austrian otaku

 

Yes, I’m still alive and since one week I’m computing different.

Why? That’s why:

Yup, I actually switched to Mac lately. I got myself a new 2011 27” iMac.

 

Those of you still following my blog from back in the day might be surprised. Yes, I admit that I had an “interesting” relationship with Apple until a few months ago. A lot of things happened since my last blog post one year ago. (o_O)

…because the people crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do

I got a job as it-technician, got myself a car (finally mobility), met a lot of new, interesting people and broadened my horizon in several areas. By working in a small, flexible and innovative company I learned one important lesson if you want to succeed in it today: Be different. Don’t sell the same solutions everyone else is selling, don’t try to sell hardware to the it-manager, try to sell it to the person behind that title. With such a mind-set I guess I just had to end up with an Apple computer for my home office sooner or later.

But the decision wasn’t that easy. Maybe it is for some people but transferring over my entire virtual life to a different platform is a big deal, at least for me. Why did I still do it you may ask?

 

Reason 1: Windows is far from perfect.

I built my PCs myself since I was 12 years old, always had powerful machines (for gaming) and just didn’t have a desire to leave my Windows centred world. Yes sure, the operating system wasn’t always perfect but Windows 7 works quite well …most of the time. By working daily with Windows based servers, workstations and desktops you encounter situations where you seriously question the existence of intelligent life in Redmond. So for my home office I want something that just works!

 

Reason 2: I want to explore new things

Yup, a part of my just wants to explore and a powerful Unix based OS with a great GUI sounded really good in my opinion. Most of the time I spend browsing the web, listening to music, reading stuff on and offline, watching movies. Yes, I’m also playing games but that’s just a small percentage compared to the other activities. So why exactly should I own a machine with a GPU that’s eating up more energy in IDLE than a whole iMac?

 

Reason 3: Silence and design

Yah, you can have a fairly silent gaming machine but this won’t be cheaper of course. Design is a different story though, cause tastes differ, right?

Which one should it be? An Audi A4 or an Alfa-Romeo 159?

Many would be okay with the Audis design, it’s not spectacular, it works and everyone else has it too… but there are the ones who wouldn’t look at the Audi one second. Why? Because they value awesome design and the mentality behind a product.

The iMac with its aluminium body and it’s gorgeous display covered by glass surely is an Alfa. ^_^

 

Reason 4: iMacs aren’t overpriced – yes I’m serious

Assemble a PC with the following characteristics and specs:

27” LED ISP display, completely silent, nice aluminium case, Intel i-series Quadcore-CPU, a beefy GPU with 2GB VRAM, 12GB DDR3 RAM, Bluetooth and 802.11n dual-band built in, a wireless aluminium keyboard and a multi-touch mouse, Thunderbolt Ports (wuahaha), HD webcam, built in mic and stereo speakers that aren’t rubbish

+ The whole thing shouldn’t take up more space than a monitor.

So, is my iMac with a price of 2100€ completely overpriced?

 

So after all that philosophical gibberish let’s take a closer look at my iMac.

 

The front of the 2011 iMac looks just like on the the two former models.

No distractions, just the 27” screen with a resolution of 2560×1200. A lot of space to work with and that’s why I got rid of my two 24” Samsung monitors.

 

On the back it get’s a little bit more technical but overall it’s just one big piece of metal with a few holes in it (and a huge Apple).

All the connectors for peripherals are one the left, the stand with a hole for the power cord (and other cables) is in the middle while the right side is home to the power button.

The slot on the upper edge is the air outtake. That’s the area where you want to put your hands after arriving at home in winter. ^_^

 

Those are the connectors on the iMacs back:

From left to right: Audio line out, Audio line in, four USB 2.0 ports, FireWire 800 port, two Thunderbolt ports (up to 10Gbps), Gigabit Ethernet port

 

The SuperDrive and the SDXC card slot are located on one side while the other side…

 

… has nothing worth mentioning on it. You can adjust the angle of the iMac by applying very little force.

 

Besides the iMac itself you will only find the power cord and a box of accessories inside the packaging.

The accessorie box contains the Magic Mouse, the Wireless Keyboard and the usual “Everything Mac” and “Everything Else” booklets (containing the OS & App DVDs and the famous Apple stickers).

 

I really like the Magic Mouse. But you get way to fast used to it because on Windows PCs I sometimes find myself trying to swipe over the mouse to switch back and forth between webpages and folders. ^_^

If there is one thing about it I don’t like then it’s the profile I guess. Usually i prefer mice with a higher rear end. For gaming I still use my Microsoft Sidewinder for that reason.

 

Setting up the iMac and getting used to the new OS is as easy as you would expect from an Apple product.

And that’s how my workspace looks like now after booting up my iMac:

Yup, also got an iPad 2 as soon as it was available over here. Loving it.

I highly recommend the iMeme App by the way. Available on the AppStore.

 

Now back to my iMac. Let’s take a look at the SystemProfiler:

As mentioned before it’s the 27” model with the beefier Intel Core i5-2400 Sandybridge CPU with 3,1GHz.

I upgraded the RAM myself from the base-models 4GB to 12 GB DDR3 RAM. While Apple charges 200€ for an upgrade from 4GB to only 8GB RAM (that’s just +4GB !), I bought the additional 8GB for just 80€ from Kingston.

The hard drive is the default Seagate 1TB drive. I had a SSD in my “old” Windows PC which did speed up things a lot but the prices Apple is charging for SSDs are insane.

A 256GB SSD + a 1 TB HD = 600€ ? No thanks, that’s not worth it in my opinion because the iMac boots faster with a HD than my Windows machine did with a Crucial RealSSD (300 Mb/s Read)!

One thing I had upgraded by Apple is the graphics card: Got myself the AMD HD6970M with 2GB VRAM because VRAM is kina important for resolutions that high. Tested some games on it in Bootcamp and I’m quite pleased with the performance. Battlefield Bad Company 2 on 2560×1440 looks just great!

 

 

While this hardware is available for PCs too of course the software isn’t. (Don’t even think about mentioning Hackintoshes.)

Mac OS X is such a smooth and elegant way to work. There’s no clutter, just you and your content.

Features like Expose got sort of copied into Windows now too, but on OS X it’s actually usable!

 

You think, the search in Windows 7 is fast? Lol, just until you have seen spotlight in action.

 

I bought Office 2011 for Mac and iWork with my iMac but I also found such an amount of great, new software. For example Parallels: http://www.parallels.com/eu/

Parallels is a virtualization software which can run either in a window (like usual Vms) or in a so called Coherence mode. In coherence mode you can access Windows applications (for example on your Bootcamp partition) seamlessly from your Mac.

Let’s say you want to access Windows LiveWriter which is installed on your Bootcamp partition.

Just click on the Windows-App folder in the dock, and choose the application you want to launch.

Now Parallels does it’s magic by booting up Windows from the Bootcamp partition in the background and launching LiveWriter as soon as Windows is ready.

You can also open the Windows Start menu, open any application, copy and paste between OS X and Windows and much more.

 

Another great piece of software is Pixelmator. Want to shell out 1400€ for Photoshop? Think again, cause Pixelmator does most things just as good as Photoshop. And the best part: it costs just 23€ !

 

Conclusion:

Yes, I love my new iMac. In fact I think I love it a little bit too much already. I finally understand how hard it is not to open that box of smugness that comes with every new Apple product.

Oh…and I got a bunch of those in the last two months.

 

So I hope you liked my quick look at my new iMac, stay tuned for new blog posts in the near future. I plan on making a comeback as a blogger, covering not only Japan and Anime related stuff but also hardware and software reviews for Mac and Windows like I did now and then in the past.

A special greeting to my old comrades from the good old days who are still subscribed to my RSS-Feed! Zeh hikky is back!