Apple has a habit of springing surprises where you’d least expect them. Their products can be likened to that long cherished T-shirt that you have always dreamt of wearing. You are overjoyed to spot one in the market - first class clothing material, just the right size, lovely sleeves, that perfect earthy colour and that elusive V neck you have always been obsessed with. Its only when you go to the counter to get it billed that you notice a grose graffiti adorning the backside, that too in rubberpaint. You feel like banging your head. You cant decide whether to buy or not and you end up cursing the manufacturer for having manufactured a brilliant piece of merchandise only to spoil it with that rubberpaint.
When I opened the carton of my new iMac it wasn’t without a set of apprehensions. What if there is no power cord ? What if I’m told I’ll have to buy it separately for 2K. These things happen with Apple. They always do. However, I was pleased as punch to see that they had given me a sparkling white power cord and a long one too. I checked and everything else seemed in order. I was thanking my good luck. I connected the cord to the machine and was about to push the plug in the power socket when I realized that the Plug was a flat pinned one. And there was no sign of an adapter. Darn them, why do they always have to do this :-(
I got a cheap adapter from the market. Also as suggested on various sites I tried finding a 4 GB 1333Mhz generic RAM stick meant to be installed prior to starting the machine for the 1st time (to make it compatible). I hardly hoped of getting one, if at all, for less than 5-6K. Imagine my pleasant surprise when I was told I could get a 4 GB RAM tailor-made for iMac for as little as 1.8k. I swear I could have bought another Apple machine I was so happy. Anyways I got the 4GB stick, installed it, followed instructions and switched the thing on. A slick setup and soon I found myself face to face with the legendary Apple desktop and the famous Dock.
Over the next couple of months I often found myself in awe of the machine. To start, with the machine has looks to die for. Snow Leopard, the OS shipped with the machine loads in 20 seconds and shutdowns in less than 5. It has a zippy quad core processor that seriously reduces the time required for all processing including video/photo/audio encoding. The 17W internal speakers produce enough sound to enable me to watch movies. Whenever I have done videocalls using Skype, the other party has enquired about the webcam used by me (Facetime HD camera). The keyboard with island type keys is so easy to clean. No clutter of wires behind my desk. Both the Keyboard and Mouse run on AA sized batteries so no proprietary headaches here.
Before I delve into the seamier side of Macs, here are a couple of myths that I’d rather dispel :-
Myth 1 - Macs are terribly expensive and meant only for snobs with money to splurge. They may be expensive but only marginally. For example if you were to buy a all-in-one PC with these/similar specs (read an i5 quad core 2.5 Ghz processor, 21 inch IPS panel full HD display, 4 GB 1333 Mhz RAM, a 64 bit OS, an ATI 6750M graphics card, wireless keyboard and wireless mouse), you’ll end up paying over 50K (eg., the Dell Inspiron One 2305 or the HP TouchSmart 610xt, similarly specced model costs around 55K). Further, software for Macs is rather cheap compared to that for Windows. You can buy a full retail copy of Snow Leopard/Lion for 1700 bucks whereas a copy of Win 7 ultimate will set you back by a cool 10.5 K. A copy of Aperture (Apple’s photo editing software) costs 7.5k whereas a copy of Photoshop costs about 50K.
Myth 2 - Macs take a lot of adaptability. If you are using Windows, any OS will require a bit of adaptability. Thankfully Macs have an interface similar to Windows and it doesn’t take too long to adapt to its ways. Learning to use Command X, Command C & Command V for cut-copy-paste instead of Ctrl X, Ctrl C & Ctrl V isn’t a big deal. Similarly a lot of shortcuts may be different but again they can be customized most of the times. In fact if you wish to take your own sweet time to adapt to OSX, you have the option of using Bootcamp, an application that allows you to dual boot Windows. This enables you to switch between OSX and Windows as per your convenience and also enables you to run a few programs that were exclusively written for Windows and/or have no Mac equivalent.
As I said before, Apple’s products present problems where you’d least expect them. The native font size for the menu bar as also other applications is too small for most of us and there is no way to increase it as of now. So much for an OS that calls itself “the World’s most Advanced Operating System” :-P There is no forward delete button on the keyboard. Then of course there are skeptics who harp on the health risks of using Bluetooth technology for Keyboard/mouse, even if the energy transmitted is too little. Next there are omissions that many of us find hard to digest. No USB 3, no Bluetooth 3 and no Blu Ray. For the price you’d expect them there but they aren’t. And thats not all. All of the 4 usb ports are located on the back panel towards the bottom. So accessing them can be a big headache. Further the machine has a tendency to get hot on the backside. But thats rather normal considering the heavy duty processor used. The display side is quite ok.
But the most glaring bottleneck of all is a slow 7200 rpm Hard Disk that you cant replace with SSD. The option is available only in higher models but there again you’d need to get ’em installed from Apple as they have tweaked the SATA interface to ensure that HDD/SSD from open market cannot replace the installed one.
For problems like font scalability there is no solution as of now unless you are prepared to use the full HD display with lower resolutions. For other things there may be workarounds. If you are not comfortable using Bluetooth purely from health perspective (it has no lag rest assured) you can opt for a wired Keyboard/Mouse but it would set you back by 5k. Again you can use USB extension wires to tackle the accessibility problem. In future you can get a Thunderbolt to USB 3.0 adapter if you feel like it.
Software for iMac - Some must have softwares include Open Office, Skype, VLC Player, ClamXav, Audacity and Firefox. These are all free but great to use. Paid softwares include Office 2011, Aperture and Final Cut Pro.
If you have been interested in getting a Mac but haven’t made up your mind, you can refer to a set of criteria in my 1st comment that might help you take the dive.
Apple has the most compelling mix of substance and style when it comes to PCs. Sadly they have turned into complete control freaks, the very idea they stood against back in the 80s. Maybe 1984 was not like 1984 (refer video), but 2011 certainly is :-(