Rev A? Rev B?

I’ve been mulling over which Mac to buy. I think it’s going to be the iMac 20″ Core Duo.

Originally I was eyeing up the 17″ MacBook Pro, as one of the things I’ll be using it for is lugging into the living room to watch movies on. Then Si steered me towards the Intel iMacs. So this 20″ iMac is basically as powerful as the MBP, with a bigger screen, and just over half the price? Sounds good to me! Sure it’s not quite as light as a MBP at 22 pounds / 10kg (what do they put in these things?), but hey, I could do with some weight training! 😉

Good old Apple, shoving everything in 1 box. I’d have a job lugging my tower and 19″ CRT display around quite so gracefully.

So I can feel the pull of my credit card in my wallet, enticing me to part with my AUD $3.5k on the Apple Store, when Si brings up this “Rev A” thing. Allegedly, Apple’s first generation (“Revision A”, or Rev A) of any new bit of hardware is dodgy as anything, and you’re better off waiting for a Rev B, at which point they’ll have ironed out all the bugs that were in the Rev A machines.

So how true is this theory? It’s certainly a hotly debated topic. And things like this scare me a bit too, especially as I plan to be watching movies a lot. But the truth is, you never know what’s going to happen do you – Rev Bs might be worse than Rev As!

The best advice I’ve heard is, if you see something that’s right for you now, then get it. Actually the MacRumors Buyer’s Guide is a great help as it tells you how far through the release cycle a particular Mac’s likely to be, along with advice to buy or hold off (ooh it’s like the stock market isn’t it!). I see my iMac (“my iMac” – I’m already sold!) is 2/3 of the way through its cycle, so a good time to buy.

Apart from the aforementioned Front Row problems (which were due to a software bug anyway), I haven’t heard of any serious issues with these new Intel iMacs. So I reckon they’re a good bet.

Now where’s that credit card got to!

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 9th, 2006 at 8:14 pm and is filed under Hardware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

6 Responses to “Rev A? Rev B?”

1. Si Says:
   May 10th, 2006 at 12:11 am

   Go on son, you know you want it!

2. mattdoyle Says:
   May 10th, 2006 at 10:05 am

   *lol* Thanks mate. I’m pretty keen on that iMac I must say. I’m attempting to exercise a bit of restraint, but I can feel the power of Apple’s marketing machine working against me. 😉

   I’m totally cool with the whole Rev A thing now. I mean, I’m getting AppleCare with it so if anything does go wrong then they will fix it (I hope!). Also I think having AppleCare means they’ll visit you on-site to fix the machine. Or am I just being hopelessly optimistic? lol

3. capsule Says:
   May 10th, 2006 at 3:27 pm

   The Rev A thing seems to affect Apple’s portable stuff more – thing like iPods and their notebooks. The iMac should be a safe bet. Just don’t drop it!

4. mattdoyle Says:
   May 11th, 2006 at 9:32 am

   Thanks capsule. I’ll try not to drop the thing, yes. 🙂

5. Phil Says:
   May 14th, 2006 at 11:42 am

   Hey Matt
   Welcome to the great Apple purchase dilema *lol*

   AFAIK Applecare doesn’t cover on-site fix it stuff. It’s merely an extended warranty program. Luckily you have an Apple Centre up in DY 🙂 FWIW In the 16 years I’ve had macs I’ve never (touch wood) had any problems, and have never had to take anything covered by Applecare in for repair. In fact I decided against Applecare for my G5 and Cinema Display. Though if I we’re buying a Rev A Intel Mac then I think I would get applecare. Georgie at work has the Rev A iMac and Ryan has gotten some MBP for Pricipals in too. So if I hear anything I’ll let you. Also Ryan saw Parrallels running the other day and raved about it. Though it can’t do games custom grafix stuff yet, but you don’t need that for web development though 🙂

   Any how, back to work
   Phil

6. mattdoyle Says:
   May 14th, 2006 at 12:13 pm

   Cheers Phil 🙂

   The Apple Store is a bit vague on the on-site aspect:

   onsite repairs for desktop computers,*

   (Note the little star, with no explanation!)

   I think the Next Byte Apple store in DY’s moved! (Frenchs Forest I believe) Though there’s a store at the Mall of course.

   Yeah not bothered about games/3D stuff on XP – that’s what the Mac’s for 🙂

   Any recommendations on buying memory? Apple RAM seems v expensive. Might just get 1GB from them when I buy the Mac, then grab another 1GB stick from another source…

   Matt