I was thinking of buying a new iMac in October when they have Leopard out, but I'm reading a lot of posts where some of the iMacs are freezing up, and the only way to "unfreeze" them is to use the power button and turn it off. I was just wondering if there are a lot of iMacs users that are still experiencing this, or has this been resolved?
Hopefully you have resolved your issue by now, but it sounds like an SMC problem, from what I've read in other threads. I've had the same freezes with my new 24" iMac so was reading those. Not sure if the procedure helped. But if you haven't solved the problem, search here for resetting the SMC.
I have the same problem with freezing and it's making the machine unbearable to use. If so many people are having this problem as posted here and many other sites you think a fix would be quickly coming. Or are we doomed to wait until until the next OSX release that could be months away. As much as i like Apple this has not been a good experience for me with this new machine. After contacting support and getting the usual check this run this or re-install I still end up with the same problem. My last try at this is to re-install with no updates. I don't remember having this problem when i first used it, it was close to the update I hope I'm right. Have to give my credit card company a call to see if I have an option as it's past the 14 days return to Apple.
Would i suggest someone buy a new iMac? that would be a big NO
Just bought mine last week... and in one day doing Motion and FCP, I had to reboot 10 times.... Frustating you think... I looked at the box, I thought I had bought a PC, not a Mac 🙂
I'm really sorry to read that you folks are having such problems with your iMacs.
I guess I'm one of the fortunate buyers whose new iMac is working well.
I hope you get your systems up and working soon.
CrankyB
I would go ahead an purchase, just don't apply any of the current iMac updates.
Before I updated my system to the 1. and 1.1 iMac versions, I had no problems. My problems started after these updates. I did an erase and install, and voila.... no more freezing.
Read the discussions before applying updates to ensure relatively few problems result, then update.
JB
I'm sure they don't mention these bugs when they send an update... Also it's not the first time that I see ATI having drivers problems... They could use some of the mac geniuses!
I had no problems with my 24" except when playing Age of Empires III, until I ran the 1.1 update, which I did this morning. I have had nothing but trouble since. After over 20 freezes in three hours I just reformated the drive and restored from a week old backup. I have not applied the update since doing so and have had no problems.
based on my experience, and only with one Mac, I would not recommend appying the 1.1 update. I believe it is at the root of the issue. I won't be updating my other Intel Macs until I research this further.
In all fairness I have to say that after I downloaded and installed both the latest iTunes update and the 1.1 update when it asked me to restart, it crashed upon trying to do so. It could be iTunes that is creating the problem, but I suspect it is the 1.1 update.
the first time I used my IMac, I didn't have internet access, so no update were made, and I haven't been asked for any update to my IMac since i'm on the internet... but still experienced a lot of crashing...
I definitely suspect a video card problem, since like some others, I was still able to use the computer as if it was ok (by using voice over on), but with my nice frozen screen and beach ball...
The 1.1 update is an update tha Apple put out I guess a few days ago. If you run software update, it should find it for you unless you already have it. If you don't have it you may want to skip it for now.
Based on a little further research, the problem seems to affect the 24" iMac far far more than the 20" models,why, I don't know. It could be that it is with the video card used in the 24 and one 20". A different video card is used in the base model 20" and maybe it is not affected.
In my case it has now been many hours since I removed the 1.1 update and my iMac is operating beautifully. I have not had on instance of an application freezing nor have I had any video artifacts. I stil believe this update is causing problems. What it is I don't know as the console logs are not showing anything unusual. I will keep trying to figure it out though.
Al Van Malsen wrote:
In all fairness I have to say that after I downloaded and installed both the latest iTunes update and the 1.1 update when it asked me to restart, it crashed upon trying to do so. It could be iTunes that is creating the problem, but I suspect it is the 1.1 update.
Just my opinion.
The problem existed before the 1.1 update was released, and it still exists. So I doubt the update has anything to do with it.
Same here. While my iMac doesn't crash as often since installing the update, it is still crashing occassionally with other applications. Over the past week, it's crashed 4 times with iDVD (complete system freeze) and yesterday it crashed twice with iPhoto (single application freeze). I haven't had any more frequent problems with iTunes, but for me the drama continues. My patience is wearing thin. Where is the "official" response from Apple? Do we have defective hardware or is this a software problem with drivers and all those background things that they assure us we don't have to think about when we buy a Mac? I'm accustomed to these hassles in working with a PC, but come on...this is rediculous.
Yeap... windows should actually start it's own series of commercial... "why switch to" pc.. and have vista crashing 2-3 times, while Mac is crashing 10 !!! I just hope that Steve Jobs won't forget what made this brand what it is today and starts throwing the ball at the other manufacturer...
Besides this issue, I love this new 24" IMac... it's georgeous, fast and... made my friends jaleous 🙂
I've been having the same problem as well...! I bought a 2.4 Core 2 Duo 20" iMac and at first it would only freeze while playing World of Warcraft but then I started freezing out of sleep mode and restarting my computer, then sometimes would freeze while plugging in any USB drive.. and it started becoming so frequent! I went on Apple support over the phone and ran a bunch of different scenarios, nothing worked. At the end I took it to my local Apple store, they ran a hardware test and said it came up with bad ram. They swapped it out for a brand new iMac with no hassle. Now so far it's working fine and seems a LOT faster especially with plugging in USB drives and what-not.. we'll see what happens now... I hope it was just a mishap. Maybe some models just came out flawed?
