So my iMac experience so far has been nothing but frustrating. I hope it gets better from now on. Here are some of the items that were suboptimal.
1. The wireless mouse Apple sold me with this iMac for a 100 dollars extra is a piece of junk. No vertical scorll, no back\forward button, no middle click -- hell almost no click at all. Impossible to use in any productive way. Feels like a 1st gen mouse I used in my youth.
2. iTunes copy and iPhoto copy to get all the ratings, keywords, etc. from the PC was a chore. Apple could have done a lot of people who are going to be switching a huge favor by publishing it clearly in a document on their website or in a help file. iPhoto wasn't such an issue but iTunes required some trickery. If you let iTunes organize your music and consolidate the library on the PC then you are OK but otherwise it is next to impossible.
3. Handling exceptional situations like if you choose restart and one of the programs running has exit confirmation (like firefox with multiple tabs open) the system just freezes. You have to plug the plug to bring it back to life.
4. The biggest disappointment is the way the much touted Front Row almost doesn't work. I was somehow able to trick it to play iTunes songs -- no such luck with iphoto. It says I have nothing in my library. I have 12000 photos.
5. Of course, I am one of those lucky guys that got stuck with a bad display as well. There are flickers and white lines specially when using Front Row. Good thing you cannot really use it too much.
6. Syncing with Yahoo was a pain. I copied over the NDIF format for addresses and all it copied over was names and number -- no Birthdays and other dates. Too bad I cannot really use the Address Book which is supposed to link so well with iPhoto.
7. There is no easy way to get the Yahoo Calendar into the iCal software. Another bummer for the iPhoto Calendar option.
8. Tried playing some old video files encoded in avi format and it wouldn't work. I downloaded some codecs and some software. No luck.
9. Citrix client works well but the audio is terrible and the screen sizing is a complete mess. Only works well if you move the dock to the right -- which actually isn't bad given how wide the damn screen is.
10. iPhoto froze to death and took the computer with it when I tried to import photos directly from an otherwise blazing fast external drive.
11. iPhoto Calendar crapped out with a system error when I was almost about done.
12. Everything is generally very slooooow...
13. I tried to use iWeb but it was so limiting -- it was just not worth considering unless you wanted to do everything via the .Mac subscription.
14. Oh the .Mac subscription. Apples touts all these great features about automatic backup, photo sharing, web hosting and all. Reality check: Apples sells a measly 1 gig of space for 100 bucks a months. I couldn't even fit word docs in that let alone 50 gigs of music and 20 gigs of photos and everything else. A high quality home video for an hour is about 10 gig. You can buy another 3 gig for another 100 bucks but what the hell will you do with it? Backup? Web hosting? Sharing and syncing? If you are in your 80s then it might work for you.
15. I downloaded remote desktop from Microsoft to connect to my Windows PC. Apparently, StuffitExpander (which is supposed to be included my Apple) was not able to open the downloaded file. Spotlight (another much touted feature) wasn't even able to find Stuffit Expander so either Spotlight is broken or there is no Stuffit Expander wasn't bundled.
16. I tried to use Quicken that supposed came bundled (Hasn't asked for money yet) and I just shuddered. Many many small windows opened all over the big screen demanding different things and I had no idea what to do. It was like a game more than a business application.
17, The damn thing has no volume. I have Bose speakers that blasted sound from the PC but on the iMac they barely squeak.
That's it for now. I've only spent a few hours on it so far so I haven't had enough time to spend fixing some of these problems that I mention. But the whole point of getting a Mac was that I wouldn't have to worry about 'fixing' anything.
It was like getting a Toyota but I've realized in the last few days it is more like a BMW.
1. The wireless mouse Apple sold me with this iMac for a 100 dollars extra is a piece of junk. No vertical scorll, no back\forward button, no middle click -- hell almost no click at all. Impossible to use in any productive way. Feels like a 1st gen mouse I used in my youth.
2. iTunes copy and iPhoto copy to get all the ratings, keywords, etc. from the PC was a chore. Apple could have done a lot of people who are going to be switching a huge favor by publishing it clearly in a document on their website or in a help file. iPhoto wasn't such an issue but iTunes required some trickery. If you let iTunes organize your music and consolidate the library on the PC then you are OK but otherwise it is next to impossible.
3. Handling exceptional situations like if you choose restart and one of the programs running has exit confirmation (like firefox with multiple tabs open) the system just freezes. You have to plug the plug to bring it back to life.
4. The biggest disappointment is the way the much touted Front Row almost doesn't work. I was somehow able to trick it to play iTunes songs -- no such luck with iphoto. It says I have nothing in my library. I have 12000 photos.
5. Of course, I am one of those lucky guys that got stuck with a bad display as well. There are flickers and white lines specially when using Front Row. Good thing you cannot really use it too much.
6. Syncing with Yahoo was a pain. I copied over the NDIF format for addresses and all it copied over was names and number -- no Birthdays and other dates. Too bad I cannot really use the Address Book which is supposed to link so well with iPhoto.
7. There is no easy way to get the Yahoo Calendar into the iCal software. Another bummer for the iPhoto Calendar option.
8. Tried playing some old video files encoded in avi format and it wouldn't work. I downloaded some codecs and some software. No luck.
9. Citrix client works well but the audio is terrible and the screen sizing is a complete mess. Only works well if you move the dock to the right -- which actually isn't bad given how wide the damn screen is.
10. iPhoto froze to death and took the computer with it when I tried to import photos directly from an otherwise blazing fast external drive.
11. iPhoto Calendar crapped out with a system error when I was almost about done.
12. Everything is generally very slooooow...
13. I tried to use iWeb but it was so limiting -- it was just not worth considering unless you wanted to do everything via the .Mac subscription.
14. Oh the .Mac subscription. Apples touts all these great features about automatic backup, photo sharing, web hosting and all. Reality check: Apples sells a measly 1 gig of space for 100 bucks a months. I couldn't even fit word docs in that let alone 50 gigs of music and 20 gigs of photos and everything else. A high quality home video for an hour is about 10 gig. You can buy another 3 gig for another 100 bucks but what the hell will you do with it? Backup? Web hosting? Sharing and syncing? If you are in your 80s then it might work for you.
15. I downloaded remote desktop from Microsoft to connect to my Windows PC. Apparently, StuffitExpander (which is supposed to be included my Apple) was not able to open the downloaded file. Spotlight (another much touted feature) wasn't even able to find Stuffit Expander so either Spotlight is broken or there is no Stuffit Expander wasn't bundled.
16. I tried to use Quicken that supposed came bundled (Hasn't asked for money yet) and I just shuddered. Many many small windows opened all over the big screen demanding different things and I had no idea what to do. It was like a game more than a business application.
17, The damn thing has no volume. I have Bose speakers that blasted sound from the PC but on the iMac they barely squeak.
That's it for now. I've only spent a few hours on it so far so I haven't had enough time to spend fixing some of these problems that I mention. But the whole point of getting a Mac was that I wouldn't have to worry about 'fixing' anything.
It was like getting a Toyota but I've realized in the last few days it is more like a BMW.