Getting Apple to "admit" this is a hardware problem generally requires a much larger sampling of the user community experiencing the problem. Based on the posts here, and the meager sampling found via Google searches, that sampling does not exist. This doesn't mean Apple won't do something about it only that it will take a lot more than a relative few complaints in various forums to cause Apple to act.
Well, I don't know where you looked for your sampling information but I have a list of about 10 different threads and blog-posts about this issue. Are 200 or 300 or 400 complaints on-line relatively few? Look at our thread and compare that with the 4850 HD GPU issue with the newer iMacs - our thread trounces it and everyone who had that GPU had an issue. According to your logic there should have been thousands upon thousands of complaints about the issue, but guess what? There weren't, there were only a few hundred, yet the problem affected tens of thousands. Also, these failures took some time to appear and do so gradually which is quite unlike the 4850 driver problem which occurred so close to purchase, happened immediately and all at the same time. How many people actually post about a problem 2 years after a machine purchase anyway? Our problem appears to the average person to be just 'a bad video card' - they probably justify it to themselves: "I guess I was just one of the unfortunate souls who got a bad component through unluck-of-the-draw; next time I know to purchase Applecare." This is why you aren't seeing much coverage anywhere.
Clearly, there is a problem. The question is, is it Apple's problem, the GPU maker's problem or something else.
Well, it isn't the GPU maker because it is happening to 4 different video cards - probably the logic board is over-loading the GPUs and causing them to go bad - maybe a "leak" somewhere, maybe Apple used a batch of defective contact grease or maybe their was a bad Firmware update that set something into motion on the hardware side (e.g. I remember that when I first got my machine, I would occasionally hear the fan kick-on for a minute, but then I never heard it for months to a year - this could have started it all) - who knows.
As I said, your problem is hardware. From the description of others, they may not share the same problem even though the circumstances seem similar. I'm not beating anything here. You simply failed to understand what I said.
No. we all have the same issues, we have beaten this to death. Our iMacs have heat tolerance problems - that is why ALL of our computers graphical-freeze at 50 C or so; that is why we ALL get horizontal lines at those temps; that is why we ALL are upping fan-speeds to keep our iMacs below their sub-par temperature thresh-hold. How could we all have the exact same symptoms with the exact same models and "remedy" them with the exact same methods and then not be experiencing the same problem?
I'd imagine that Apple has a reason for ignoring the issue. How costly would it be to replace every Late2006/Early2007 iMac? Hmm? How many were sold? 100,000? multiply that by $1000 (estimated system cost for Apple) - that is $100,000,000.00 They would have to issue a recall because many of the replacement components have already been used up and according to some, they end up failing as well.
