FAQ: What's new with Apple's iMac?

Jobs trumpeted the new design and the new look of the iMacs. Sizzle or steak? "Aluminum and glass" was a phrase he used several times to tie the new iMacs with the MacBook Pro line, design-wise. By Apple's own spec sheets, the systems are not any thinner, but they are slightly smaller on the horizontal and vertical. The 20-in. model is 2 lb. lighter, while the 24-in. machine tips the scales at 0.7 lb. heavier.

The LCDs are glossy-coated, something that Jobs bragged about, saying that polled consumers had overwhelmingly preferred the look. The MacBook Pro notebooks let buyers pick between glossy and nonglossy; no such choice for iMac customers.

One expected change, however, didn't happen. Sources had told some bloggers and Apple-only news sites to expect the elimination of the iMac's distinctive "chin," the area of the machine's face below the display. The new models still sport the chin, but it's slightly smaller thanks to the 1/10th of an inch shrink between the new and old models' overall height measurements. The chin also looks smaller, thanks to the black border now surrounding the iMac's built-in LCD.

Actually, it's the keyboard that looks the most different from its predecessor. Not only is it wafer-thin compared to the old version -- it's just a bit over one-third as tall at the front, for instance -- but it boasts a brushed metallic look (rather than the previous plastic), several new function keys (that call up, for example, Exposé and Dashboard) and flat, square typing keys.

What's the weakest link of the new iMacs? Even though Apple anted up the video cards to the ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT and HD 2600 Pro (the former only in the $1,199 20-in. model), the graphics subsystem is a stumbling block for gamers, especially for those using Boot Camp to run Windows and its much deeper game library, on an iMac. Tom's Hardware, for example, puts the new iMac's graphics cards way down the list on game frame-rate benchmarks.

What's one significant change that Jobs didn't mention? The top-of-the-line configuration, a 24-in. unit for $2,299, comes standard with an Intel Core 2 Extreme processor running at 2.8 GHz. That chip, so new it's not even discussed on Intel Corp.'s own Web site, debuts on Apple's platform.

The processor, labeled the X7900 by Intel, is a sibling to the X7800, a 2.6-GHz CPU designed for mobile computers that Intel touted it in a July 16 launch as "the world's fastest-performing mobile processor."

Unlike rivals such as Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co., Apple uses chips normally slated for notebooks in the iMac, reflecting their laptop-like design. The higher temperatures of traditional desktop CPUs would give the iMac thermal problems, or require larger, and louder, fans.