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iMacs and eMacs

iMac Core 2 Duo (Mid 2007)

Overview

Apple has given the iMac a fresher look, the first change from the stark white face introduced with the first G5 iMac three years ago. The new look puts a black border around a glossy display, has an aluminum finish, and is thinner than its predecessors. There is no longer a 17" iMac, only 20" and 24" models.

The new iMac is thinner than the old one.
New iMac thinner than old one.

Three models use the Core 2 Duo CPU (a 24" 2.8 GHz Core 2 Extreme model is also available) with the same "Santa Rosa" chipset and 800 MHz bus found in the current MacBook Pro models. They have 3 USB 2.0 ports, FireWire 400 and 800 ports, gigabit ethernet, 802.11n WiFi, and an upgraded SuperDrive - as well as a brand new, slim keyboard with USB 2.0 ports.

The 20" 2.0 GHz iMac has 1 GB of RAM, a 250 GB hard drive, an 8x SuperDrive, Radeon HD 2400 XT graphics, AirPort Extreme, Bluetooth 2.0, and Apple's new keyboard and Mighty Mouse.

The 2.4 GHz models ship with a 320 GB hard drive and use Radeon HD 2600 Pro graphics.

The new iMac ships with Mac OS X 10.4.10 and iLife '08.

2007 iMac

The Radeon HD 2400 and 2600 Pro graphics processors, while better than the Radeon X1600 GPU in the previous generation 2.0 GHz iMacs in some respects (and worse in others) is a step down from the nVidia GeForce 7300GT and 7600GT in the earlier 24" iMac. Gaming benchmarks measure GeForce frame rates as anywhere from 20% to nearly 200% higher. There are also many complaints about reflections due to the glossy display.

Note that 20" aluminum iMacs use an 18-bit LCD, which can only display 262,144 colors, not the "millions" all other iMacs can display. This should be good enough for most users.

Unlike earlier iMacs, where every USB port could provide 500 mA of power, only a single high-powered device can be attached to the USB ports, and software will enable one of its downstream ports to supply 500 mA of power. If a second high-powered device is attached, it will behave like a normal bus-powered hub and only provide 100 mA per downstream port.

Intel-based Macs use a partitioning scheme known as GPT. Only Macintel models can boot from GPT hard drives. Both PowerPC and Intel Macs can boot from APM (Apple's old partitioning scheme) hard drives, which is the format you must use to create a universal boot drive in Leopard. PowerPC Macs running any version of the Mac OS prior to 10.4.2 cannot mount GPT volumes. PowerPC Macs won't let you install OS X to a USB drive or choose it as your startup volume, although there is a work around for that.

Details

Upgrades

Online Resources

Go to the iMac and eMac index.

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