Apple unveils the new iMac and a yawnfest

As expected, today’s summer media event revealed the newest love child from Jon Ive’s playground: the aluminum and glass iMac. Also released: power slogan for the weight-challenged & megalomaniacal amongst us.

Although not as revolutionary as some had imagined, I have to say it looks pretty awesome. Within the first 15 minutes of the presentation, El Jobso pulled the black cloth off the new face of consumer Mac computing, and also displayed the macbook-inspired minimalistic keyboard. The 17″ model hit the cutting block but we now have two 20″ models and one 24″ model filling the old price spots. I’m very disappointed to see that apple is only installing glossy screens on their entry level devices, but I guess it’s the trendy thing to do. While the contrast is increased, at least from my old macbook, colors are COMPLETELY skewed by viewing angle. That is to say, when I would be working on a website, it was impossible to get a fix on what shade a saturated color was displaying. When my macbook was replaced for my current Santa Rosa MBP, I made sure to demand a matte display, and I haven’t regretted it for one second.

While it threw me a bit at first, it is important to note that the WIRELESS keyboard comes with the power button on the right side and NO keypad, while the WIRED version has the keypad AND two usb ports flanking the keyboard. Upon first glimpse, I thought they had taken care of my biggest complaint with the last generation iMac: the power button being on the back of the device. Sure it makes the front look great, but it also forces users to grope around behind their panel to start the work day. Oh well, maybe in the next revision 5 years from now?

iLife’s iPhoto and iMovie were both updated respectively, revealing a new “events” sorting feature for iPhoto (snore), and a complete revamp of the iMovie interface and icon.

iMovie always felt sluggish. Even handling low-resolution footage in its own propriety footage, it could turn a tricked out mac into a well designed paper weight. Now it seems that scrubbing through mixed formats including HD can be done with a flick of the mouse, and exported just as easily. However doubtful, it is possible that pro users will benefit from this release as well, if not simply in speed of use.

iLife revealed the much rumored excel-competitor, titled “Numbers,” and while it is pretty and easy to use, I think this might be too little, too late.

While nervously geeking out 24 hours before the official press conference, it came to my attention that .Mac was going to see some much needed attention because of a comment Jobs let fly at All Things D. For a moment, I considered the impact that a fully functional ajax-enhanced iWork suite would have on the world and Microsoft specifically. Over the past 3 years, Microsoft has been desperately developing their Live offerings while trying to stymie their office suite from the hemorrhaging that has been Google Documents and open source solutions like Open Office. Can you imagine if $99 a year bought you guaranteed backups, instant software updates, and safari-grade apple-designed online interfacing with all your word processing/spreadsheet needs? Despite the completely sexy web2.0 overhaul of apple’s main site after the WWDC, .Mac didn’t see much more than a storage increasing (10gigs from 1gig) and new “web albums” which could compete with the likes of flickr (for personal use), but probably won’t b/c it simply isn’t free. This would have been amazing technology a couple years ago, but at this point is just aero, I mean, frosting on an already outdated system.

All in all, it was a fun morning. I would have liked to have seen more, but I’ve got a couple close friends who will be ordering the new iMac and keyboards shortly, and the fact that apple is at least aware of their .Mac shortcomings is promising. Now if only I could get my touchscreen iPod.