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  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.


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Tuesday, November 19, 2002
17:54 - Perceived Quality
http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=1272

(top) link
Here's a meta-article about a C|Net review of the 17" iMac and its build and design quality as compared to similarly-priced HP and Gateway PCs. (Gateway is a particularly eye-to-eye Mac rival these days, considering the recent stunts like the Profile 4-vs-iMac ad, their retooling of the Gateway Country Stores to be more like the Apple Stores, and the "You can do all this stuff with Gateway!" ads for them-- though one that I saw the other day, in a promotion run by AT&T Broadband, gushed about the great online services offered by AT&T and Gateway-- while the camera zoomed in on the Ethernet cable plugged into the side of the iBook on the laughing actress' lap. Hey, props for recognizing visual style when it suits the ad setting, but points off for Photoshopping a piece of graphical ad-copy onto the iBook's screen when the camera zoomed in.)

Anyway...

Yes, Wilcox even cites the cables, and their tangle-free properties, as a indicator of high quality.

But more importantly, the review shows what you don't get with low-end PCs: high-end video cards. But even on HP's mid-range 883n - lineball with the iMac at $2,000 - HP resorts to an analog video card with an LCD monitor, merely to save a few bucks. The result, says Wilcox, is a blurry LCD, which compares poorly with the iMac's bright, clear 17" display.

Of all Apple's purported weaknesses these days, one of the least-often cited is "fuzzy/blurry/dim LCD screen". The display on my iMac at work still gets admiring stares from passing co-workers. It really does look good.

The review does note a number of legitimate gripes, though (I'm still scratching my head over the iMac's power button being at the back and flush with the body so you can't find it no matter what you do). And that's fair.

But the tech press as a whole is being very pro-Mac lately-- and not in a rah-rah way (which would betray the presence of idiosyncratic Macophiles on editorial staffs here and there, using any excuse to blurt out a sycophantic paean to Jobs), but in a critical and even-handed way. That's money, baby.

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© Brian Tiemann