Technology review: The minimalist iMac with the most to offer Apple 27-inch iMac (rating:4/5) Amid the carnage wreaked on the desktop PC market by the advent of mobile computing, all-in-one computers are stalwart survivors thanks to their compact design and performance. The minimalism and power of Apple's latest iMac make it the standard by which others will be measured. Personal Technology Everything about the look of the latest 27-inch iMac is minimalist, from the ultra-slim screen with its brushed aluminium pedestal to the Bluetooth wireless keyboard and mouse. On sale at $1,800 (£1,600 in the UK), the new iMac has 40 per cent less volume than the previous version and is just 5mm wide at its edge. This astonishing engineering feat has been made possible by adopting friction welding techniques borrowed from aerospace and rocket manufacturing. Such design aesthetics do, however, come at a cost in terms of usability. Unlike the circa-2008 Taylor-family iMac that my wife mostly uses, the new iMacs (starting with the 2012 redesign) do not incorporate an optical drive for playing and recording CDs and DVDs and the SD card slot has been moved from the side to the much less convenient rear, next to the USB, Thunderbolt and Ethernet ports. In these days of fast home WiFi networks, broadband connections and multi-Gigabit USB thumb drives - memory sticks - the lack of an optical drive is not crucial, but as I found when I wanted to show a home movie about my daughter's early years at her wedding last week, it would have made life much easier simply to burn it to a DVD ready for display. Instead we compressed the video file and stored it on a large thumb drive ready for playback. Aside from its elegant design, the most striking feature is of course the screen. The LED-backlit display with "better-than-HD" resolution uses advanced manufacturing techniques to reduce reflection by up to 75 per cent, which is an important consideration given the size and the likely setting for a family-owned iMac in the home or office with lots of windows and suboptimal lighting. While the iMac screen is not a Retina display type (as found on the latest MacBooks and iPads), it does deliver rich, bright colours and superb resolution, making it my favourite all-in-one for activities such as watching movies or editing images. Anyone interested, like me, in doing computer-intensive tasks such as editing video or still images will also appreciate the significant performance boost delivered by the quad-core Intel Core i5 (or i7) processors used in the latest iMacs and the upgraded Nvidia graphics. In its base configuration, the latest iMacs come with a standard 1 terabyte hard drive, which can be upgraded to a whopping 3TB - a good idea if you store a lot of videos. Another upgrade to consider is to swap out the hard drive for what Apple calls its "Fusion Drive." This technology combines a traditional high-capacity hard drive with high-performance flash storage and Apple claims the latest version is up to 50 per cent faster than the Fusion Drives used in earlier iMacs. The technology in Fusion Drive automatically and intelligently manages your data so that frequently used apps, documents, photos and other files stay on the faster flash storage, while infrequently used items move to the hard drive. The upshot is that the system boots up much quicker, apps launch much faster and you spend much less time watching the screen and waiting for data to load or be processed. Swapping a standard hard drive for a Fusion Drive of the same capacity costs an extra $200 (£160) but many will regard this as worthwhile. Overall, despite niggles such as the position of the SD card slot, it is hard to fault the new iMac. It delivers better performance at a significantly lower retail price than older-generation iMacs. If you prefer a smaller screen, the 21.5in iMac is also an excellent buy and costs $500 (£450) less than its larger sibling. Planet of the apps Paul Taylor picks his favourite from the latest crop What it is: Spotliter, free for iPhone and iPod Touch. Why you should try it: Netomat's fun new mobile video camera app allows users to tap, slide or pinch their fingers on particular areas of their iPhone screens to apply sophisticated effects while recording. For example, Spotliter enables users to magnify a friend's face in a video, or to change a specific object from black-and-white to colour while recording the video.