Click here to see the index of Craig's columns.

APPLE'S NEW IMAC FLATTENS OLD IDEAS

Apple's new flat screen iMac follows in the company's tradition of creating beautiful works of art that do wonders with a spreadsheet. In last week's column where I predicted its unveiling at this week's Macworld in San Francisco, I didn't foresee how appealing this iMac would be until I saw it. But no ESP is needed to know that this iMac's simple yet elegant design will appeal to anyone looking for an all in one computer that can get the job done.

All that looking great begins with what you see on the iMac's flat 15 inch color LCD screen that can be raised, lowered and rotated around the base with a mere touch thanks to the precisely balanced arm that holds it in place and is anchored at the top center of the dome. After tilting the screen to your ideal viewing angle, the mechanical arm preserves the screen's position even while raising and lowering the screen. This ability makes the screen feel as if it is floating on air. The screen displays millions of colors at a 1024 by 768 resolution. The rest of the computer is housed in a compact 10.6 inch dome base. All the necessary connections are conveniently located at the lower back of the base and include two Firewire, three USB, Ethernet, headphone, speaker, modem and VGA video ports. Even the power supply is in the base so there's no bulky transformer at the end of the power cord.

Three models will be initially available starting with the top of the line version that includes an 800 Mhz G4 processor, 256 MB of memory, 60 GB hard drive and Apple's SuperDrive that reads and writes CD and DVD formats. This model also comes with Apple's external speakers that compliment the built-in speaker. Apple also announced that all Macintosh computers shipping from now on will come with OS 10.1 installed as the default operating system. Announced prices for the new iMacs are $1299, $1499 and $1799.

I have iPhoto for you

Apple's other newly announced item is iPhoto. This software application lets you organize and manage your "digital shoe box" of photographic images you've taken with a digital camera, scanned or downloaded. iPhoto lets you crop, scale, rotate images and place them into an online photo album hosted by Apple's servers so that anyone online with access may view your images. You can also send images to Kodak to be printed out on sizes starting from 4 x 6, to a 20 x 30 inch glossy poster size for $19.99. The photos are delivered right to your door. One of the nicer iPhoto features is being able to scale thumbnail images on the fly so you can more easily locate pictures. You can organize them into related groups, export them into QuickTime movies and create slide shows. A brand new feature is the ability to print a real hard-covered book that contains your images and text. A book printing starts at $29.99 depending on the number of pages in the book. And possibly the best feature of all is that Apple lets you download the iPhoto application for free on their web site.

www.apple.com