FedEx delivered my son’s new iMac Intel today. I ordered it last Wednesday night and it arrived the following Monday morning (less than five days after placing my order)—direct from Shanghai. 

Unpacking it was essentially the same experience as with my former iMac G5 (see my previous post regarding its return and the order of the Intel). The packaging for the mouse, remote, and manual was both more secure and more elegant. I didn’t bother to unpack the manual or look at it.

The computer itself looks pretty much the same; it would take a close inspection to see the differences between the G5 and Intel version.

Starting it up, everything behaved the same as the G5. It required something like 15 minutes for the initial boot up and configuration of the network and admin account—complete with the exercise of taking my photo.

But what I was really concerned about was compatibility with G5 software. So, I loaded in all of the games that we have—which include Halo and Medal of Honor/Spearhead. Although it seemed like it took a long time to install (is there some sort of file conversion process going on during installation?), they ran perfectly. Some games seemed to run faster than on the G5, and my son commented that the periods of “loading” were significantly shorter. A game with high resolution graphics looked great and the performance was fast. Time will tell if some software compatibility issues show up, but I didn’t see any problems tonight. Someone will need to do a more scientific benchmark test, but it looks to me like the performance in emulation mode is comparable to the G5.

The Superdrive seems quite a bit noiser at high speed than the one that I had on the G5. I don’t know if this is due to a design change or if this is a peculiarity of my specimen. After I was done installing, the drive went to low speed and was nearly silent. The noise from the computer cooling fans is about the same as the G5—which is to say very quiet.

In summary, I have good news to report: The Intel iMac appears to be performing as advertised. It will be interesting to try native Intel applications in the future. Having owned three iMacs in three weeks (see my previous post), this is my favorite one.

I’ll let you all know if some glitches show their face.

Regards,

-Brett

That’s great news. I do hope you find your new iMac to be the experience you had initially hoped for.

And remember, if you do have troubles, or don’t understand something, feel free to drop in.

There are plenty of people here with real working knowledge of Macs who are happy to help.

Just one thing. Can you open the “About this Mac” window (first choice in the Apple menu, top left of menu bar) and tell me what it says?

Cool!  Keep us updated, as there are lots of folks interested in how these things are working.

You ran Halo and Medal of Honor?  Under Rosetta?  With acceptable results?!?!?!

Considering how Macs have almost always lagged behind in gaming performance, and also that the Radeon X1600s are merely okay gaming cards as per the PC benchmarks (i.e. they don’t offer the same tier of performance as NVIDIA’s GeForce 6600 and likely 7600 lines), that’s great news!

Thanks for the report, martinsd!

The About This Mac window shows, depending upon CPU:

1.83Ghz Intel Core Duo

then the normal information.

The biggest concern is peripherals. When Classic came upon us older printers in OS 9 that worked would be sketchy in OS X. Depending on how the X86/Rosetta version handles conversion on that kind of process is whether or not it will be worth buying this forward looking Mac.

Thanks, Spider, I know that, but for the original poster’s sake, I’m keen to know that he got what he was supposed to get.

Classic?

Can anyone tell me what’s the status with Classic? I can’t seem to find a definte answer anywhere. Does it run or doesnt it?

Classic is dead.

Sooooo thats a no? or a but with a maybe?

Classic in emulation

Maybe when an intel version of Baselisk II is available, it’ll let you run Classic apps at a decent speed.

I haven’t used it in years, and you need a rom from a Mac to run it (I have a Centris 610 rom I used).

I read someplace as well that it is dead. Looks like I’ll hang onto my G4 until I can get an “obsolete” quad G5 cheap next year.

Classic support is dead. I still run classic on my G5 and G4, occasionally. It seems very lively. 

Sooooo that means on the new INtel-Macs there is NO classic and you wont be able to INSTALL it or RUN it? that sucks!

sorry I still have a FEW apps that I have to resort to in classic. . . mainly Quark. I havent upgraded and have no reason to since Quark is crap anyway, but some of my clients STILL use it and send me files now and then. . .

Classic will not be installed on nor can it be installed on the new Core Duo machines.

I guess that’s the last nail in Mac OS 9’s coffin, then. Oh, Mac OS 9, I knew you well… I would expect someone to come up with a third party Classic emulator for Intel, though.

This is pretty definitive about what will and will not run under Rosetta.