2 Days after the Keynote

It has been a couple of days since Steve has delivered his yearly Keynote at the MWSF 2006. And once again he has set the Mac community on fire, me included. Everyone was expecting an Intel-based mac (contrary to the official statement, that they would be introduced in the summer), but that it had to be the iMac, that really was enticing news.

I had been thinking of getting the iMac G5 since its introduction (summer 2004?). But then came the Mac mini at the MWSF 2005 in January, which I believed would be a sufficient successor to my Powermac Cube, especially considering the price. It has been a great ride with the mini, an if you don't really do any CPU-exacting things with it (such as video and photo editing) then you will be real happy with it, especially since it is virtually silent. One gripe I had with it is not its limited expandability, but the fact that opening the case just to augment your RAM was very taxing and invasive, you had to literally use excessive force and hope that all those plastic retainers would not break.

But since my purchase of the Nikon D70 and given the backlog of video films I still want to edit, I reassessed the necessity of pure CPU-power. And the new iMac with its dual core CPU (Steve said it would be up to 3,2 X faster than the current model, just introduced last October) will suffice my needs quite nicely, to be sure. Also, I need a new monitor, no doubt, my current CRT is just too dark, contrast is the pits. I am a bit worried about the noise level as I have been spoiled in this respect with the mac mini. The Apple-Store is offering the iMac 2,0 Ghz Intel Duo Core with a 3 day wait, most of the other retailers can deliver in February. Will I wait?