The packs could also be more generous, with more than 50 and 100 minutes voice minutes and SMS respectively. Ditto the small 250 and 500 megabyte data caps which are have "been set based on the insight that average daily data usage when roaming is 25MB" according to Spark's fine print for the service.
Vodafone's local data caps are hardly amazingly huge, but even at a relatively small 1.25GB to 2.5GB they're much better than Spark's roaming plans.
Be careful not to roam outside the value pack, so to speak: Spark's casual rates will kick in if you do, and they're expensive at 49 cents a minute to make calls, $1 dollar to receive them, and 80 cents per SMS.
Casual data is an eye-watering $1 per megabyte while in Australia too. Why not offer an auto-renewal option for the pack, Spark?
At least the packs are additive according to Spark - well, sort of: the amounts of voice, text and data will expire within the time period assigned to the pack, but you don't lose them when you buy a new one. Handy when you run out of one of the three.
Another oddity to watch out for is that while the prepaid value pack kicks in when you start roaming in Australia, the postpaid ones begin at purchase.
Spark suggests that postpaid customers should ideally buy the value packs at the airport or as soon as they arrive in Australia to get the full time period.
For some reason, the incumbent doesn't want you to know that roaming data charges will start at 50 kilobytes from now, and not a meager 10KB which would have customers slugged with the above exorbitant casual data rates.
Seems like rather a useful thing to know.
Gear: Apple iMac Retina 5K
I've got a great 2580 by 1440 pixel screen made by Dell that's been my main monitor for a couple of years now - and I wouldn't want to go back to anything lower resolution, but the opposite.
The high price of 4K screens has put me off upgrading though; they're around three grand for the 31-inch models (which is a good size for the resolution) and wide colour gamuts which I like for photo and video work.
The iMac Retina 5K I received for review isn't exactly cheap at $4,500 including GST but that money buys fast hardware: a 4GHz quad-core Intel i7 processor, an AMD Radeon R9 M295X video card with 4GB RAM and a one terabyte Apple Fusion hard drive with a solid-state cache.
There's also 802.11ac Wi-Fi, four USB 3.0 ports, two Thunderbolt 2.0 connectors, an Ethernet jack and an SD card slot on the iMac Retina 5k.
Those specs are pretty good, ample for general computing as well as video and photo editing of large files - the Fusion drive keeps up well, ditto the Radeon R9 graphics card. I'd upgrade the stock 8GB of RAM though, as it's not enough for demanding tasks.
Luckily, that's easy enough with the iMac 27" and not that expensive if you don't buy Apple's memory upgrades. You can squeeze in a total of 32GB of RAM.
Considering the display is capable of 5,120 by 2,880 pixel resolution, more than usual 4K screens and also features Apple design, the iMac Retina 5K is quite good value if high-res is what you're after.
If you want to know what the LG made screen is actually like, it's great. Apple uses custom electronics to make sure the panel is driven evenly and smoothly even at full resolution, and it's noticeably better than last year's 2560 by 1440 pixel iMac screen.
Hi-res does bring a few oddities with it though.
To start with, I wasn't able to run the iMac Retina in 5K resolution without downloading the shareware SwitchResX utility. Without the very good SwitchResX tool, the most you'll see in System Preferences is 3,200 by 1,800 pixel resolution - very high, nice to use, but not 5K.
In fact, Apple has 2,560 by 1,440 pixel as the "best for the display" resolution (and it looks great).
Using SwitchResX, 5K was possible and you get masses of space on the iMac Retina screen. Editing large image files with minimal scrolling, and yes, putting together video clips 4K resolution with space left on the iMac screen for the timeline is an excellent feature.
Unfortunately though, icons and other screen elements are very small on the 27-inch screen at 5K resolution, ditto text. Not all can be scaled up either.
Running the screen in 5K also heats up the iMac and the fans kick in. While not that loud, they're noticeable enough unlike the Mac Pro which remains near-silent even when pushed. Users on the MacRumours forum are reporting that the heat causes the video card to throttle back and performance drop as a result, which is a pity.
It's also a bit disappointing that Apple didn't go the whole hog with a 10-bit display (and support for Deep Colour in OS X), but that I suspect is still too hard technically and price-wise. I've asked Apple for more information on 10-bit colour support and hope to know more on that topic soon.
Leaving those flaws aside, it's great to see Apple push the envelope with the iMac Retina 5K. Considering what you get with it, and it's a lot, the new iMac Retina 5K is fantastic and I love to have one myself (or if money was no object, a Mac Pro with a similar monitor).
