iMac 27" for Web Designers/Developers?

You assume there is a widespread problem that Apple needs to "address and resolve," beyond honoring the one-year warranty as individual cases arise.

Apple sells Macs currently at a rate of over 12 million per year. By now, if a million new iMacs have been sold, even if only 1 in 1000 customers have a hardware problem, that's 1000 customers with hardware problems. I don't know what the actual problem rate is with the new iMacs, but reading a few dozen or even a few hundred problem reports does not indicate there is a general problem. When you sell a lot of something, even if only 0.1% are affected with a problem, it will be large number of customers; conversely, it means the vast majority of customers have no problems because Apple's customer support systems (and Apple Discussions) are not being overwhelmed.

And if you happen to be affected by a hardware problem, that's the purpose of the one-year warranty and optional AppleCare.

Also, while Apple Discussions is a great way for individuals to get their individual questions answered with the help of other users, it is not a verifiable, consistent, nor comprehensive source of quality control data. For every problem report you read, you have no idea if there are 10, 100, or 1000 customer with no problems. People with no problems generally will not bother logging onto Apple Discussions (or any other forum) just to post that they are having no problems.

For your question about web designers and developers, using a new 27" iMac for this purpose would not be any different than using any recent Mac (except maybe having a larger screen to work with). You should look for forums, articles, and reviews related to whatever development tools you happen to use for your work. You should also mention what those tools happen to be here, so that users who also use the same tools can comment. If those current tools happen to be Windows only, you should stil mention what they are.

thedge wrote:
new 27" iMac. My main concern is screen size and normal font size being too small

I assume you mean the font sizes seemed too small for you to use during your web development process and not related at all to the end-user of your web pages. Given that there are a couple of ways of very quickly changing font size: You can hit the COMMAND and the + key at the same time. Each time you hit that key combination, the screen zooms in on everything. If you only want the text size to increase, select the Safari/View/Zoom Text Only menu option.

You get the same effect, if you select the large "A" in the Safari (browser) navigation bar. COMMAND and the - key decreases or zooms out as does selecting the smaller A in the navigation bar. Is that helpful for what you are asking?

Sorry, I thought my comment would appear after Kenichi's... it wasn't aimed at the OP. Personally I think the iMac 27" makes a superb web development machine, but it has had major hardware problems and even units manufactured last week are still exhibiting the flicker and uneven backlight.

It's disgusting to me that people on this board continue to deny (condescendingly, no less) that there is a problem with Apple quality control. How often does a new Apple product, a top-of-the-line model, need to be replaced 2, 3 even 4 times and STILL exhibit basic flaws... and the marketing material still presents a totally false picture to prospective customers?

Pull your heads out, apologists. There's no excuse for it.

You really didn't say anything wrong...an Apple fanboy immediately jumped in to defend Apple. By the 'advice' given to your web development question, he or she clearly didn't have a clue how to respond to your original query.

I don't have anything to add to Rick's comments other than that you may want to keep a PC for backup to test how your site looks using browsers in Windows; but then again you could just use Bootcamp on a Mac.

I personally would just go for a dual screen or an improved external display for your PC. The reason being that you would be 100% assured that the majority of Internet users are seeing what you're seeing. It also saves you having to buy Mac-compatible software that may not have as many releases or may differ slightly to Windows'. But I guess it's all down to personal choice.

as long as they support their products I can live with some risk.

That's the spirit! 🙂

I am a web designer/filmaker.

I love the '27 for web design. 2560x1440 is amazingly better that 1920 x 1200 for working with multiple programs open. I find the default font sizes to be no problem. The only issue when working with a monitor this big at that resolution is it's easy to lose the sense of scale that one needs to keep in mind for work that will be viewed on smaller monitors. I work with two monitors, the other is a 24' inch Dell 2410.

I have a Mac Book Pro that I often use to check for scale issues. I also run a Windows box for browser issue checks/games.

I have a Mac Pro which is what I used before picking up this '27 but since getting this I use that strictly for video. The '27 is a web designers dream in my opinion.

I don't know if this is still relevant to you, but else it might be to someone else.

I think the new iMac is really excellent for web development! I use it as a freelance designer, and I have never thought the font size to be a problem. One thing to remember is that you will be sitting at the same distance from the screen as you would any other screen, and so the font size should appear pretty much the same (although the pixel density may be slightly different.) With smaller screens, you're sort of used to sit a distance that allows you to have almost the whole screen in view at the same time. With the 27" iMac, it's more like having two screens next to each other, and that's another important reason why it's so awesome for web development:

You can have two full browser windows open at the same time! I use a free little app called TwoUp, that allows me to resize a window to fit the left or right part of the screen by pressing the keyboard (or by assigning a gesture on the Magic Mouse). This means that you could have Photoshop fill one part of the screen, and maybe a CSS sheet on the other. Or PHP on one side, and a browser on the other. Browser windows shouldn't be maximized, because pretty much no websites are optimized for a 2560 pixel width (2x1280, which is a common width). I don't think you'll experience problems with sense of scale, because if you only let your browser windows fill half the screen, that is exactly the width most users will experience. Of course the page fold will be way further down than what most user will see, but as long as you're aware of that it shouldn't impact on your designs.

I recently purchased a quad-core 27" iMac. I am a web designer and had been working in Windows for many years. I am, overall, happy with my iMac, but the system font sizes are indeed much too small. If you're 25 years old it might be OK but I'm 50, and after several hours' work I have noticeable eyestrain.

With these extremely high res screens they're making now, Apple needs to fully support resolution independence and allow users to set larger system font sizes. They also need to offer this option for all the applications they make.

Quite a few system menus are set to use 9pt. Lucida Grande. That's small even in print, but the actual size on-screen is closer to 8pt, and in the Creative Suite apps it's around 7pt! That's WAY TOO SMALL for all-day work!

I haven't had any problems at all with the hardware or Snow Leopard. No screen issues, fast as blazes, runs like a champ. When you get ready to switch you might wait till CS5 is out in a few months, as it will (hopefully) be more stable on Snow Leopard than CS4, which is from what I hear a bit of a dog.