New iMacs still freezing? (After week 42)

Week 42? These new iMac models have not been out 42 weeks.

This issue has affected about 1% of the shipping units so your odds of getting one are pretty slim. If you want or need a new one why wait. I say go for it.

Al Van Malsen,

How do you know that the freezing problem affects only 1% of iMacs? Can you show us a link to the Apple Press Release that makes reference to 1% of iMacs being affected?

Take a look at the sheer number of people viewing the threads concerning the freezing issue compared with the number of thread views on other topics. That should tell you something about how widespread this problem is. Try to call Apple Care in reference to an iMac on any day of the week and time how long it takes to get to a live person. 30 minutes to 1 hour on hold? Now, ask yourself just how realistic that "1%" number Mr. Van Malsen keeps pulling out of thin air really is.

Based on all the solid evidence one can put together, your chances of getting an iMac with some kind of problem is pretty high. You might have to go through one or two product replacements to get one that works the way it should (I dunno, that kind of math sounds to me more like anywhere from 30% to 50% of iMacs sold has issues).

Freezing. Screen artifacts. Power supply failures. Discolored screens with yellowish tints. Condensation inside the front glass. Backlight leakage.

Macworld is just a couple months away with all of its associated product revisions? Um, yes, I think I'd wait. As the old adage goes: why buy trouble?

The point is that mine is 2 weeks old and has had zero issues!!

And no, they have not been in assembly for 42 weeks either.

This is simple mathematics. Suffice it to say there are about 600 posters out here suffering from this issue and maybe 2000 more on the internet at large complaining of this issue . Apple, as of the end of October had shipped over 2.5 million of these units. I believe you can do the math. Even if I am way off, which I doubt, and 25,000 people have the problem, well, again, you can do the math.

The point is even if 30% of these units were bad, which would be an absurdly high number, you would still have a 70% chance of getting one with no issues. Not trying to be argumentative, just trying to keep this in perspective. It is not a hugely widespread issue.

Message was edited by: Al Van Malsen

"viewing the threads concerning"

Viewing has little bearing on the number of people actually affected by the issue. I dive in to these threads 10 times a day and each one of those consititues a view, but I am only one person. If everyone does the same, or answers posts more then once then each one of those also constitutes a view. I amtalkikng about new people posting or those that already have. Views also could be someone responding with something positive to say, or an off topic post, and as such the view numbers bear little resembelance to the number of people actually reporting this issue or the others you mention, which is even a smaller percentage.

30% is absurd, that would mean that 750,000 units are bad. I really really doubt that. 50% would mean that 1.25 million of them were bad. Do you really think that is realistic?

Message was edited by: Al Van Malsen

I think he means week 42 of the year. Many businesses measure time by the week number, so weeks 1-4 are January, and so on.

Yes, in fact I do. If your numbers were correct, there would be a statistically insignificant chance of getting two bad iMacs in a row. I could see it happening maybe a few times to a few people with extraordinarily scary levels of bad luck. Browsing these forums (which comprise themselves only a small sampling of the vast pool of iMac owners), one finds not just one or two (which would be extraordinary if your 1% number were correct), but numerous individuals claiming to be on their second or third or even fourth replacement iMac to get one that works. Three or four exchanges to get a good one? And that happens to more than one person? Any way you do the math, that points to only one of two possible logical conclusions: these particular people are all in some way directly responsible for the death of Mr. Job's dog, or the number of bad iMacs in general being sold is way, way higher than just 1%. Take whichever option you like.

I believe all these problems point clearly in one direction: Apple received a big batch of bad cards from ATI along with a somewhat smaller yet still significant number of defective power supplies from whatever vendor provides those. As those products get out of the system through repairs and exchanges, the chances of getting a bad iMac will get less and less. By next month or January, one should be fairly safe. Until then, the idea of "go ahead and buy one and hope for the best" is just a silly attitude for any consumer to adopt. That just encourages poor quality control from any company, even Apple. I'm not going to loan Apple $2300 while I wait for a good computer to finally show up after all the emotional and time consuming hassles of exchanging one or two or three bad ones. I'm going to buy one when I'm certain that, absent the rare and random lemon that will always be in any product pool, I'm going to get a good one the first time around.

Moral to this entire story with this Alu-iMac disaster: never be the first in line to buy anything. Let someone else be the beta tester.

Just to add my 2 cents...I view all the threads...the freezing threads, and other problems out of interest. My iMac is fine. Maybe there are many others like me, who just like to read threads out of interest and not necessarily because they have a bad apple...
Just thought I'd share.
Peace
🙂

Sure, and I in no way meant to imply that every person who views those threads has a problem. Yet look at the forum list and compare the number of thread views on the freezing issue to the number of thread views on, say, the audio question about how to enable both external and internal speakers at the same time. It isn't true that everyone who visits this forum reads every thread. By far, most people read only the threads that are meaningful to their situation. The huge difference in thread views on the freezing issue versus other threads therefore is a significant factor in determining how widespread this problem is.

Al Van Malsen,

Perhaps you skipped over my question to you. You have repeatedly reported on these boards that 1% of iMacs are affected. How do you know this? What information do you have from Apple verifying this number?

I don't wish to take issue with your guesstimate of the number of iMac owners plagued with the (still unresolved) problem of 'freezing'.

However, if I walk into a shop and pay the full price for a product, I don't expect to have to 'play the odds' as you have put it - and then have to wait weeks or months for a 'fix' that resolves the problem.

You are most fortunate in that Apple has replaced your defective machine, and all is apparently well with you. I, on the other hand, haven't had that good fortune and have for well over one month now been stuck with a defective iMac that was bought brand new and which Apple here in the Middle East flatly refuse to replace. That refusal is in spite of my highlighting the inconsistency of Apple's replacement policy between here and the USA/Europe, and possibly elsewhere. Surely Apple is Apple wherever one is in the world?

Why anyone, (forewarned of an as yet unresolved serious issue), would take a leap of faith in the face of Apple's arrogance in not even acknowledging that there is an issue, is beyond me.

luchris worte:
"Why anyone, (forewarned of an as yet unresolved serious issue), would take a leap of faith in the face of Apple's arrogance in not even acknowledging that there is an issue, is beyond me."

Apple did acknowledge the issue n Oct.4th in an interview with Macworld. While it has been a while since they released any more information, which is not a good thing in my opinion, they did at least acknowledge that their is an issue.

"...Apple here in the Middle East flatly refuse to replace. That refusal is in spite of my highlighting the inconsistency of Apple's replacement policy between here and the USA/Europe, and possibly elsewhere. Surely Apple is Apple wherever one is in the world?'

That makes no sense to me either. When you called whomever to get help with your issue, what did they tell you? Did they ask you to try anything such as reloading system software or anything else? It doesn't matter what they do anywhere else as some of those things are governed by local laws and legislation that Apple has no control over. If you had read any of my threads I have given advice numerous times of what will be expected of the customer and what they will have to tell Apple they have done in order to get it repaired or replaced. If you have done what they asked and it still does not function then it has to be a hardware issue which under the terms of the warranty they are obligated to uphold. What I can't tell you is how that works where you live as I don't have direct knowledge of the laws where you live.

I received my new 24" 2.8GHz iMac w/4GB RAM/750GB HD on November 9th. I immediately reformatted it, installed MacOS X 10.5 (Leopard), and migrated my accounts/apps/files/folders over from my old G5 Tower. It worked perfectly throughout the weekend, but Monday afternoon the 12th I noticed that my Library lights had not come come (controlled by Indigo 2) and checked on my Mac. The screen was off, which is normal, but nothing I could do would refresh the screen, which forced me to do a cold reboot.

I checked the Console logs and found nothing related to hardware, but did notice some old Virtual PC stuff in the logs that was failing. I removed VPC from my G5 Tower ages ago, but some stuff had clearly remained buried in the System, so I dug them out and deleted them. I also checked Apple's Support site and found that some USB devices may prevent the new Intel iMacs from waking, so I removed my old USB 1.1 hub, reconnected those devices I need to my USB 2.0 hub, and plugged my keyboard/mouse directly into the back of the iMac. I also unplugged the power and all devices from the iMac for 30 seconds to reset the System Management Controller (SMC), which may play a role in waking/sleeping issues if its settings are corrupted.

Since then my new iMac has been performing normally. This Mac is not idling. We use it for the home server, so file sharing to a common volume on a separate partition on this iMac's hard drive is always online. Additionally, I run SereneSaver's animated Desktop (runs Quicktime movies as the Desktop background), Safari, Mail, Indigo 2 (home automation), MacKiev's 3D Atlas screen saver (shows rotating globe with latest cloud cover), iCal, iTunes, and iPhoto constantly, with occasional jumps into Delicious Library and Apple Remote Desktop (to check on other home Macs). In short, this Mac is in constant use and is noticed when things don't work.

I checked the Console logs this morning, since I'm still a bit wary about the stability of this machine, but nothing jumped out at me as amiss.

To comment on the huge volume of views in these iMac freezing posts, I'd just say that this new iMac is a very compelling machine, both in appearance and power. It's much more responsive than my old 2.7GHz G5 Tower, and runs 40º cooler, so I am no longer concerned about its running 24x7. I also no longer worry about the coolant seals in the liquid cooled system in the tower aging and beginning to leak.

I held off two months purchasing this machine as I daily lurked in these forums for the latest on the freezing issue, as I'd guess many are. I simply decided that I'd waited long enough. It became clear to me that the video card issue is waning. Either the bad cards have been replaced, or the patches Apple released have helped many who no longer post here. In any case, I'm not installing the 1.3 patch until I see evidence of my having a video card hardware issue.

So, yes, some are still being plagued with freezing issues, and I will continue to read these threads until it's clear exactly what the issue was and how it was resolved. While I did have the one issue this week, I have no reason to suspect anything more than some legacy software that migrated to my new machine, and Leopard's/perhaps the Intel chip's sensitivity to old USB 1.1 devices. The next few days will have to play out before I'm comfortable that the issue is gone. But, nothing I've seen so far seems related in any way to the video card.

I'm very excited about this new Mac, and look forward to many enjoyable years using it.