Here's the skinny… The new iMac line-up comes in two flavors, 20" or 24" and features an aluminum and glass case. There are several improvements made on the case that we liked. First, the outer frame around the LCD has a black margin (versus white on the last iMac series) which will give your viewing screen more pop. This should help video editors see colors more clearly. Second and probably most obviously, these new iMacs are pretty thin. Check out the photo below. Apple has sliced off an unreported amount, so far there's no measurements available. [image:blog_post:14119]We're also very excited to see a FireWire 800 port added to the iMac line, equipping these computers to handle higher throughput via external hard drives for digital video editing. Also, the 24" model has a 1920 pixels by 1200 pixels resolution, enabling it to be a decent HD video monitor with the right software (FlipFlop or ScopeBox ). And let's not forget to mention the 2.0/2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo chipsets which should help handle the complexities of digital video. If your thinking about loading up Final Cut Studio 2.0 on an iMac, you'll be happy to know that the system requirements check out, although not ideal for all the features and an extra gig of RAM would meet Apple's recommended specs. We suspect working in Apple Color on an iMac would be especially cumbersome. But, I doubt there are not too many colorists eager to jump on an iMac. Lastly, we were hoping, along with many others to see a Blu-ray drive somewhere in the mix. The 24" model with its 1920 by 1200 resolution would have been a good fit, technically speaking. Perhaps the iMac audience isn't a good fit with Blu-ray technology this early in the game. Oh well. There's more to come on our blog following the iMovie overhaul in iLife 08.
