A Few Weeks with an iMac

I've had the iMac now for a few weeks and thought I'd give some of my first impressions of the machine. I really like the machine. It's the first Mac I've owned and it's the only computer that I've ever owned that I could see being described as "sexy." The physical design of the machine is beautiful. It feels solid, is quiet, takes up a minimal amount of space (important in a San Francisco apartment), and is very fast. Apple has done a wonderful job of making the experience of owning a Mac from the time you open the box to the time the machine is up and running a really great one. Compared to the pain I had when I set up a Vista box at work a few months back, the iMac was a cinch and I was up and running within 30 minutes (including un-boxing and physical setup). Compare this to Vista where I spent the same amount of time un-boxing the machine, and then the rest of the day removing all the crapware Dell was gracious enough to install for me, this was a dream. The only thing Apple tried to sell me was a .Mac membership. I politely declined and was never bothered again. I really appreciated that as it was obvious that someone spent time thinking about *me* (the person that just forked over his hard earned money to buy this machine) as I was going through this process. It may sound weird, but I'd almost describe it as thoughtful.

As for the machine itself, I'd say it's been an OK experience so far. I don't say "great" because while the gear is nice and I was up and running quickly, Leopard isn't quite ready and hasn't been as stable as my Dell laptop running Ubuntu Linux. I've had a few Leopard kernel panics that I have been unable to figure out and the wireless support is embarrassingly bad. To be fair, the kernel panics seemed to have subsided since I installed the 10.5.1 "patch" for Leopard and the machine does seem a bit more stable now.

Above all, the one thing that has surprised me more than anything is the lack of reasonable support for "secured" wireless networks. My network at home was set up with a 128 bit WEP key (not too secure but I change it on occasion and it's better than nothing), is not broadcasting its SSID (why would I?), and is MAC limited to only my machines. I have *never* had a problem with my Linux box finding my wireless network. Granted, with Linux, you generally need to find the right driver/gear combination to get a stable system, but once I sorted that out, it has been rock solid for me.

The wireless support has been a nightmare. Every time I booted the machine it would forget the SSID of my network. Seriously? So, I re-provide the SSID and the password and then maybe it would attach successfully to the network 1 in 10 times. I even had this type of problem after waking the machine from sleep. Come on, the ability of a Mac to go to sleep and come up right where you left it is legendary! After a few times dealing with this I decided that I needed to figure out what was going on. So, I did some experiments.

The first thing I changed was to remove the wireless security and WEP password. This made absolutely no difference to how the machine behaved. The next thing I did was to broadcast my SSID. Sadly, this seems to have made things more stable. I say sadly because now my network SSID is being broadcast to the world. It's not so much that I am worried that the black van with the tinted windows is going to pull up outside my house to steal bandwidth and passwords (I am a heavy user of SSH and SSL), but I am pretty amazed at how poor a job Apple did making sure Leopard was "right" before they released it. Isn't this the company that hates buttons and wires? Are they subtly encouraging me to wire up? :)

Ok, enough grumpiness for one night. Apple will be coming out with another multi-hundred GB patch for Leopard shortly. I'm hoping they will sort these issues out.