24-inch G5 iMac: Impress Your Friends and Your Enemies

First, full disclosure, I know very little about computers. So if you're searching for an arcane product breakdown with lots of technical jargon and competitor comparisons, search on. This is for the millions of people who are computer idiots, like me.

I purchased my 24-inch G5 iMac at the Apple Store in Pasadena, California last September. It is the first brand new computer I have purchased since 1992. All other computers I've owned have been secondhand machines that were pretty much already set up when I got them. So what amazed me first about the iMac was the ease with which I was able to get up and running. All told, I had the computer completely set up in less than 20 minutes. And I didn't even look at the manual which, for a computer idiot, is probably a stupid approach, but after simply plugging in the AC adapter, the keyboard and the mouse my computer has run without a hitch for six months now. The computer comes with all the software and system files preloaded. The only thing you need to add are whatever extras you might want.

The iMac is one complete, self-contained unit. No separate CPU. It's basically a giant, 16:9 screen, with a small body underneath that apparently contains a 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. I have no idea what that means, but I do know it's enough computational power to do anything I've wanted to on this thing.

To give you an idea of just how much computational power that is, I edited my short film on the iMac. I loaded four hours worth of digital footage onto the hard drive, then set up my editing software (Final Cut Express) and plugged the footage into it. I was warned by some of my computer-savvy film friends that doing this would really bog down my computer and that I would need to shut the program down every time I wanted to do something else on the computer. But that hasn't been the case. I have routinely opened other programs, including my web browser while leaving my editing bay up and I haven't experienced any operational sluggishness whatsoever. And the great thing about the size and shape of the display monitor is that you can move various windows around so that you can see everything you've got open all at the same time.

My short film is now complete and I have converted several versions of it into Quicktime files. I have all these saved onto my hard drive, my editing program and all the original digital footage, plus hundreds of digital photos and other documents created using other programs and I am still not experiencing any sluggishness to speak of. I don't know about you, but I'm impressed.

While my primary reason for buying an iMac was to cut my film using Final Cut, I've enjoyed many of the other features that came preloaded. For example, if you want to edit your own home movies and give them a little Hollywood razz-a-matazz, the iMac already comes with a great little program for doing that. iMovie HD is a rudimentary version of Final Cut and utilizes the same nonlinear editing formats. You simply plug your video camera into the computer, load your footage and then cut it by dragging clips onto the editing bar. Messing with the program for an afternoon and watching the tutorial is all you need to make some slick-looking home movies.

Save your movie in the hard drive's "movies" file and then all you have to do is open iDVD to create DVDs of your film. Like iMovie HD, it's a simple enough program to pick up in an afternoon of experimenting and it's got some great templates that allow you to make professional-looking DVD menus.

Another wonderful pre-loaded program is called "GarageBand" which allows you to create music with everything from a simple acoustic guitar to a full-blown orchestra. Being musical helps, but you'd be surprised to hear some of the compositions non-musical people can make using the program. It's fun to tinker with or, if you're more ambitious, it has separate fields for creating movie scores and even podcast episodes. You can also use the program to foley your film if you want to, which I learned basically by goofing around one afternoon.

Photobooth is a fun and simple program using the built-in webcam. Take shots of yourself and the kids, leave them how they are or utilize one of the many effects filters and then email them to everybody you know. Hours of fun. You can also use Photobooth to set up a video conference with people who have video conferencing capabilities. I haven't tested that feature yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

Another feature I like is the "dashboard", which you can access by clicking the small roller knob on the tip of the mouse. This brings up a weather icon for your city, a calculator, a calendar and a clock. At first I thought the dashboard was annoying because I would accidentally click it when I didn't want it, but to correct that problem was a simple matter of remembering not to put my finger on the roller knob. Now I'm surprised how frequently I use it. I click the dashboard for a quick reference probably a dozen times a day.

And now the bad parts of the iMac.

There really aren't any. Not when viewed as part of the greater whole anyway. But there are two things that could be better, in my opinion. The first is that roller knob I mentioned. It's a great little feature when it works. It makes scrolling through web pages a breeze. The problem is that it often doesn't work. Sometimes it only partially works, allowing you to scroll down, but not up or side to side. I don't know if it somehow gets dirty or what, but the feature is definitely flukey, to say the least.

My other complaint is the built-in word processor, TextEdit. It's very minimalist. I like a few more bells and whistles to come with my word processor. A word count, for example, would be nice. However, the program has grown on me a little. I like that it will read my text back to me in a funny little computer voice. Of course, remedying this issue is a simple matter of downloading something else.

So, all in all, the minuses of the iMac are miniscule compared to the benefits.

Bare-bones, the iMac retails at $1,999, which may seem a little pricey, but for a buck shy of two thousand dollars, you get everything I mentioned above, plus a "Wow" factor as many of your house guests will complain that their televisions are smaller than your computer screen. Which, let's be honest, is pretty cool. And, it makes for very comfortable media-viewing, be it a DVD or a webcast.