The New iMac Dazzles, but Hold That Purchase

Rosetta could not, however, run demos of the games WWII Online and Doom 3 at any acceptable speed. LimeWire, a file-sharing program, and NeoOffice, a version of the OpenOffice suite, wouldn't start or crashed every time. Microsoft's Virtual PC emulation software doesn't work either. And Rosetta can't translate any "Classic" programs written for Mac OS 9 or older versions of Apple's operating system; Mac OS X actually stamps their icons with a "forbidden" graphic to emphasize this point.

Even with those glitches, Rosetta (developed for Apple by Silicon Valley start-up Transitive Corp.) stands as one of the most amazing feats of emulation I've seen. Its only major cost seems to be a ravenous appetite for memory: Rosetta often wound up doubling PowerPC applications' memory requirements, a trait that made the iMac unbearably sluggish with one of its two memory modules removed.

Don't even think of using an Intel-based Mac without a gigabyte of memory on board, not the 512 MB that would suffice on other models.

Although the Intel Core Duo chip in the iMac will also soon grace many Windows laptops, other parts of this Apple's innards aren't compatible with Windows XP, at least for now. (Using this laptop processor offers the utterly pleasant side effect of making the iMac almost silent in use.)

But that should not stop owners of Intel-based Macs from running Windows programs on their machines. For one thing, Microsoft says it's researching how to update Virtual PC for them. For another, Mac versions of Wine and CrossOver Office -- programs that for years have allowed Linux users to run Windows programs without even installing Windows itself -- have a good chance of arriving before Microsoft can ship a universal version of Virtual PC.

(In case you were wondering, Windows viruses also don't have any access to these computers.)

Both the promise and the reality of the Intel iMac -- especially the cheaper, $1,299 model, once upgraded to a gigabyte of memory -- make it one of Apple's most appealing releases ever. But it would still be wise to wait a month or so if you don't need a new machine today. This computer may look just like its predecessor, down to the too-few USB ports on the back, the slot-loading DVD- and CD-burning "SuperDrive" on the side, and the iSight webcam above its fabulously bright screen, but it represents an enormous change inside. And in the computer business, enormous changes usually mean lots of bugs that don't surface until after a product lands on store shelves.

Waiting a little will give Apple time to find and fix those bugs, then work on taking better advantage of Intel processors. It will give the developers of Mac software time to rewrite more programs as universal releases -- or at least make sure that their current releases function correctly under Rosetta.

It's barely been six months since Apple even announced that it would move to Intel processors. Waiting a little longer won't hurt and could save you a lot of trouble.

Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro atrob@twp.com.