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Practical Mac / Glenn Fleishman
User-friendly iMac G5 keeps it simple

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The company does a good job of portraying its products in the best light on its Web site, but I'm always a bit dubious until I can get my hands on them.

For example, the anticipation of the Power Mac G4 Cube was somewhat dampened by the realization that it was actually larger than it appeared, and it clung to a hefty power adapter that never made it into the marketing photos (but I liked the design overall).

So when Apple sent a 20-inch iMac G5 to me for review, I was surprised to discover that it is larger and heavier. Most of that, of course, is the beautiful 20-inch screen, which is bright and crisp.

But more surprising was the small size of the iMac's footprint: It takes up the same space on my desk previously occupied by a PC laptop, including room for the keyboard and mouse.

The iMac G5 is also sturdier than I expected. The curved sliver of anodized aluminum that is the machine's stand balances the computer solidly and doesn't budge when I adjust the viewing angle.

Like the iMac G4 with its jointed arm, the new iMac's vertical swivel mechanism requires only a finger's pressure to adjust it and stays in place after moving. Unlike that previous model, you can't adjust the side-to-side angle, though it's easy to shift the entire machine left or right, base and all.

When looking at Apple's pictures online, many people thought the expanse of white space below the screen seemed a waste, or a distraction; only the gray Apple logo appears there, instead of any ports or controls.

I'm sure that will be the repository for Post-it notes in some households, but otherwise the area isn't distracting, because as you work you're looking at the screen.

To me, however, the best part of the iMac's design is not the stand, the rear location of all of the ports or even the double-shot layers of white and crystal plastic that encase the unit. No, the best part is cracking open the shell. If you've ever had to dig around the innards of a computer, you know some components are hard to reach, use different size screws and often have sharp edges.

By contrast, to open the iMac G5, you loosen three screws on the bottom edge and lift the back panel off using the stand. The screws are designed to just loosen and stay in place, so you won't inadvertently drop and lose them.
 
With the guts revealed, you can replace (or upgrade, depending on the part) nearly every component inside, from memory to hard drive to logic board. This is a huge design effort and will no doubt reduce the time and money required for Apple to repair iMacs and reduce the time you're without a computer.

Why am I spending so much space talking about the iMac's case design? Once running, it's another modern Macintosh loaded with Mac OS X 10.3 Panther and iLife '04 (iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, and GarageBand). A few standout things are worth mentioning, though.

Apple also sent a Wireless Keyboard and a Wireless Mouse for review, since the iMac G5 looks best without wires trailing from it. The first time I started the machine, it automatically established a Bluetooth connection to the mouse, before the login screen or the musical welcome program that is first to run. A few steps later it paired with the keyboard, too. I never needed to unpack the wired mouse and keyboard that came with the iMac.

The PowerPC G5 processor indeed makes this iMac faster, and the NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra graphics card seemed to keep up with a handful of game demos I downloaded. (A few online outlets such as Macworld.com have posted benchmark results of the iMac's speed.)

The base iMac configuration comes with 256 megabytes of memory, which is not enough. Apple equipped this unit with 512 MB; I'd recommend at least 768 MB or 1 gigabyte total at least (it can support up to 2 GB), given that tomorrow's applications invariably need more memory (not to mention Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, which will arrive next year).

This iMac is also the first machine on which I've been able to test Apple's new Setup Assistant, which can transfer information (including user accounts and settings) from an old computer to the new one via a FireWire cable.

The process took a couple of hours, and the assistant notified me which applications would need to be reinstalled manually (two, in my case). Otherwise, the transfer worked quite well.

The iMac G5 makes a few important leaps for Apple's consumer line of computers. Adding the G5 processor is a significant boost but doing so in a simple, functional and space-saving design seals the deal.

Jeff Carlson is filling in for regular columnist Glenn Fleishman. Carlson is managing editor of the online newsletter TidBITS (www.tidbits.com) and the author of several books (www.necoffee.com). Send questions to carlsoncolumn@mac.com. More Practical Mac columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists