

That decision makes some sense on laptops, where every ounce and millimeter matters, but I miss it here. For starters, there’s no optical drive in the iMac anymore. Since a 5mm edge doesn’t leave room for much of anything, the iMac's other parts had to get shifted around a bit.

That part was weird, but it just goes to show how good-looking this thing is. It’s incredibly sleek - almost every single person who saw it on my desk started stroking it absent-mindedly. It's not quite as light as the HDTV-like Vizio All-in-One PC, but it’s still thinner than most computer monitors you’ll find, and there’s, you know, a whole computer inside. It's almost an optical illusion, astonishingly thin if you look at it from the front but much fatter if you catch it at the wrong angle. Apple’s claim of it being 5mm thin is a bit misleading - the back bulges out from the razor-thin edges almost like an old CRT television, and in the center it’s about four times as thick. But it’s smaller, lighter, and thinner than ever. It’s still very much an iMac, with a big black bezel surrounding a big screen, an aluminum chin below with a glossy Apple logo in its center, and a tilting aluminum stand sticking out of the back. This year's iMac appears to have undergone the computer version of elective cosmetic surgery – it doesn’t look different, just better.
