iMac 2.0GHz PowerPC G5 17-inch (ALS)

Table 1: iMac 2.0GHz PowerPC G5 17-inch (M9844) 512MB Ambient Light Sensor
Quick Facts	17-inch iMac G5 ALS
Introduced	May 3, 2005
Discontinued	October 12, 2005
Part Number	M9844
Processor	2.0 GHz G5 (single)
L2 Cache	512 KB
Frontside Bus	600 MHz
Memory	512MB 400MHz DDR SDRAM
Hard drive	160GB Serial ATA, 7200 rpm
Optical drive	8x SuperDrive
Original Price	$1,499 USD

View other iMacs in this series or return to The history of the iMac

Revision B | G5 2.0GHz | ALS

Eights months had passed since the introduction of the new G5 iMac design. This “Ambient Light Sensor” series is the first refresh, known as Revision B.

The price and design of this model remained the same as the 17-inch 1.8GHz iMac it replaced but there were improvements worth noting.

For one thing, Apple finally provided a reasonable amount of factory installed memory in this series. All the models came with 512MB of 400MHz PC3200 DDR SDRAM and were expandable to 2GB.

Another welcomed change was having Airport Extreme and Bluetooth as built-in features. After all, the iMac was originally billed as the “Internet-age computer for the rest of us.”

The ALS series also represented a return to ATI graphics processors. The NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra in Revision A models was tossed out in favor of the ATI Radeon 9600. It had double the DDR SDRAM of the NVIDEA for a total of 128MB.

This mid-range model and the high-end 20-inch 2.0GHz iMac model both came with slot-loading SuperDrives. The low-end 17-inch 1.8GHz iMac had a slot loading Combo drive.

The processor speed jumped from 1.8MHz to 2.0MHz and storage capacity doubled over its predecessor to a generous 160MB.

The entire lineup had two FireWire 400 ports, three USB 2.0 ports, (two more USB 1.1 ports on the keyboard), mini-VGA output port, S-video and composite video output, headphone output, audio line in, and built-in modem and Ethernet (now 1000Base-T).

Matching white Apple keyboard and mouse were standard, or for an additional cost, customers could upgrade to wireless versions. The built-in stereo speakers are surprisingly good.