topic iMac & Cinema Displays in Installation & update

iMac & Cinema Displays

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 21:58:13 GMT

I am going to switch from Windows to Mac, I already have a MacBook, but am undecided between an iMac and a Mac Pro, the Mac Pro seems like overkill to me but I am uneasy about an all in one system.

The thing I am most curious about is, is there any difference between the quality of the screens on the iMac and the Cinema displays, also I have read that there have been some problems with colour shifts on the 23" model which Apple has not been keen to rectify, has anybody experienced this.

The nearest Apple shop is about 600 miles away so I can't wander in and look.

If I go for the Mac Pro should I go for a Cinema display either the 20" or 23" which are quite elderly in specification terms or am I better to go for an Eizo or some other up market model with a more current spec.

Thanks

Chris Dennehy

Re: iMac & Cinema Displays

Thomas Holm — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 22:25:27 GMT

I'd recommend the EIZO FLEXSCAN S2411W if you're buying a separate screen. It's got two qualities that sets it apart from the crowd: Much better back light quality and flexiblity, and a stand that allows you to pull the screen down to act like an extension to the keyboard. This paired with exceptional color quality for the price. I'm using the previous model with my MacBookPro.

But if bang for the buck is priority, I'd go for the 24" imac. It's got a better quality screen than the 20".

Re: iMac & Cinema Displays

Rex Maximilian — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 05:12:52 GMT

If you need a beast, get the Pro. I mean, some people who specialize in visualization will need to do great amounts of renderings and animation frames, etc. So, processor speed and RAM is a must! However, if you plan to use ArchiCAD on standard type projects, then the iMac is for you.

Even if you get the iMac, get it configured with MAXIMUM RAM and the biggest hard drive you can get!

I would of course get the 23" iMac as well... And a second monitor would be wise to as you can expand all of your palettes, etc., and have multiple windows open and viewable at the same time.

And of course, the great thing about going Mac is you can use BootCamp or Parallels as a crutch.

Re: iMac & Cinema Displays

Anonymous — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:54:42 GMT

Thanks to the both of you for the feedback.

For once getting the most bang for the buck is not an absolute priority this time I'm after the best quality.

From your observations the 24" iMac has a better screen than the 20", if I decide on the iMac, I was going for the 24" anyway as I don't want multiple monitors, I find them distracting. I'm just wondering if it's worth going for the 2.8 model.

I feel that there is too much of a gap in the Apple line up between the iMac and the Mac Pro, for ordinary work a single processor version of the Mac Pro would probably be more than adequate, as nobody round here wants renderings or animations the Mac Pro is probably something of an overkill for me but I just can't make up my mind as the Mac Pro is user accessible and you can fiddle with it whereas the iMac is a sealed system apart from the memory.

I have been looking at the Eizo screens and if I decide on the Mac Pro I will probably get one rather than a Cinema Display as I feel they are due for renewal shortly and I don't want to find myself the proud owner of an obsolete display.

Regards

Chris Dennehy

Re: iMac & Cinema Displays

Thomas Holm — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:59:58 GMT

Chris wrote:
I feel that there is too much of a gap in the Apple line up between the iMac and the Mac Pro...

Agreed! A faster Macmini with a graphics card option would be ideal, I think (essentially a "headless" Imac)

I have been looking at the Eizo screens and if I decide on the Mac Pro I will probably get one ...

You won't regret the Eizo! But check out their different stand options.

Re: iMac & Cinema Displays

Erich — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 02:05:42 GMT

Chris,

You might take a look at this MacWorld article too.

http://www.macworld.com/2007/11/firstlooks/speedmark5new/index.php

They found that the 2.8 iMac was very close in speed to the Pro (at least in their tests)

Re: iMac & Cinema Displays

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 08:22:27 GMT

Thanks Erich,

It's difficult for me to say if these tests relate to anything we do apart from the rendering one which only occurs occasionally for me and then with Lightworks, what does seem interesting is that the 3.0GHz Mac Pro only seems to have a marginal performance increase over both the 2.8 GHz iMac and 2.66 GHz Mac Pro which is out of line with it's price premium.

This of course may change as rumour has it that Apple has been buying up the latest Xeon chips for a rumoured upgrade which will happen sometime just after you've bought one, for this reason I'm looking at the refurbished models of the Mac Pro which are more reasonable and carry the same warranty, then if the upgrade happens you don't feel so bad about it.

So far no new aluminium iMac's have appeared in the refurbished page in the applestore.ie though they do seem to have quite a lot of MacBook Pro's and I'm wondering why.

Regards

Chris Dennehy

Re: iMac & Cinema Displays

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 18:12:46 GMT

Chris wrote:
So far no new aluminium iMac's have appeared in the refurbished page in the applestore.ie though they do seem to have quite a lot of MacBook Pro's and I'm wondering why.

The MacBook Pros have been around a lot longer. Alum-iMacs are still in their first release. I doubt it's to do with build quality. My first gen MacBook Pro (ordered the morning they were announced) is going strong with no problems (aside from some fingernail wear on the A, S & E keys).

Re: iMac & Cinema Displays

Eduardo Rolon — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 18:54:34 GMT

The benefits for the MacPro are not necessarily in processor speed but in expandability. The max memory for an iMac is 4 Gb for a MP is 16, the video card is upgradable and you can have more than one, internal Hard disks in MP = 4? in iMac 1. If you don't need to add anything more than 4Gb of Ram and a 256Mb video card then an iMac will do fine. For a regular user of AC with not much rendering get an iMac 24, save the money, max the memory (from crucial or macsales) and buy an external firewire hard disk for time machine.

Re: iMac & Cinema Displays

Erich — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 01:37:41 GMT

ejrolon, I think you hit it square on with that comment! Although the Mac Pro's do have minor speed bump it is really the expandability that is of value.

Re: iMac & Cinema Displays

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 08:11:18 GMT

Well I took the plunge and bought a 24" 2.4GHz iMac without any extras except Applecare based on the theory that the performance gain in going to a 2.8GHz processor was out of line with the premium asked and put the savings into additional Crucial ram and a 500GB external backup drive, trying to make up my mind between a Seagate Free Agent and and a LaCie d2 quadra, any comments ?

Am also wondering about Aperture which seems to have fairly mixed reviews on the Applestore.ie site

Many thanks for your comments

Regards

Chris Dennehy

Re: iMac & Cinema Displays

Thomas Holm — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 09:33:03 GMT

Chris wrote:
... any comments ?

You did the right thing!
About the drives - we have a bunch of LaCies. No problems at all. We also have some Seagates. No problems there either. We have had problems with Hitachi/IBM drives though, but that was a while ago and we stopped buying them so I don't know their quality these days. So it's up to you!

Re: iMac & Cinema Displays

Rex Maximilian — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 11:55:14 GMT

Chris wrote:
Am also wondering about Aperture which seems to have fairly mixed reviews on the Applestore.ie site

I tried Aperature for a bit. It was... nice. But Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is the BOMB! It is incredible. My favorite thing about it is to include PSD files with your RAW files in the collections. AND, keeping yourr PS files with 16-bit pixel size allows you to further edit the PSD with RAW controls in Lightroom. Plus, it has GREAT web gallery exportation capability using Flash or HTML from many templates.

Re: iMac & Cinema Displays

Anonymous — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 12:30:53 GMT

im hearing good things about pixelmator.

its based anopen source app but has a good mac look and feel,utilises core technology too.

although i think it is more of a photosop replacement rather then aperture

http://www.pixelmator.com/

Re: iMac & Cinema Displays

Rex Maximilian — Sun, 02 Dec 2007 23:39:36 GMT

Lennox wrote:
although i think it is more of a photosop replacement rather then aperture

Don't look for a Photoshop replacement... 'cause their ain't one!

What Aperature and Lightroom do is differernt than what Photoshop does. LR & PS together is the way to go... LR's advantage over Aperature is its tight integration with PS.

Re: iMac & Cinema Displays

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 08:11:09 GMT

Well after ordering my iMac on Friday I had just got back from a meeting on Monday when it arrived about 4.30 which surprised me as Apple deliveries here usually take about a week, then when I went for my compulsory walk I noticed that the delivery guy lives about half a mile down the road.

I didn't get around to setting it up until about 9.30, straightforward enough except that I had to root around to find a power lead to connect it to the UPS, fair enough the supplied lead plugs straight into the mains.

First surprise coming from windows the internet connection was picked up straight away, no hours spent fishing around for connections, second surprise it came with Tiger Installed and a copy of Leopard in the box, will wait to install that until GS gives the ArchiCAD OK.

The keyboard is quite nice but is very low off the ground compared to my Gateway 2000 programmable model I have been using since I bought one of their 486's back in 94 ?, still works perfectly.

I tried the mighty mouse and gave up simply because, even after adjusting it in preferences, I found I was having to wave my arm all over the desk top to get it to travel the screen and it was very slow to travel as well. I downloaded drivers and plugged in my Wacom Graphire tablet which I have had for years, very much faster and just a slight wrist movement and it covers the entire screen. I think I might lash out and by an Intuous 3, it should look more the thing with iMac, its kind of grubby and held in place with globs of Blu Tack

The iMac picked up my HP DesignJet 500 plotter and HP 1700 A3 printer no problem, it picked up my Canon Pixma copier as well but I will have to install drivers for that. Vista see if it works utility a few weeks ago picked up all 3 as unknown

One other thing that surprised me was that the power supply is integral with the unit, for some reason I had it in my mind that as it is basically a large laptop it would be a separate power brick, top left hand corner gets quite hot, the top right hand corner is warmish and the boom corners don't fell warm at all, wonder if expansion/contraction problems will occur later on.

I have been trying to download the latest ArchiCAD upgrade but the site seems to be asleep.

Regards

Chris Dennehy

Re: iMac & Cinema Displays

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 08:12:05 GMT

Opps sorry about the double entry

Chris d

Re: iMac & Cinema Displays

Stephen Dolbee — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 20:12:20 GMT

Chris,

I appreciate your input, especially from an ex-windows user. I am jealous since I plan on making the switch also, but can't justify the cost until my Dell workstation fails-or becomes too slow. In the meantime, maybe i'll go buy an iPod.

Steve

Re: iMac & Cinema Displays

Eduardo Rolon — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 23:20:09 GMT

Stephen wrote:
Chris,

I appreciate your input, especially from an ex-windows user. I am jealous since I plan on making the switch also, but can't justify the cost until my Dell workstation fails-or becomes too slow…

turn off the firewall and the antivirus…

or install Vista

Re: iMac & Cinema Displays

Erika Epstein — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 05:13:50 GMT

Chris,
I have so missed your slice of life writing. Just in case you can't see this far, I have a huge grin on my face from reading your post. It's wonderful having you back!
Erika