I'll take some photos of it alongside my existing Powerbook G4 to see how noticeable the difference is.
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. Anyone else also notice the superdrive in this system won't record dual layer nor is it as fast as previous models (4x compared to 8x)? And that the screen is LOWER resolution than the 15.2" model in the last PB revision... Yuck. Saving grace is that it's 16:10 like their desktop displays. I'd still have preferred 1600x1000 though.
Apparently the slimming of the case prevented Apple from fitting in the 8x/DL burners. Doesn't bother me too much, I do only a little DVD burning, and my system is a 2x drive, so still an upgrade.
Screen res, also not a huge deal to me. The system did go from 1440x960 to 1440x900. In the move, Apple went to the standard 16:10 LCDs used in the rest of the industry, instead of the 15:10 screens they used. Should avoid their screens lagging too far behind again, and also avoid issues like the complaints on the newer PowerBook screens. And for me, I'm at 1280x854 currently, so again an upgrade for me. And until the DPI independent stuff is brought forward in Lepoard, I'd prefer it to not go too far beyond the 110ish DPI range.
Regarding World of Warcraft, Blizzard shipped it day 1 in the same box for PC and Mac. They are one of the best gaming companies for supporting both sides. And they will have Universal binaries for the new Intel Macs free of charge for all existing subscribers by the end of January. WoW is a big deal to 5 million people around the world (and still growing). So the fact that it works on the Mac, including all the in game mods is actually a big deal. I know some people at work very likely to look at a Mac laptop now with the performance jump, OS X, and perfect WoW support.
Regarding Windows, the issue is that no 32 bit version currently supports EFI, however the x64 and IA64 versions do. The new Macs are all 32 bit, so Windows won't boot natively. The question now would be is if Apple is shipping the backwards compatibility part of EFI in the systems to still be able to boot Windows. Thus far, it seem no hackers ran out and grabbed the iMacs to try it, but probably soon more info should be out there. Apple has stated many times they have no intent to block other OSs from running on the Macs, but they will try to protect OS X. Oh, and apparently Gateway has been shipping some Media Center boxes running 32 bit processors and EFI. Either MS added EFI support to Media Center XP, or Gateway is relying on the backwards compatibility aspect. I've not personally looked into it too much to see where the major issue is. My guesses are the lack of a compatible boot loader, and also the lack of support for GPT disks over MBR disks.
Vista will support EFI in their 32 bit versions.