Okay, it's official; AtAT now both acknowledges and endorses the iMac as the new "computer for the rest of us." We were holding off on succumbing completely to the iMac's "I'm the simplest" claim that gets trumpeted so loudly in Apple's commercials until the ultimate test of ease and simplicity had been passed. We're pleased to state that such a test has commenced, and so far the results are encouraging.

Yes, it's a great thing to show that an eight-year-old and a border collie can set up an iMac and get it onto the Internet in eight minutes or so. And we're hearing reports of people letting their four-year-olds set up the iMac, just to show that a four-year-old can do it (though we've got to assume that said four-year-olds got a little help with hoisting the iMac's thirty-eight pounds up onto a desk). That's all well and good, but let's face it-- kids, even very young kids, often have a technological edge over their parents. We're talking about the "son, get over here and program the VCR for your dad" syndrome; exposure to computer technology early in life (even technology like a Sony Playstation) seems to have given kids a familiarity with computer use paradigms and, probably more importantly, a level of comfort around high-tech stuff that often stands in sharp contrast to the technophobia that affects some people of an older generation. The real test of an iMac's simplicity is not whether our kids can set it up, but whether our parents can (or would even want to). We've frequently seen this referred to as the "Mom Test."

Well, so far we personally have no data on the "Mom Test," but as of tonight, AtAT can vouch for the fact that the iMac is passing the "Dad Test" with flying colors. The first part of the test was the hardest: projecting an image of simplicity strong enough to persude my father to buy one. (We're talking about a man who avoided getting a telephone answering machine until his activities made it an absolute necessity.) The second stage was set-up, and we're pleased to note that he called and proudly said he had the whole thing assembled and running. The fact that he was able to do so without feeling the need to call and ask questions or make sure he wasn't doing something wrong is a huge testament not just to the iMac's ease of use, but to its aura of simplicity and encouragement. Of course, the third part of the test-- getting on the Internet-- is going to be the trickiest from a technical perspective, as unfortunately EarthLink's nearest dial-in point is twenty miles away, so my father is going to have to sign with a local ISP instead of using the super-simple "Total Access" signup that ships on the iMac's drive. We'll keep you posted on the results, but so far, the iMac has aced the "Dad Test."

It appears that the biggest iMac glitch so far has been the way that many owners have been unable to keep reliable connections with their Internet service providers when connecting via the iMac's internal 56K modem. After widespread reports of connection difficulties, Apple formally addressed the problem earlier this week, when Steve Jobs himself replied to the complaints by saying that Apple had "jumped on this problem" right away, but found nothing wrong with the iMac's modem. Instead, Steve blames the problem on several ISP's who aren't using current equipment; many older, pre-v.90 56K modems apparently automatically hang up on the iMac's state-of-the-art modem, and so Apple is "trying to convince these ISPs to upgrade their modems," though of course that's about as much as Apple can do. You can read the full response at iMacInTouch.

We take issue with a couple of Steve's points, however. First of all, he claims that "customers using EarthLink... should have no problems whatsoever." According to Katie, AtAT's resident fact checker and Goddess of Minutiae, that's not necessarily true; she frequently sees her EarthLink connection get dropped after about twenty minutes of time online. Steve goes on to say that he recommends "anyone having problems with their local ISP just switch to EarthLink." That's what Katie did, but it didn't completely solve the problem, though it did make things better. And what about people like my father, who don't live close to an EarthLink dialin point? Toll-free access plans are very expensive, and not always a viable option.

We're starting to wonder if Apple's original plan to ship the iMac with a 33.6 modem instead of a 56K one was not because they were trying to save money, but because they knew that this kind of thing would happen. Of course, the best option of all would have been to ship the existing v.90 56K modem, and include two modem descriptions to use: "iMac Internal 56K" and "iMac Internal 33.6K (More Reliable)." As it turns out, several people who are having disconnects when connecting with the v.90 protocol are reporting rock-solid connections when forcing the iMac's modem down to 33.6. That was certainly our experience, too. If you're having difficulties, you might want to give it a try.

You knew the G3 was fast, but how fast? Apparently fast enough to give a Cray supercomputer a run for its money, according to a MacCentral story. A group at UCLA has shown that, if used correctly, the raw processing power of the G3 yields a kick-ass number cruncher at a cost much lower that the millions typically associated with supercomputers.

The UCLA effort is called "Project Appleseed," and it reveals that not only does a single Power Mac G3/266 compare very favorably to a single computing node on a high-end "massively parallel processor" such as a Cray supercomputer, but also if you take four such G3's and network them together, you've got a parallel computing system that performs comparably to a Cray MPP at a fraction of the price-- only about $11,000. (It's worth noting that while four Power Macs perform similarly to a four-processor Cray Y-MP, that particular Cray is eight years old. But it's still an impressive feat.)

Of course, what we'd like to see is an array of five or six iMacs beat a Cray. Imagine the marketing potential of such a story. Let's see, you'd need six iMacs, an eight-port hub, and some extra RAM... you could probably squeeze out even better performance (due to more processors and fast ethernet), and keep the cost under ten grand. Who's up for the challenge? ;-)