Well after 4 great years my first gen 17in Powerbook G4 had died. The drive has crapped out and I am also getting some weird errors that might be from the logic board. It was definitely time for a new machine so I picked up a 24in Intel iMac and let me tell you… this thing fucking rocks! I did want a quad Mac Pro with a massive cinema display but then I saw this one and that changed. This machine is more than capable of running all the graphic apps I need without a hiccup. The new Apple keyboard is also a work of art on it’s own. Love it.
I also installed the new version of OS X and it is pretty impressive. Time Machine is nice but the UI design is just plain awful. Not sure what they were thinking with this one but I don’t see what’s the deal about the new look of the dock. Sure it’s not amazing but it’s also not as bad as everyone is making it out to be. The one issue I have with the dock are the small glowing orbs that indicate a running app. You can barely see them. There other visual issue is the transparency of the main menu at the top. Some one remind me why I need to see what is behind the menu? One new feature that is great… when you press command + shift + 4 to take a selected screenshot, you get the pixel dimensions next to the cursor and you can also press the space bar to move the selection. Very cool.
I’ve just done the same thing. I’ve got a old 1.5 ghz G4 Powerbook. The thing still runs alright but the screens now faded and is becoming harder to use, especially for graphic work!… can’t wait to get my new iMac and cs3 on the go!!
Do you know what, the same thing happened to me yesterday, my 4 and a half year old Powerbook just gave up the ghost (It has has a proper good life though). I’m on the scout for a new machine, and I might plump for the iMac.
We just bought a new MacBook Pro. Although we haven’t added Leopard too it yet, too much money in one month. And unfortunately by Dual-500 2000-era G4 won’t take the new OS. So next year, I’ll have to buy a second machine.
As for the TIme Machine UI, I think John Gruber explained it well at DaringFireball — it needed to be as much like a game as possible. Something so bizarre and gee-whiz wow to look at that people would want to just play with it. Backing things up is no fun and few people do it, so the UI had to be a little over the top to get people to use it.
Oh how I envy you. I’ve wanted one of the shiny new iMacs since they came out, but they’re not really practical for me (I need the mobility of a laptop).
The Shift-Command-4 command works in 10.4, too. There’s also Shift-Command-3, which takes a screenshot of the whole desktop.
You lucky boy.
Andrew, I am aware that the command works in 10.4, I use it all the time, the feature that impressed me are the pixel dimensions read out and the ability to move the selection using the space bar which aren’t available in 10.4.
Gruber is definitely right about Time Machine needsing to feel like a game but I think they could have done a better job at achieving that. I don’t mind the outer-space environment, I just can’t stand the bottom navigation that is in perspective. It just looks bad.