With the innovative spirit of "thinking differently", Apple Computer has created a new generation of computer image and the concept of the core of digital life for computer users, providing consumers with more exciting choices.
Steve Jobs, the founder and current president of Apple Computer, said at the promotion ceremony of iMac: "We are in a situation where digital cameras, digital cameras and MP3 players are becoming more and more difficult to use. We cannot simply combine them. We need a so-called digital hub to connect these devices, which will make our digital life more convenient and enhance the value of digital products. "
His remarks show the core of the "digital lifestyle" advocated by Apple Computer. His goal is to make Apple a center for connecting various digital devices, so that users can organically connect different digital devices through software.
At present, all kinds of digital devices are entering our daily life more and more deeply. They not only improve our work efficiency, but also make our life more colorful. We can say that we live in a world surrounded by digital products.
The new iMac made its debut in people's infinite expectation and wonder. It lived up to expectations and brought about another revolutionary development of the computer industry. It has charming design and exciting and powerful functions. It fundamentally changed the rigid relationship between people and computers. You can keep it away from you at will, close to you at will, and cooperate with any posture of you. Just like sunflower, it makes our digital life brighter, simpler and more exciting.
So, how does the new iMac play a central role in digital life? How do Apple's four digital tools give strong vitality to digital life?
Together with the operating system, the new iMac provides four new softwares: iMovie 2 for making home movies, iDVD 2 for making digital video discs, iTunes 2 for listening to digital music and iPhoto for editing digital photos, which constitute the four pillars of digital life.
With these four softwares, you can easily handle digital photos, listen to music, burn CDs, make DVDs and even edit your own movies on the iMac.
The new iMac organically combines your digital music player iPod, digital camera, digital video camera and other digital devices, and becomes the real core of your digital life.
It has been 20 years since the first personal computer was born. Apple's MAC computer, as another force, is regarded as different in the computer world. It should be noted that MAC is divided into two series: home and business. Home desktop is called iMAC, and home laptop is called iBOOK. The business desktop is called Power MAC, and the business notebook is called PowerBook. All Apple computers are collectively referred to as Macintosh computers, or MAC for short.
Let's take a look at Apple computer first, compare it with PC, and get to know the characteristics of Apple computer itself. If you are going to buy an Apple computer, the following will undoubtedly give you the necessary knowledge.
Power PC chips used in MAC are RISC (Reduced Instruction Set) chips, while most PCs are CISC (Complex Instruction Set) chips. Power PC runs with multi-pipeline operation and superscalar instruction set, and CISC chip runs with single thread.
Mac's operating system is MACOSX, which is a core system based on UNIX, which enhances the stability, performance and responsiveness of the system. It can give full play to the advantages of dual processors through symmetric multiprocessing technology, providing unparalleled 2D, 3D and multimedia graphics performance, extensive font support and integrated PDA functions. MAC OSX can support almost all MACOS9 applications through the Classic environment, and the intuitive Aqua user interface makes the usability of MACintosh reach a new level.
The appearance of MAC has always been transparent, giving people a noble and elegant feeling; The design of its iMAC machine is of epoch-making significance, which completely integrates the host and the display, and with colorful translucent colors, it quickly became popular all over the world. MAC added high-tech elements to the product shell. For example, the shell of PowerBOOK notebook computer is made of titanium alloy with purity of 99.5%, which is the first time that space shuttle materials are used in notebook computer manufacturing.
MAC-specific CPUs include Power PCG3 and Power PC G4, which are jointly designed and manufactured by several big companies such as IBM and Motorola for Apple computers, especially Power PC G4, which can also perform 128-bit operations. Using 0. 18 micron process and copper connection technology, 483-pin ceramic CBGA package. The core is integrated with 33 million transistors, and the working voltage is1.8V. It can work stably without fan cooling. PowerMACG4 is not equipped with CPU cooling fan, but only has unique cooling fins, which can reduce the noise of machine operation, and also shows that PowerPC has incomparable advantages over Pentium and Thunderbird. Because it is 128 bit operation, the speed is beyond the reach of those 32-bit CPUs at present. When running graphics software, the speed of MAC can be doubled. For example, Photoshop5.5 specially designed a plug-in program to give full play to the speed potential of PowerMACG4, which improved the overall speed by more than 2 times and the rendering performance of some special effects by 10 times. Therefore, Apple computer has always been synonymous with the professional application of graphics and images in people's minds, and its floating-point computing ability far exceeds that of ordinary PC.
Motherboards used by Apple computers are divided into low-end motherboards and high-end motherboards, all of which have three 64-bit 33MHzPCI slots, two external IEEE1394,400 Mbps firewire ports, and built-in1100base-t network cards, 56KModem and four DIMM memory slots. However, the low-end only supports 1GB with a maximum memory capacity and theoretical bandwidth of only 400Mbps, while the high-end increases these two numbers to 2 Mbps and 800Mbps respectively through a more efficient memory controller, and has 133MHzAGP2× slot and built-in IEEE1391400 Mbps FireWire port, which can be upgraded in the future. As for the system bus, the low-end MAC works at the external frequency of 100MHz, and the high-end PowerMACG4 CG 4 adopts the MPX bus architecture of 133MHz. The core of MPX bus architecture is PowerPCG4 processor and two related integrated control chips (Uni-N memory bus control chip and KeyLargo I/O device control chip), which are equivalent to the well-known north bridge chip and south bridge chip of PC motherboard. In the MPX bus architecture of 133MHz, Uni-N chip is responsible for memory,10/100/1000 Mbps network communication, FireWire interface transmission function and graphics card. KeyLargo chip is responsible for the normal work of storage function, wireless network communication function, USB transmission function, modem communication function, sound output function and power management function.
The memory and hard disk on a MAC are similar to those on a PC. The memory is SDRAM of PC 133, and the hard disks are IBMATA66 and ATA 100. Since the technology is the same, can the hardware of PC also be used on MAC? The answer is no, if the compatible hardware of PC is installed on the MAC, it will lead to failure.
In terms of graphics cards, ATI and NIVIDA, two competitors, spread the war from desktops to laptops, and from laptops to Macs. ATI's dominance in notebooks and Macs has begun to be shaken by NVIDIA. MAC graphics cards include ATI and GeForce2MX. Among the latest three PowerMACG4 computers, the Apple computer adopts the GeForce2MX graphics card specially made by NVIDIA for MAC, but the low-end 466MHzPowerMACG4, iMAC and notebook computers still use ATIRAGE 128 as the standard configuration of the graphics subsystem. There is no difference in technical parameters between the MAC version of GeForce2MX and the PC version of GeForce2MX. However, because Apple and PC use different operating platforms, NVIDIA designed a special driver for the video characteristics of the MACOS. The biggest difference between the MAC version of GeForce2MX and the PC version is that the MAC version of GeForce2MX is equipped with two display signal output terminals (VGA 15 pin port of MAC standard and ADC display signal output port). For digital flat panel displays connected only through DVI(DigitalVisualInterface) interface, PowerMACG4 also provides a DVI/ADC conversion line, so users can use DVI digital flat panel displays without any difficulty. So why should we formulate a special input standard for ADC display signals? This is because Apple computer allows users to transmit display signals between the monitor and the host computer through a single ADC signal line in order to keep the desktop of PowerMACG4 CG 4 computer clean and tidy, so there is no need to provide a display sheet.
The power cord and signal cord are provided separately, which is really original.
In terms of display, MAC also uses CRT and LCD. CRT is iMAC series in MAC, and CRT is mainly Mitsubishi Diamondtron; The liquid crystal is mainly apple's PowerMACG4 series. In addition, Apple also launched its own brand LCD: AppleStudioDisplay, which has three sizes: 15 inch, 17 inch and 2 1 inch.
In terms of sound, MAC has built-in high-performance Odyssey sound system designed by Apple and Harman Kardon. Inside the Odyssey sound system, there is a very unique sound guide. This group of sound guides will conduct high-frequency sound like tweeters, creating an attractive sound field depth effect. Although this Odyssey sound guide is only 34mm in diameter, it can also produce bass effects that are usually only heard by high-end audio (or expensive soundproof cars).
In terms of optical drive, the optical drive used by MAC is DVD, and the ordinary optical drive has been basically eliminated by MAC. At present, G3 and G4 are both CD-RW or DVD；; At the high end, Apple incorporated SuperDrive into the G4 model of 733MHz and sold it together. SuperDriver can backup up to 4.7GB of personal data through iDVD burning software provided by Apple, or connect a digital camera through a FireWire interface with a transmission speed of 400Mbps, download pure digital audio and video signals, and make interactive DVD audio and video discs.
As for the mouse, MAC's AppleProMouse photoelectric mouse is a glass shell, crystal clear and beautiful. But its mouse has no buttons. In fact, the whole AppleProMouse is a button. You don't need to click with your finger, just press the whole mouse gently, and it doesn't matter left or right. So that the fingers will not be tired when using. The mouse is oval, suitable for users with different habits, and can be used by both hands. Mac's single-button mouse comes from 1984, which is the core part of the concept of "easy to use" of Mac. However, due to the lack of right-click function of other operating systems, it is often necessary to run back and forth between the screen and the menu bar during operation, so it is not so convenient to operate.
MAC integrates three network communication functions: Ethernet communication, modem communication and wireless network communication. One of the most striking is the wireless network communication function of the airport. The AirPort base station has a 56-KbpsV.90 modem using RJ- 1 1 connector, and an RJ-45 connector for connecting to the 10BASE-TEthernet network. With the AirPort high-speed wireless network technology, your PowerBookG4 can surf the Internet anywhere in your home or office. In addition, this transmission method has an obvious advantage: unlike infrared rays, radio waves must be straight between two transmission points without obstruction; Because radio waves can penetrate solids and travel as far as150m.
Apple not only produces most of the hardware of MAC, but also develops its own operating system. Next, let's look at its operating system.
Mac's current operating system has reached OS 10, and its code name is macosx (the Roman numeral for x is 10), which is the biggest change since the birth of MAC computer 15. The new system is very reliable, and many of its functions and services reflect Apple's philosophy.
In addition, the computer viruses that are raging now are almost all aimed at PCs. Because the architecture of MAC is different from that of PC, it is rarely attacked by viruses. MACOSX operating system interface is very unique, highlighting the image of icons and man-machine dialogue (man-machine dialogue interface was first created by Apple, and was later favored by Microsoft Windows and widely used on PC). Apple can produce computers according to its own technical standards and independently develop the corresponding operating system, which shows that its technology and strength are extraordinary. For example, Apple, like a combination of Intel and Microsoft, is "both talented and beautiful" in software and hardware.
Many software companies have developed special versions for MAC, and now there are many softwares available for MAC. For example, Microsoft developed the MAC version of Office and the MAC version of IE browser for MAC. Apple has also introduced a software, through which it can simulate the WIin98 platform on the MAC and run some software of Win98, but the compatibility is average, and the speed of running PC games is relatively slow. Most of the software around MAC is specialized in image editing, such as iDVD, which can make DVD discs, MP3iTunes, which can compress CDs into MAC format, and iMovie2, which can make digital movies.