New iSight-Equipped iMac

I got to play with one of the new iMacs briefly at a friend's house last night.

The external design is clever. The remote control magnetically snaps into place on the side of the case and the iSight camera is almost invisible, though a small green light comes up on when the camera is in use. Installing extra memory was easy -- just unscrew a single door on the bottom of the unit, pull two handles, and pop the DIMM in.

Front Row is gorgeously designed. Pressing the "Menu" button on the remote sweeps the main Mac OS X desktop into the background in an impressive 3D transition, then zooms the four main icons to the foreground.

The striking thing about the application is that it's simple and clean, but not at all plain. I haven't found the approach of other media center PCs very appealing, but the iMac approach really seems to work.

We also played with Photo Booth for a few minutes, which is a great little app to goof around with. Particularly good to pop open for a quick demo. Apple should consider doing a few more of these or buy them from indie developers.

A solid evolution of a great machine.

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