Well, a few feet high, anyway. Scott Salter sent us these pictures of a crash on the PC that runs the giant Coke ad at Piccadilly Circus. Try not to feel too smug.

Hallelujah! TV shows have landed on the UK's iTunes Store. In a move that suddenly makes Apple TV a viable option in the UK, Apple has released TV shows at £1.89 per episode. That's a steep price compared to the US Store, but I'm not surprised - everything just seems to cost more in the UK. Why the same digital file has to cost more for the UK audience is beyond me, but the reasons are probably known to economists everywhere (answers in the comment section below please). On the plus side, there's a good selection of content, however it seems to be mainly US TV shows. Amongst the plethora of kids TV shows like Dora the Explorer there's also some content for grown-ups, like LOST, South Park and Night Stalker. Considering they're better than most UK TV (and let's be honest, they are) that's not such a bad thing. It would be nice if the BBC could offer some content for free through the iTunes Store, like they do with their currently Mac-incompatible iPlayer, though. That would kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.

The UK iTunes TV show line-up looks like this:

Night Stalker Season 1
That 70's Show Season 1
Dora the Explorer Season 2
Handy Manny Season 1
Drake and Josh Season 1
Bam's Unholy Union Season 1
That's So Raven Season 2
Genie in the House Series 1
Pimp my Ride Season 4
Grey's Anatomy Season 2
Laguna Beach Season 3
Jongleurs Unleashed Series 1
Comedy Blue Series 1
Barrio 19 Series 1
South Park Season 10
LOST season 3
The Suite Life of Zack and Cody Season 1
Ugly Betty Season 1
Disney's Little Einsteins Series 1
Desperate Housewives Season 3
The World Stands Up Series 2
Avatar: The legend of Aang Series 1
American Dragon: Jake Long Season 2
Disney's Kim Possible Season 1
My Super Sweet Sixteen Season 3
SpongeBob SquarePants Season 3
Commander In Chief Season 1
Disney's Mickey Mouse Clubhouse

So, we finally have some (legal) TV content to play on our iPods - thank you Apple. Now all we need is a new touch-screen iPod to play them on. What's that Apple? You've got a secret product announcement coming up on the 5th September? Well, there's a coincidence...

One thing that many people have ignored in the new iWork suite is compatibility with other applications, in particular Microsoft Office. So here we present an extended excerpt from the iWork review in the next issue of MacFormat, explaining the issues around compatibility and specifically Microsoft's new XML-based file format.

It used to be that, as Mac users, we used different applications and different networking systems, and saved to different file formats from the rest of the PC-using world. Those days, thankfully, are long gone, and with the adoption of standard document formats most Mac users can open the majority of documents created on PCs.
The critical challenge is opening documents created by Microsoft Office apps. Word, Excel and PowerPoint are essentially established standards and the respective .doc, .xls and .ppt file extensions a familiar sight on desktops everywhere.
The easy solution was to buy a copy of Office for Mac, but even then documents created in the Windows counterparts didn’t necessarily render perfectly on the Mac. Whether due to obvious reasons such as the use of non-standard fonts or more exotic programming glitches, you sometimes have to put up with slight differences.
Just when it looked like we could be making progress – even TextEdit has been able to open Word documents for years – Microsoft has introduced an entirely new file format based on XML. All the Windows Office apps now use these formats – .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx – and even Office 2004 for Mac can’t open these files without the beta version of Microsoft’s translation libraries; native read/write abilities won’t debut on the Mac until Office 2008, slated for release early next year.
But while Microsoft seems to be dragging its feet with its own format, third parties have been much more proactive. The open source suite OpenOffice.org can access these files, as, ironically, can iWork 08. As a very young format, we expected to see even more of the odd rendering glitches crop up when opening documents created in Office 2007 for Windows, but we were pleasantly surprised. As you can see, apart from some text flow with the floating clip art, you’d be hard pushed to tell the difference with relatively simple documents. (Apart from Pages looking much less flabby than Word 2007!)

We got similar results with Excel and PowerPoint documents, though the point still stands that if you rely on absolute consistency with Office Windows documents or regularly make use of Office’s advanced features, Office 2004 for Mac is still a safe bet. It’s worth noting that if you go through a few cycles of convert-to-Keynote-save-as-PowerPoint-share-with-original-PowerPoint-creator some very odd and unwelcome mistakes do crop up. Also, though iWork apps read the XML format, they don’t write to it. It’s just that at its normal price, the standard edition of Office for Mac costs seven times that of iWork 08; even bought through, say, Amazon, it’s five times the price.
Despite being more basic than Office, support for Office 2007’s XML-based formats and previously Office-only features such as Track Changes means that iWork is more compatible with the wider world than ever.

Should you ever be jealous of the glamorous world of magazine publishing, we've put together this short video showing a typical gruelling/dull day for deputy editor Christopher Phin. That's him in the foreground, lolling unprofessionally. Beside him is art editor Alex Thomas, often away from his desk on the day of filming, directing photoshoots in our studio.

Soundtrack courtesy of Lee Maddeford.

Kit used Logitech QuickCam Fusion webcam, Gawker (open source time lapse software), iMovie HD (not iMovie '08...)

Apple's new iMac (the 20-inch version) arrived in the office today, and as soon as we'd unpacked it and set it up our MacFormat reviews desk was immediately swamped by a gaggle of excited art editors, technology journalists and pretty much anybody else who happened to be passing through the office. It's a testament to the look of the new iMac that pretty much everybody was desperate to have a play with it.

Here are the initial impressions of the MacFormat editors, and benchmark scores are mentioned in James' comments. Look out for the full review in the issue 187 of MacFormat magazine, on sale 19/09/07.

"It's a much more serious looking Mac than its predecessor. It's darker, slimmer, sexier and has a more professional feel. The display looks fantastic when playing video (who needs a TV in the house when you've got the new iMac?) The glossy screen however does present some problems and makes the iMac appear like a black mirror when not in use. If you're using it with a window behind you then you can really see the blue sky reflecting in darker areas of the screen - this is especially prevalent in apps like Front Row, where large sections of the screen are black.

The iMac from Apple came packed with music, and the sound is a vast improvement on the old iMac's speakers. If the original G5 iMac was a case of "where did the computer go?" then the new iMac is a case of "where did the speakers go?". It really does sound like there's a very decent set of speakers hidden away under the desk.

On paper the specs look fantastic, and our first speed tests (see below) are impressive.

While I love the aluminium look and the new keyboard I think there are still a few design issues for Apple to improve upon. For instance, the new aluminium styling of the iMac and keyboard makes the old-style Apple white of the Mighty Mouse and Apple Remote look out of place, as if they belong to a different computer.

It's going to take a while to get used to the new media controller keys as well, but it's a definite improvement from the old Apple keyboard. It's incredibly thin, and I find the lower elevation makes typing much easier. It's much more like the MacBook keyboard to use.

Overall this is one amazing iMac."

Graham Barlow, Editor, MacFormat

"I'm not yet completely sold on the predominance of black, though the thick black border that surrounds the screen seems to work much better in real life than in photographs. The black Apple logo is a bit ugly in my opinion, though I know that some folks really like it. It is superbly slim, however; it's hard to see where Apple can go with the design of the iMac other than cosmetic tweaks.

The glossy screen is proving divisive; get your position wrong – heaven help you if you face away from a window – and the reflections can get distracting. That said, I was very sceptical about glossy screens in general before I used and then bought a MacBook, and you do quickly adapt; most of the time, I don't even notice that there are reflections on the screen. You kind of learn to focus on the screen, not the reflections that seem to extend out behind it. Angles of view do suffer, but it's not a deal-breaker.

The new keyboard – and I confess this was the bit I was most excited about – seems a little less sprightly than the one on my MacBook; the keys feel a little more dead, without the same spring to them, though I had assumed that it would be an identical mechanism. Maybe it just needs breaking in.

Few products have the ability to draw the crows like a new iMac, though, and within a few minutes of trying out the speakers with a selection of music – they sound superb, by the way; by far the best speakers I've heard on any desktop system – embittered journalists from sister magazines were forming an appreciative semicircle around the desk it was set up on. Admiring murmurs could be heard for some time as Front Row swung into view, sleek lines were stroked and keyboard fingered reverentially.

For a long time, now, the iMac has been the jewel in the crown of Apple's range. It sits at the perfect sweet spot between power – just on paper, the specs are fantastic – and affordability.
So would I buy one? Put it this way: I'm already pricing up LCD TVs to hook up to my Mac mini media centre at home, and a small but insistent voice in my head keeps informing me of the small price difference between a decent LCD TV and the 24in iMac. For most people, I think that the 20in is the perfect size, but, particularly with its living-room-friendly colour scheme, the 24-incher is a cracker. Now, where did I put my Visa card?"

Christopher Phin, Deputy Editor, MacFormat

"Our first impressions of the new iMac design are nearly all positive. One of our benchmarking tools, Xbench, put it at approximately 18 percent faster than the white iMac it replaced. Some of that boost is down to the faster chips (2.0Ghz, 2.4Ghz and 2.8Ghz available), though the better power handling and fatter front-side bus of the new Santa Rosa board is also playing its hand. The new ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro card with its 126MB of dedicated memory is a useful upgrade too.

Performance is excellent. Ours, the 20-inch 2.4Ghz model with 1GB of RAM, matched a year-old quad core 2 x 2.66Ghz Mac Pro in everything other than a threading test. Under light use you do not really notice a difference in performance between the two. The Mac Pro only starts to accelerate away from the new iMac when tasked with very heavy workloads like batch conversions or large rendering jobs.

The new look is what everyone is talking about. Our take is that the aluminium looks very sharp indeed, and brings business-like looks to the iMac that should appeal to the professional user. Its almost as if Apple has taken the design elements of its laptop line and worked them into the iMac. The glossy display is a talking point because its highly-reflective and can act like a mirror in some light settings, but is also very adept at delivering rich colours and extreme brightness. Out of the box we found the default brightness settings needed toning down about 10 percent. Movies play back very well. One improvement not getting many review column inches is the speaker upgrade. The sound quality on the new iMac is quite superb and much louder than before. This gives movies much more punch.

Some things have been scrapped. The glowing sleep-mode indicator has gone, so has the activity LED next to the iSight. [Update: the LED for the iSight is actually still present; it just looks like it has gone when it's off, but when you're using the camera, the little green iSight light does appear to the right of the lens.] There's only one screw on the whole exterior (to access the RAM slots) and the remote no longer magnetises to the lower-right hand edge of the casing. We suspect the new aluminium exterior might well be upsetting the wireless abilities of the iMac. The Airport reception in the iMac has dropped slightly. "

James Ellerbeck, Reviews Editor, MacFormat.

We've been putting the new iLife and iWork applications through their paces, but wanted to ask if there was anything specific you'd like us to test for you. Complex Excel-compatibility questions? Have a problem with the current version of iMovie importing assets? Let us know in the comments, we'll do our best to investigate, and we'll report on our findings in the review.

If you have specific Office documents - maybe long Word docs with Track Changes enabled or Excel spreadsheets with complex formulae and formatting - that you think we should test, let us know your email address in the comments, and we'll be in touch to try them out.