iMac G5 - Where did the computer go?

Written by Philip Roy | 31 August 2004
Posted in Apple

It's the announcement we all knew was coming, but we never really knew quite what or specifically when it would be, or what the final product was going to look like. In the end, it was quite amazing.

Apple surprised many in recent months by admitting that they had made a mistake and they weren't ready to release an all new iMac. But all that changed in the last few hours with the release of the iMac in its third major design evolution.

Steve Jobs may have not been present in Paris (he's recuperating from an operation) but he was most certainly there in spirit when Phil Schiller (Senior Vice President - Worldwide Product Marketing) launched the first ever iMac G5 featuring a new radical design at the Apple Expo 2004 around 10pm New Zealand time.

Schiller, no stranger to keynotes speeches (albeit in often humorous cameo appearances to demo gear) appeared to enjoy a warm welcome from the crowd as he unveiled the strongly awaited machine, after the usual roundup of other great Apple news.

Schiller started off by reminding attendees of Jobs's surgery and was happy to report that he is doing well and should be back (as planned) at Apple in September.

The iTunes music store and music in general featured in the presentation (Europe's iTunes music store has sold a staggering 5 million songs since its launch in mid-june) and commented on the continued overwhelming performance of the iPod, including the recently released "Apple iPod from HP". Also mentioned was the cool iPod advert featuring the music of New Zealand's own Steriogram, which Apple has posted on its website.

Schiller went on to demo one of Apple's most recently released applications, Motion, which is quickly gaining a lot of respect and will provide stiff competition for applications like Adobe After Effects. He also demonstrated the new QuickTime codec H.264 (a version of MPEG-4), which will be a part of the new iChat program that will allow multiple person video conferences.

Other demonstrations were very much of a similar theme to this years Worldwide Developers Conference....Safari 2 and its ability to handle RSS feeds...Tiger's Spotlight engine, Automator and iChat, showing off a three-way video conference.

Schiller then went on to the moment we had all been waiting for....the iMac G5.

Planned to ship worldwide in mid-September, there are a number of models that will be available...

The 17-inch models come with either a 1.8 GHz PowerPC G5 processor and a SuperDrive?? for burning professional-quality DVDs, or a 1.6 GHz PowerPC G5 processor and a Combo drive for watching DVD movies and burning CDs. The 20-inch model has a 1.8 GHz PowerPC G5 processor and a SuperDrive. With a completely redesigned system architecture, the new iMac G5 now offers up to a 600 MHz front-side bus, 400 MHz DDR memory expandable to 2GB, AGP 8X graphics and 7200 rpm Serial ATA drives up to 250GB. The new iMac G5 comes standard with high-performance NVIDIA graphics with dedicated video memory for outstanding graphics performance and realistic game play.

The computer is quite breathtaking and once again an amazing feat by Apple Computer. Interestingly, no other announcements of hardware revisions came at the time of the iMac announcement, although some had speculated that there would be PowerBook updates today also.

UPDATE : You can view the keynote speech on Apple's website

More details : http://www.apple.com/imac/

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