, I can get rid of Office.
Unless everyone you work for and with does the same, I doubt it. There are a few things a file-translator just can't quite nail when you're importing someone else's stuff. (I know Apple's got built-in exporters to Office, but I've learned not to put 100% faith in those either.)
Come on now. Office 2008 for Mac will be dropping VBA macro support so even the mac version of Office will not be compatible with Office for Windows. Your best bet for compatibility in a macro heavy environment would be Neo Office or Open Office as they support Office 2007 formats and VBA macros. Macros aside, previous versions of Office for Mac were not 100% compatible with their windows counterparts.
If iWork provide higher compatibility (outside of macros), then that should be good enough for most peop
Balloons (Score:2, Funny)
They could make the iMac more expandable (Score:2, Interesting)
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I was arguing from Apple's point of view. Apple doesn't care what you add to the iMac after you buy it. Their fo
iMac and VMWare (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been considering a Mac desktop for a while, and now that a new one is out, perhaps I'll buy it.
One thing I need, though, is to be able to run Linux and OpenBSD in virtual machines on my desktop. Does anyone have any experience with how the new VMWare Fusion compares to VMWare Workstation? Is there any difference between the two (aside from the price, and that unity view for Windows, which does not affect me)? I mean, in terms of features and running other OSes?
Have you considered OS X with X11 and KDE? (Score:3, Informative)
If you want both Aqua/OS X & KDE, that's the way to go, as it means nearly zero overhead for your Mac compared to some virtualisation or dual-boot solution. Don't forget that OS X is a full-blown Unix (bash Terminal, GNU Toolkit and all) that can easyly provide all the Linux goodies you want. It's even got this OSS project called Fink [finkproject.org] which offers a full apt-get (as in Debian Package Management) enviroment including a usefull GUI tool (Fink Commander) to operate
Attack of the clones. (Score:4, Insightful)
Seeing these new Macs, however, I can't help but wonder why in the hell PC makers don't actually start putting some damn effort into the manufacture and design of their machines. Instead they go for quick, cheap gimmicks like Dell and the goofy interchangeable color covers for their laptops. Even worse are the third party case manufacturers.
There are a million ideas out there for very elegant designs that could be just as impressive, if not more so, than anything Apple has designed. But instead what are we going to see? Dozens of crappy clones of the Apple design. Either that or half-hearted attempts that scream of cost-cutting over thoughtful design. Even Nintendo couldn't help but cloning the MacBook design with the DS and to a lesser extent the Wii.
Apple has nice design, but they are far from being the pinnacle of high design. If only other companies weren't cheap and unimaginative.
Re:Attack of the clones. (Score:5, Insightful)
(1) I need this to get work done and it has to run forever: Lenovo (formerly IBM) and high-end HP. Ugly is fine, as long as it's bullet-proof ugly
(2) I'm cheap and have no taste: Dell. Absolutely rock-bottom prices, and it has to match my velvet Elvis or corporate posters from Inspiration.com.
(3) It's a lifestyle choice, and I'm willing to pay for polish: Apple. They're not that much more expensive (especially the laptops), but getting people to overlook the price on the quad-core monsters is going to take better marketing. Tasteful, unobtrusive, and just let you get whatever it is you do done. Should be offered in Latte.
Besides, 94%, give or take a Linux box or two run Windows of some flavor. Why shouldn't the look of the machine remind you of the experience you're about to have?
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Re:I, for one, welcome our... (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, I was thinking the same thing.
A lot of people dislike the MacBook keyboards. They look nice, but the keys don't travel far enough for some people, which messes up the tactile feedback. And these new keyboards look very similar to the MacBook keyboards, plus they're extremely thin, which would also suggest a short travel distance for the keys.
But of course, until I check them out next week at the Apple store, it's all speculation.
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Personally, I think short key travel is more ergonomic, although I'd prefer to see contoured keys (as on MBP and most other laptops) rather than the flat MacBook-style keys. After typing mostly on laptops for the last couple years, the long travel on desktop keyboards makes my hands hurt.
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Yeah. I have a Macbook pro, almost a $3000 computer; and the keyboard is terrible. As is the one-button trackpad. I love OSX, but I'm afraid the physical design of the Mac keyboards is just pitiful, totally focused on looks and not usability. I've got a full-size Mac keyboard at my desktop on my Mac Mini, that's a much better keyboard — full numeric keypad, better key travel — but it still isn't even close to the best keyboards out there which h
Re:I, for one, welcome our... (Score:4, Insightful)
Funny, I love mine, and previously I was a diehard Model M user.
Switch on right-click support in the System Preferences or use the Ctrl key.
Personally, I use Ctrl for right-click even when I'm using Linux on a system with a 4-button trackball.
Re:I, for one, welcome our... (Score:4, Insightful)
Tada, you've made life better for people who like 2-button mice and you have not hurt the 1-button mouse people in the slightest!
Re:I, for one, welcome our... (Score:4, Informative)
No.
I take it you've never done phone support, then. In my opinion, the second mouse button is one of the single worst physical interfaces ever invented for computers. Your main input device has two unlabelled buttons which can only be discerned by whether they are on the right or on the left of the device? This is just stupid. An astonishing number of people aren't even capable of reliably telling you which side right is, and which side left is (as I find out time and time again when telling somebody where to drive - "to the right. no, the other right").
Not to mention the bad influence the right mouse button has on UI design.
Yes, as I've said, it would be, but it would still make it worse for the majority of all users.
Different Keyboards. (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah. I have a Macbook pro, almost a $3000 computer; and the keyboard is terrible.
Uhm. You're talking about different keyboards. The MacBook Pro has a "normal" notebook keyboard, while the MacBook (without Pro) has the "new style" keyboard, which is very similar to the one being used in this new Apple keyboard, from the looks of it.
Re:I, for one, welcome our... (Score:5, Insightful)
As a point of reference, at home and at work I use a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 keyboard and a trackball (logitech marble mouse at work, Kensington Expert mouse at home).
Re:I, for one, welcome our... (Score:5, Informative)
And a lot of people, on the other hand, love laptop keyboards in general for the very reasons you listed. Furthermore, a lot of people spend much of their young life with a laptop as their primary rig, so they're actually more used to it than a traditional keyboard. It's kind of a moot point. Some people will be excited by the keyboards. Some people will hate them. And for many, the keyboard will not have a large net effect on their purchasing decisions.
I do give them props for doing something different (or, if it's been done already, making it standard). I just wish they'd also have an option which brings ergonomics into play, even if it might end up looking like Gaudi made it.
Dovetails nicely with iPhone. (Score:5, Funny)
Apple is slowly phasing tactile response out of their input devices. Started with mice, then the iPhone, and now with keyboards. Soon, we will live in a polished world where nothing lets us know we touched it! I hope Apple never enters the sex industry.
I disagree (Score:3, Funny)
I disagree. Entirely.
I'd be more than happy to wait in line for 6 hours so I can take home a stunningly beautiful iGirl that doesn't give me any feedback no matter how much I touch her, doesn't break when dropped, doesn't scratch easily, is good for up to 8 hours of activity (as long as I turn her wireless off), goes to sleep at the touch of a button and comes with a 2 year warranty.
For sure. Sign me up.
Of course, I'll probably regret it when they come out with a
Re:I disagree (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I disagree (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Dovetails nicely with iPhone. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's also the Slow Keys setting in the Universal Access pref pane. I just turned it on now for the first time, and it's friggin' annoying. If you try this, be sure to set acceptance delay to short. Yeah, this is really annoying.
Yeah, typing that last paragraph pretty much sucked.
There was also a drop in keyboard replacement for the Ti books that was just like a touch sensitive pad. There was a keyboard printed on it I think. Oh, here it is. The TouchStream MacNTouch. Never used one, but it seems interesting because of some of the other input possibilities (chording, gestures, etc.). [fingerworks.com]
Ah, well. You were making a joke and I got all esoteric on you. Sorry. =)
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Check out Newegg and Microcenter. You can buy Macs at both places. Dunno if there are others, I don't go looking to buy Macs typically.
Re:Down with the Apple monopoly (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Down with the Apple monopoly (Score:4, Funny)
For some reason, I think of her whenever I see the people who work at the Apple store. They look like someone cuts the crust off their sandwiches for them, and they're proud of it.
But anyway, if you want to buy Apple in Chicago and don't want to pay 18 bucks to park downtown (and get skeeved out by the people who work in the Apple Store), MicroCenter has a nice big parking lot, and there's a PetSmart next door so you can buy kibble for you ferret when you're done.
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Re:Down with the Apple monopoly (Score:5, Informative)
Well, first, Apple isn't a monopoly. They have viable competitors in every market in which they compete, and insofar as that is the case, the behaviors you describe (which are called "vertical integration", or "anti-competitive practices" if and only if you already have a monopoly) aren't "brutal" so much as "a business and design choice".
They destroyed the Mac clone market and reseller market because those things were destroying Apple. At that time (the late 90's), Linux wasn't nearly as mature or widely-adopted as it is today and the destruction of Apple would have, as far as almost everyone could predict, led to a total Microsoft monopoly. Microsoft was already starting to displace commercial UNIX in some segments. Other companies had licenses to manufacture Apple hardware designs with Apple software, including the Apple ROM that (at the time) was necessary for the OS to run. Those license payments weren't enough to allow Apple to continue existing and developing their OS, so Apple refused to extend those licenses to future technology (the CHRP common hardware platform, Mac OS 8) and purchased back the licenses it had already granted.
The real question is whether it's acceptable to sell integrated systems that are capable of working together above and beyond the interoperability offered by open standards. When I look across the fence at the hardware support issues Linux and Windows are struggling with, I'm pretty happy with how green the grass is over here. And if I wasn't, I'm still perfectly able to get a new OS and new hardware. That's the difference between a monopoly and a competitor who offers a significantly different solution.
Re:Down with the Apple monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't like Microsoft because they make shit products and force them down our throats. I use them regularly, as I now have an XP laptop at my current job as a Unix SA. I am willing to pay for Microsoft products when I think they are worthwhile -- I have an XBox 360 Elite -- but usually they are not worth paying for. The XBox is the first Microsoft product I have bought
For my own computer, I am happy to pay the extra few bucks for an Apple product that does exactly what it is designed to do, and does it extremely well. It's just not worth hassling with a Linux desktop machine anymore. OS X has the Windows advantages of being "mainstream" and playing all that fancy DVD and audio content with no fuss, no muss, but without the disadvantages of being utter crap. I definitely spent more money on my Mac Pro than I needed to spend on a computer, but mostly that was me buying an overkill machine, and very little of it was the Apple tax. Of course, if they had a mid-range headless system, maybe I would have bought that instead... But the low-end laptops are very competitive with PC offerings, and to some of us it is worth paying money for stuff that works.
By the way, I register all of the shareware I use and enjoy in OS X, something that is far more true of the Mac community than the Windows community. Why? Because we feel the products are worth paying for, rather than Windows users who feel that they use what they use out of necessity, not choice.
I like the idea of free software, but I'm not devoting my life to the cause. If it works best, I'll use it. If not, I'll pay to use whatever works best. Unfortunately for Microsoft, it is almost never their product.
Re:Down with the Apple monopoly (Score:4, Informative)
iTunes Compatible Players [apple.com]
Chances are that most USB MP3 players will work with iTunes if they follow the standards set for such devices. If you have an MP3 player give it a try and see if it works with iTunes, it probably will.
You might want to do a bit more research the next time you make false, blanket statements like that.
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The answer to this will determine if I snap one up or save a couple of months for an iMac.
Re:No kidding (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it just me, or did he not say, "Boom!" once during this presentation?
Come to the PC side! (Score:2, Informative)
But here's the best part...
We don't have to beg for anything! In fact, they beg us to buy their products, because PC manufacturers actually have something called "competition"! What a novel concept!
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Well, the pretty-pleases to Adobe haven't been working well. And begging is for the lupine pest at my feet.
It's Applications.
Applications.
Applications.
And GIMP does not count.
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I'm waiting till the next OS X comes out, and then I'll probably get a new laptop. I might end up with a MacBook, but I'm really hoping there'll be a 13.3" MacBookPro. Cause I
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Now if only it was ergonomic...
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I'm not really into all-in-ones either, but you can plug your screen into an iMac and use both at once (up to 1920x1200).
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Ex: he only has the desk space of one monitor taken up, even with 3 computers. (or in my case, four - I wouldn't buy an iMac if I were to buy a Mac, for the same reasons). The fix would be to have teh iMac screen allowed to switch to external input rather than just the mac that it is part of. I.E. use with a KVM.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I'll wait for an updated mini (Score:4, Informative)
*COUGH*AppleTV*COUGH*
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Re:Why didn't they go wireless on the keyboard/mou (Score:3, Informative)
They did. (Score:4, Informative)
Who said anything about gaming? (Score:3, Insightful)
The GMA950 hurts any 3d application, and any application that pushes the limits on RAM - and not only because it eats 64M of real memory. It's not just third-party software (let alone games) that exceed the limits of what the GMA950 can do, Apple's own software uses 3d effects all over the place, so it's got to load their software OpenGL to cover for the shortcomings of the GPU regardless. And it's going to be using more and more of them over