Filed under: iMac
What the 27" iMac means for a designer
We asked our colleague over at Download Squad, Matt Heerema, for a designer's eye view on the new iMac 27" model.
Designers everywhere will rejoice at the announcement of the 27" iMac. With a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels, you are just 160 pixels shy of a full, pricey 30" monitor (2560 x 1600). My current design setup (17" MBP, 24" Cinema display) nets me two 1920 x 1200 screens, though only one of them is really useful at a time.
My current Photoshop or Fireworks workspace occupies about 1500px of screen (with however much height is available at the moment). The 27" iMac means I would have a spare 1000px to have a browser with a full-width Web page open for reference, or possibly my coding environment (usually Textmate or Coda), for which 1000px would definitely be sufficient.
This side-by-side workspace would mean massively efficient flow. Combine that with the intense specs of the iMac (quad-core processor & boatloads of RAM, anyone?), and you have the ultimate designer machine. Also: The 27" will handle DisplayPort input as well as output, allowing it to double as an external display for yet another computer, in a pinch.
Now, where did I put my credit card?
Our 
We all know
that Apple announced the release of the first Macs to use Intel chips. To get full speed and compatibility out of
applications that run in Mac OS X on Intel-based Macs, programs need to be recompiled to run natively on the Intel
processors. Apple's coding tools allow for a program to be coded as a "universal" application which means
that the "universal binary" will contain executable code for both architectures in one package, and then will
run the PPC code on the PPC processor or the Intel code on the Intel processor, depending on which is in your Mac.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
