Tech Notes: New iMacs, Minor Mac Annoyances, Apple Travel Whine

May 4th, 2011

New iMacs

The last iMac owned was the short-lived “sunflower / PIXAR Lamp” model, and I’ve been on a Mac Mini / MacBook track since. As a result, the new Thunderbolt-enabled iMac is a non-drool-inducing Apple product. Personally, it’s too much computer spec-wise with a big loss of portability. I’ve written before how a 27 inch monitor seems like overkill — staring at the equivalent of a large television inches from your face. It’s also hard to see how an average consumer would need a terabyte of storage space or quad-core anything. But I suppose if you can get it all for a little over a grand — why not.

I guess this is a testament for how far Mac products have come — once, the cheapest Mac desktop or portable was acceptable, but felt like a sacrifice as the “better” or “best” options were what I’d really be lusting after. Now, the cheapest Macs are almost too much Mac, and the more expensive ones seem over the top.

And the savings from no souped-up Mac go to iDevices.

Minor Mac Annoyances

Fuzzy monitor on wake from sleep. Possible solution found.

Long Bluetooth sync time. Syncing earphones to the iPhone is a rather lenghty process of turning on Bluetooth and waiting for the iPhone to find the headphones. Every time I feel this should be faster than plugging in a wired headphone cable.

Noisy hard drives taking their sweet time spinning up. Two LaCie external Firewire drives momentarily freeze up the system while they spin up, and once they do, their fans produce a low-level hum that’s frankly rather annoying. One can set the energy settings to never spin down drives, but that’s not very energy friendly and you get low-level hum all the time.

I love the MacBook Air, iPhone, and iPad’s sound of silence.

First World Problem: Choosing Which Apple Products To Take On Vacation

Poor moi — too many Apple products and I can’t decide which to tote on a trip. The iPhone is a given, but I can’t decide between adding the iPad or a MacBook Air. A circular, internal argument follows:

MacBook Air better than iPad for writing long blog posts or doing work. But how much work will I do on vacation? It’s also slicker to show photographs using the iPad. And watch movies on the plane. And games. But I’ll have an iPhone for games. But why did I buy the MacBook Air if not for travel? It’s so light and thin; might as well take advantage of it. I could tote both — but that would be ridiculous — how many Apple products does one person need?

1. All three = ridiculous overkill.
2. iPhone + iPad = will use someone else’s computer if the need arises.
3. iPhone only = no freaking way.
4. iPhone + MacBook Air = overkill if I end up doing no work.

At this juncture, it’s option 2, but I can see a last-minute cave to 1. Not bringing a camera, books / magazines / newspapers, maps… there’s extra space… sigh.