Okay, so we finally scraped together enough free time to drive an hour through the snow to go check out the new iMac up close this long weekend, and we're happy to say that it looks a heckuva lot neater in person than it did on Time's cover a couple of weeks ago. The proportion of the screen to the base is more visually pleasing than the photos imply, the overall size of the unit is friendlier than we expected, and the base, far from being a sterile glossy white mound, actually has a nifty matte finish to it that evokes images of frosted glass Christmas tree ornaments. (Trust us, that's a good thing, though we're at a loss to explain why.) The half-inch of clear plastic rimming the screen practically begs for interaction, so moving the display around feels like an imperative. And when you're actually using the thing, the base and stem are all but invisible anyway, leaving just you, your various input devices, and the all-important screen hanging in front of your face, as we'd hoped. Add all that to one unbeatable price/performance ratio, and you get more thumbs up than we have thumbs.

One interesting thing about the new iMac design is that we strongly suspect it's a perfect case of successful targeting. Given that no design can please everybody (and anything that comes close generally does so by being bland enough not to threaten the sensibilities of the lowest common denominator), we're guessing that Apple designed the new iMac specifically to appeal to the people it needs most. It's just a hunch, but we've gotten a lot of mail from people who say that "every Wintel user" they know is just wild about the new iMac. When viewed in light of Apple's retail incantation of "5 down, 95 to go," Jon Ive's latest design starts to look a whole lot like an intentional defection magnet. And that only makes sense; poor slobs like us who are already addicted to the Mac will eat whatever Cupertino hands us, so what Apple needs is a look that'll have the rest of the population drooling while tossing their Presarios out the window. (Just thank the gods of good taste that Jobs and Ive are far too classy to resurrect the Dreaded Beige Box just to grab some Wintel market share.)

Indeed, an ICM Research study referenced in a Macworld UK article certainly implies that Apple's marketing strikes a chord with demographics a mite more varied than those staked out by other computer manufacturers. In the UK, at least, "awareness of all brands is higher in the 35-54 year old age group"-- except for Apple, who is known more "among females and also among a younger target audience: 18-34 year olds." Apple's popularity among women is nothing new-- take the Japanese sales figures of the original iMac, for instance-- but it's still gratifying to hear that more women knew about Apple than about any other manufacturer, since, aside from occasional embarrassments like the Claudia Schiffer Palm organizer, the tech industry has all but ignored that half of the population. In contrast, lots more men knew about Dell than about Apple, which only makes us wonder whether those slack-jawed "Dude, you're getting a Dell" commercials are gracing the British airwaves. We shudder to think.

The really nice bit, though, is that of the study's respondents who are planning on buying a computer "in the near future," nearly twice as many women are considering Apple instead of Dell-- and the percentage of all computer-shopping respondents looking at Macs hit a respectable 14%. Compare that to Apple's alleged 5% market share (which we suspect is rather lower in the UK) and things are really looking up. Note that ICM's figures were also compiled prior to the new iMac's release, so that factor might help Apple's market share even more. On occasion we've been frustrated with Apple for concentrating so much on consumer-targeted marketing and completely ignoring enterprise sales, but considering that ICM's findings reveal that "the recession is not affecting computer home purchases as badly as it is predicted to do in the business sector," we think we'll just leave the CEOing to His Steveness from now on.