The new iMacs

After somehow resisting the initial shockwave of Job's RDF, I've decided to wait until Leopard is released in October before I purchase one of the new iMacs.

A few days after the announcement I checked out the new machines at the Century City Apple store and discovered some interesting finds. First off, the machines look great. Yeah the chin is still there but it's not so pronounced now. Maybe it was the stark whiteness of the previous design that made it unappealing to me.

The big negative for me though is the viewable angle of the 20" model. Sure, Apple clearly discloses a 160 degree angle in their specs but I was really disappointed in how the screen's colors washed out while viewing the demo models. The table heights are pretty low in the store so I had to tilt the screen 45 degrees to make it look OK. The next day I searched online to see if other users noticed this and it's definitely an issue with more than a few people. As I understand it, it's because Apple chose to use a TN panel where the 24" iMac or any of the Cinema Displays use a different type of screen. You can read more about the differences here.

So despite this, it looks like I'm still leaning towards the 20" since we don't really need anything larger in size. I (like most people) use the computer facing head on so it shouldn't affect day-to-day work anyways.

Oh and one surprising plus of the Macs? The software! Playing a few minutes with Pages and Numbers was very cool. I can't believe how easy Apple made it to work with graphics and text in Pages. They can really give Adobe a run for their money if they really wanted to.

Come on Leopard...