Apple outed its brand new iMac line of all-in-one desktops this week, and this morning at Apple’s London offices, we were treated to a demonstration of what the new Sandy Bridge computers are capable of. Our own review is in the pipeline, but in the meantime, read on and discover five little nuggets you might not know about these gorgeous boxes.
The new iMac is a Mac Pro beater
The Mac Pro is the hulking, super pricey box aimed at video and image editing professionals – yet Apple is willing to admit that the iMac is catching up, claiming that the highest end 27-inch new iMac with AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2GB GDDR5 graphics is actually faster than the current entry level Mac Pro, with 30 percent speedier graphics performance. Oh, and it comes with a screen too.
Ambient light sensor
Physically, the new iMac models haven’t changed much, other than with the extra Thunderbolt ports popped around the back. There is one other, subtle change: on the front is an ambient light sensor that we saw in action, which gradually adjusts the light based on that in the room you’re working in, akin to how modern smartphones do. It’s a nice touch on an all-in-one, particularly if you use it for a long stretch with light pouring through the windows and then receding.
Facetime is fullscreen
FaceTime on iOS devices is currently shot in 4:3 ratio – since that’s the aspect ratio of your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad 2′s display. But on the new iMac, the HD webcam films your mug for widescreen, 16:9 FaceTime chats, just as it does on the new MacBook Pro line. Black bars begone!
It’s even greener
The new iMac is Apple’s first product to be Energy Star 5.2 certified. It’s the new bench mark set by Mother Earth, or the US Environmental Protection Agency anyway, meaning that it’s been independently lab tested not to burn up too much juice, or go around throwing plastic shopping bags into landfill.
Solid state is an option
You won’t see it on the iMac page on Apple’s online store, but click through to configure your model and you’ll find that both the 21 and 27-inch new iMacs have an option to switch out the hard drive for a 256GB solid state drive – yes, you’re looking at far less storage space, but who cares when Snow Leopard will run like lightning. You could always plug in one (or even twelve) Thunderbolt hard drives in an array if you wanted – or pay eve more to grab both an SSD and a hard drive, with the OS X installation on the former and all your files stashed on the latter.
