[Matsu]

Well, I went from CS2 to CS5 then CS6 on my old laptop. Lightroom was always a lost cause on it: I gave up at 3.3, and my laptop won't run anything >4 anyway. So, I was forced to get comfortable with Bridge - which I prefer in some ways, but even that struggles with loading large multi high MP image folders. Some functions in Photoshop require patience. Things were generally a pain, and I've started to worry about reliability, the screen is somewhat dim now, and the caps whine at some brightness settings and the backlight is also uneven until it's had some time to heat up. Now, it gets hot in a hurry which when it goes into space-heater mode, and sometimes the fan runs a little rough. The optical is caput now; the battery - which I could replace - holds about 15-20 minutes of charge...

Basically, it was time to get a new machine before needing one and not having it, having to buy it, set it up, recover data, etc... That and my web client service extensions for things like proofing and online ordering have cool Lightroom integration/plugins which my existing machine won't run.

One thing I've overlooked - battery/power supply. My laptops, even with next to useless batteries, basically had UPS built in. I gave my old UPS away when I moved into a condo. I'll need one now, I haven't lost a job due to power outage in years, I want to keep it that way.

[Dorian Gray]

I’ve had an APC Back-UPS 400 for a couple of years. Fairly cheap, and does the job nicely.

[Matsu]

Holy shit, it's on it's way on a local truck in Mississauga (from 8:30). I don't know whether to dust my desk or comb my hair...

[Dorian Gray]

Originally Posted by Matsu Holy shit, it's on it's way on a local truck in Mississauga (from 8:30). I don't know whether to dust my desk or comb my hair...

Maybe get the champagne cooled?

[Matsu]

Apple is such a tease! They even send you "Today's the day." "Items on order should be delivered..." text messages. I've never seen this before. They really do work the whole occasion. I always knew they paid attention to the packaging, I never realized they put these little touches on the delivery too...

[Dorian Gray]

It’s even fancier if you order an engraved item, like the iPad mini I got my mother.

[PB PM]

The joys you miss out on by buying stuff in an Apple Store... Of course I did the same thing when I ordered an iPad on the first day of pre-orders a few years back.

[drewprops]

This is hysterical. I almost expect to see a flash mob video of its arrival, with music by Coldplay. I just know I'm gonna cry.

...

[Dorian Gray]

Well where is it?! Don’t leave us hanging, Matsu!

[Yontsey]

Haha I know, seriously! I expected to check in on this thread and see pictures and updates.

[Matsu]

First posting from it, live right now!

Unfortunately a very late running event got in the way, so I had no chance to set up the new iMac until this very moment. After all the fan fair, the unboxing is a little less seductive in refurb guise. You don't get the same glossy garments wrapped around it, but what's going on under the garments is just as sexy...

Funny, I almost didn't get it this weekend. Because our condo doesn't have a door man, it makes receiving parcels is a little weird, I have all my big deliveries sent to my parents house, which is just a minute away. Luck would have it they were out and just returning as the Fedex van was about to leave. By that time I was out. But Apple was kind enough to send a "your order has been delivered" message. Around 3AM I crept into their house to pick it up. It's a bit like being a teen, trying to creep up to bed, hoping tomorrow morning no one will realize just how late it was. Luckily, they're retired now, and heavier sleepers than I remember. My father calls me this morning to let me know the package is here. I told him, I already picked it up, but I left them some pastries. He laughs. He was a mechanic for 40 years and an amateur photographer and appreciates fine instruments. He knows I wasn't waiting a moment longer than necessary.

I've literally just plugged it in, and the first impressions are that the screen immediately seems much larger in the corner of the den that it does in any of the labs, but in the last few minutes I'ca already gotten used to it. I can sit further back, which is nice. It looks solid straight out of the box. Viewing angle is excellent. Contrast is punchy without being offensive. At about 35% brightness and with a very slight downward tilt, most of the room reflections are gone. A short hood would easily get the rest of the reflections. I'll probably calibrate it once by eye and then properly to see how good I am, and just be extra precise.


I got a message right away asking to update the bundled iApps suite, and I'm not sure whether to use my AppleID or my wife's. She is the buyer of most of the iTunesy things, and I just sync my iPhone's music to hers and add the occasional item. Can you run multiple accounts easily? Or one for Apps and one for Tunes?

The wireless keyboard is surprising. The feedback on the keys and the little bit of clickiness works very well. Better than the scissor on the Macbook, which are surely a little worn by now.

Getting used to wrong way around scrolling on the mouse

EDIT: The antenna on this thing are pretty amazing coming from the Macbook. I see twice as many networks!

[drewprops]

*fanfare

AND CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!

I just set my Mom up on a Mini and I've been experimenting with where I can apply my Apple account to various things (like Books) for her.



...
spelling popo

[Matsu]

OMG, I'm turing in into a complete moron when it comes to embarrassing typos and careless grammatical errors, any rudeness was probably well deserved.

[thegeriatric]

Nice, hope you enjoy your new "toy".

[Quagmire]

Congrats on getting it. You will love it. Do you plan on ditching the 3 TB HD once you put a bigger SSD in there? It's nice to have a SSD only setup. My iMac is so quiet without the clicking noises from the HD.

[Matsu]

Eventually. When they become available/cheaper, I may decouple them and keep the HDD for internal backups and the SSD for the system drive. Apple hides a partition with the original install somewhere on the fusion drive, so it will probably be a case of cleaning up the drive and cloning it over to the new install at some point in the future. If I find a good price I might move to some kind of PCIe expansion chassis/drive bay. I do need a bluray burner, ever so often I get asked to deliver an "HD" slideshow, if anyone has a solid recommendation, I'm all ears.

I will add a couple of RAM sticks and that's it. It's a very complete machine otherwise. Even the built-in speakers are surprisingly effective for desktop listening.

[turtle]

Just make a USB installer and not worry about it. No need for the hidden partition. It'll make another one anyway IIRC.

[Matsu]

I will pick just two little nits. The machine could use two more USB ports. Apple sweats a lot of details, and if you do things their way, they keep it all very tidy. For example, the bluetooth implementation is excellent. No lag on the mouse or keyboard. It wakes from sleep instantly and is responsive right off the top. But if you want wired or IR, you're using up at least one port. The internal speakers really are good enough for easy listening, but if you want external, a wired set will eat up another port. In the end it's very minor because they give you great wireless, and thunderbolt, and from another way of looking at it, if you have too many wires jutting out of the mac, it looses some of the zen-like appeal, so this really is just the tiniest of nits, really... but there's also the question of placement. The bottom right hand edge ought to have two ports on it. One? USB. The other? Move that SDXC reader over where it makes sense for a card reader and/or thumb drive.

That's it really.

[PB PM]

I understand why Apple moved the SDXC slot, too bad they did it right after they removed the superdrive. I think almost anyone who has a modern iMac that had the SD slot just below the superdrive on the side has either dropped an SD card into the slot or come very close several times. Of course now that there is no superdrive, removing it from the right side is just silly.

[Matsu]

It's a semi regular occurrence in the mac labs that still have optical drives. I got pretty good at fishing crap out of the slot drives with some heavy paper and tape...

[Chinney]

Congrats on the new computer.

Make sure to give us your 'hands-on' impressions once you've used it a bit.

[Matsu]

I just hooked up my 19" Dell. (1280x1024, 5:4, TN) It's still crap, but rather than try and calibrate it using Apple's utility, I've left the profile as standard Dell. It's pretty close to 6500K but there are obvious limits in it's gamut, probably only 70ish percent of sRGB which manifests itself as some images looking a little cyan by comparison while others look a little magenta. Depends on the colours in the image, there's just nothing you can do to calibrate this kind of display digitally, both the bit depth and gamut limits conspire to defeat any kind of accuracy when you stray too far from the factory settings. So why bother? Well, using the on screen menus you can aim for something pleasing within the limits it has. I've turned the brightness to zero, which is still bright, and moved the contrast up - which seems to adjust some combination of brightness and contrast, weird. Zero contrast gives a black screen, when zero contrast should probably give a grey screen.

I've placed it to the left of the main screen, tilted in about 30 degrees. In OSX's Displays panel, I've aligned it with the lower edge of the left side of the main screen. This gives me about 400 pixels at the top left corner - where menus and tool selections reside in photoshop - 400 pixels where I can't overshoot the edge of the screen and end up on the other display. I hate losing track of my mouse pointer. So, I'm working from left to right. Pick image on secondary monitor, opens on iMac screen, edit, open in PS6, layers/masks etc on the right hand edge. The biggest issue is that the lower resolution doesn't really give you too many image tiles to look at across the bottom. I'll try it for a while, might end up being somewhere for messages/facebook/browser windows

I see that Mavericks doesn't let a window span two screens, while OSX10.6.8 would. No biggie, actually better in some ways. I wonder if there's a way to toggle this on and off.

Speaking of mousing around. The Magic mouse isn't exactly smooth on my desk. It feels almost like the slippery plastic strips have been scuffed up. They haven't, but they just don't glide very well. My Logitech feels teflon coated by comparison. Also, in about a day and change of use, my batteries are down to 98%. No big deal, but it does mean that it likely gets only 3-4 months between charges. That same Logitech IR mouse has had the same batteries in it for two years! I might be going back to it. I wonder if I can apply some sort of super slick coating or decal to the bottom of the magic mouse? It looks great, but I'm not sure it's one of Apple's more ergonomic choices. Panning around an 100% image view is great though, so it does have some advantages over the scroll wheel...

I have a feeling a magic track-pad plus logitech or other more traditional mouse will be a better solution for long term comfort plus gesture based controls.

The keyboard remains surprising, maybe because I expected very little from it. Direction keys remain too small, otherwise it easy to type on without looking down and I like the feedback from the keys, but I might just like slightly larger keys (even with the same spacing)

I'm tempted to lift the screen two inches and hunt for a different keyboard, we'll see...

[Matsu]

Mavericks might be the biggest adjustment for me personally. Things are just different. In the labs I sometimes use I've never really spent any time outside of CC or CS6 to know how mavericks behaves, come to think of it, I think a number of the campus computers are still on 10.8.x or wherever that release is at. Little things. The copy and move file behaviours are different. Up to 10.6.8, my last OSX, if I grabbed a file from open folder and dragged it to another, OSX "moved" the file. If I do the same thing now, mavericks "copies" the file. Not just between the system and external disks, just like previous versions, but also within two folders on the desktop. Things are in different places in the finder too. I dislike changes generally, so I'm not a good person to evaluate this. Clearly, I need to spend some more time getting to know mavericks.

General usage. Needs more RAM. I don't think this is Apple's fault. I blame Adobe. I'll report back when I max it out.

The screen. I'm near the limit of my visual acuity. I'm typically sitting just over arms' length from the screen, most UI elements are too small at that distance, about 2.5'

I'm not saying more resolution isn't welcome, but more has to happen to the OS before it will be comfortable to use any more than 1440p. Photos and UI are two different things. Because of how the eyes work, more resolution would be perceptible when viewing photos, but operating menu heavy applications already causes a hint of strain.

Still, as it is, you can preview images full screen quite effectively. Just sit back a little, and you get a more than decent approximation of how a large print will look. A landscape 13x19 fits entirely within the screen; even 17x22 fits the whole long dimension, though the wider aspect of the screen cuts it off vertically.

Keyboard is getting easier to use, mouse is not.

[Dorian Gray]

Originally Posted by Matsu The copy and move file behaviours are different. Up to 10.6.8, my last OSX, if I grabbed a file from open folder and dragged it to another, OSX "moved" the file. If I do the same thing now, mavericks "copies" the file. Not just between the system and external disks, just like previous versions, but also within two folders on the desktop.

This doesn’t happen on my version of Mavericks. It still moves files.

Stick with the Magic Mouse for another day or two before writing it off. It’s my favourite mouse, and one of the few that doesn’t give me various pains and nerve weirdness in my wrist with prolonged usage. I realise many, many people dislike it – people, I should note, who usually mouse a hell of a lot slower than I do when I see them using their preferred mouse.

[Matsu]

It might just have been me, confused. I had four external drives plugged in at one point shuttling files around and though I was moving things into one area but was actually copying them elsewhere. I'm still getting used to the finder.

As for the mouse, it could be my posture. I'm used to sitting up close to the laptop, which while bad for my neck, at least had my wrists in the right place. As soon as I started using the iMac, I was sitting back, better for my neck, worse for my wrists. Did I mention the screen is BIG. We all know it is, lots of you have 27" screens, even multiple ones, but it really does make a different impression when you've got it on a normal sized desk in the typical home office. It changes the way you work. I like the space, but I have a feeling that at the typical resolutions and application UI available today, something in the 23-24" range is closer to the ideal size for most workspaces. Screens are now big enough that you have to think about more carefully about where you set yourself up to use them.

Getting back to the mouse, I realize it has to have a little bit of grip to make touch functions easier. hmmm. Just for fun I tried magic trackpad at the printer's today. I really like it, but I didn't have time to go to the Apple store to pick one up. I might be in the minority, but the drivers that control speed and panning across the screen are just so well judged, it's almost the perfect balance between a mouse and a graphics tablet.

Let me explain. Mice translate momentum and velocity very well navigating the screen, but you have to slow down bit to have precision in controlling brushed/pen/editing tools. Tablets have precision, but there are somethings to watch out for. You really have to have some correlation between the size of the tablet and the screen or movements become exaggerated since they map the area of the tablet to the area of the screen: top left corner on the tablet is the top left corner on the screen, middle equals middle, bottom right equals bottom right. It doesn't care how fast you mover the pen, just how much pressure you apply. Great for some things, horrible for navigation, where you really have to slow and be deliberate to tap away at buttons and such. try taping control points in Nik, for example, it's an exercise in frustration - for which we can also blame Nik/Google.

Only the Magic Trackpad seems equally at home navigating the UI as it does making selections, and of the three types of device moves most easily between navigation and editing, but again, I'm really used to (Apple's) trackpads, and I've never had one as good as the Magic trackpad... it's very good. I know what I want for Easter.

Unless you're a painter or illustrator by trade (lots of fine brush/pencil work), I have a feeling the magic trackpad is going to be faster than any mouse for typical photoshop work, faster than many tablets too.

The only clear steps up would be a from the Cintiq line - where you draw/color/paint/select and view on the same screen. That's a different experience. But there you have to think about how large of a display can you actually position conveniently for drawing?

[Matsu]

A small disappointment is that the LED backlight uses PWM, and depending on your tolerance that is going to prevent you using the very lowest brightness settings. I noticed the faintest bit of strain dropping the screen brightness down below 1/3rd in a dark room. I think that's pushing things. The information I can find on the controller says it's a two phase part that oscillates at 1Mhz per phase, so it's fast enough to be beyond the threshold for perception. However, I think some users may have strain if they operate the screen too dimly, and near poor light sources. I've found that flicker elsewhere in the room can interact with flicker on a screen, exacerbating any deficiencies. Again, you'll have to be obsessive or sensitive to notice. With daylight filtering into my den, the screen is a joy; last night with 60hz lighting turned on, I first got a little suspicious...

Don't turn it up to maximum brightness either, way too bright!

There are 16 steps on the scale, I think the comfortable operating range is from about 6-12 depending on room and lighting. Be careful not to put crappy light sources near your workspace. No cheap CCFLs. Electronic ballasts if you must.

[PB PM]

The new iMac's LED's must be a lot brighter, I run mine at 100% most of the time. I knock it down by 4 bars at night, but still 12 would be way to low. Since my workspace has a large window behind it, no choice about it, I need the brightness up to overcome the glare. I use LED lights (12W - 60W equivalents) and even with that I need to keep the brightness up to prevent glare. From what I saw at the Apple Store last year the new models don't suffer from glare as much, so that might explain why less brightness is required.

As for the magic mouse, I'm with you. It is terrible! No matter how much I use one (my parents have one for their older 09 iMac) I just cannot get used to it. It doesn't track overly well, the DPI must be somewhat low. It's way to small for my semi-average sized hands (on the smaller size of average), and my fingers get all cramped up. I use the magic trackpad and a cheap $25 MS comfort mouse and the latter blows the MM out of the water in terms of comfort and smoothness of tracking.

[Matsu]

The light in my den is nicely controlled. There's a big sliding door/balcony to the side of my chair but the curtain diffuses it enough during the day.

The mouse tracks fine, I just have a lifetime of bad habits - as I think do most people who rest their wrists on the desk - you're supposed to keep them elevated, just like typing. Apple has always seemed to design mice to discourage lazy operation, but I just can't help it. My giant mitts probably don't help either.

[psmith2.0]

I love the Magic Mouse. If Apple ever discontinues it, I'll buy a couple to put away for long-term backup. It's all I've used for about five years now. Other mice feel weird/silly/hard-to-control in comparison. It might be one if my favorite Apple products ever, no lie.

However, I know this is a very subjective, personal thing. So, unlike some, I'm not going to spend 2-3 paragraphs bashing other models and telling their users they don't know what the hell they're doing/talking about (in that condescending, know-it-all way that only the Internet can provide).

[Yontsey]

Originally Posted by pscates2.0 I love the Magic Mouse. If Apple ever discontinues it, I'll buy a couple to put away for long-term backup. It's all I've used for about five years now. Other mice feel weird/silly/hard-to-control in comparison. It might be one if my favorite Apple products ever, no lie. However, I know this is a very subjective, personal thing. So, unlike some, I'm not going to spend 2-3 paragraphs bashing other models and telling their users they don't know what the hell they're doing/talking about (in that condescending, know-it-all way that only the Internet can provide).

I agree. It took a little bit of time for me to get use to my MM but once I did, I can't go back. I absolutely love it.