Q: New iMac 27inch screen flickering/tearing/shutoff

Sorry if this has been covered. I'm aware that the cable and screen replacement is a recognized fix for the flicker, but does it remedy the yellow tinge that some are finding?
Thanks

Dino.......I have been following the yellow tint thread occasionally, as well.

One comment that I cannot help but snicker at, and it's been posted several times, "I didn't know I had a yellow tint until I ran the test....." DOH

I would really be surprised to find that sales of the 21.5"ers came anywhere close to the 27's, but no doubt that they still number in the hundreds of thousands. That would make them even more stable than the 27"ers because the compilation site only lists problems with less than ten units the last time I checked.

That is too low a failure rate, even for Apple.

Good luck with the replacement, be sure to post here again when it's a good one. (assuming)

Bakes: It appears to.

So far, everyone I have seen who has posted here, and has received a replacement display, and cable, has reported no problems since those repairs were made. There has been no mention of the yellowing, and anyone posting here is most likely aware of that issue as well, and would mention it, if it was still a problem.

OK, here's an interesting little tid-bit of information...

I have just done the rounds of a few Apple dealers in my city. Not Apple Stores, just authorised re-sellers.

One of them had Core Duo 27's in stock, but none of them have i5's. They are expecting them next week some time.

This was the same case 3 weeks ago when I went shopping for my unit which became a flickerbox. I ended up buying from the local Apple Store, because they wwre the only place that actually had them in stock. And they said they had plenty of back-up stock as well.

Now, why would the Apple Store have plenty of stock, but the re-sellers have none?

My guess is that they have held off supply to the re-sellers, so as not to cause them too much grief and potentially lose some of their dealers through this. The Apple Stores on the other hand would look nothing short of stupid if they didn't have any of Apple's shiny new machines in stock, so they take the punt and sell the existing stock on the wharehouse shelves in order to get people into the system.


The result being that "What's that? It's flickering? Well that's no good, bring it in and we'll sort the problem out for you", sounds a lot better than "Sorry, we can't sell you anything today, come back in about a month". This way, they make the sale and hope that people fall in love woth the machine and persevere through the trials of repairs/replacements, instead of being like me and just getting an instant refund on the spot.

What do you think?

Am I close?

Call me cynical, but it would appear to be working, largely.

Yes all the people that reported they got the Screen & Cable replacement checked their screens for Yellow Tinge & they did not have it. So 2 Thumbs Up!

Hi guys!

Phewww I leaved this thread on Jan 8 it was then at 156 pages and now up to 185!
And I did of course read through it all 156- 185!
So I don't miss anything important!

However, I myself and HiFiRobbie knows that LG isn't really the diamond quality brand.

And if the problem really is due to LG's bad quality LCD's.
Then why don't ALL of us head over to LG's forums(where ever that is located) and Bash on LG a little . And tell them to high up the quality on the LCD's they are shipping to Apple! But I don't think that will help a lot though

J~G

I wrote an earlier post about my 27" flickering and shutting off, and I thought I had the problem fixed when I turned off the air port feature. Well that didn't work, so I called back Apple and spoke with a supervisor about my problem. 2 days later, I had a service tech at my house with a new LCD screen. It took him 20 minutes to replace mine and he told me I shouldn't have anymore problems. He said they had a bunch of bad LCD screen's. So far everything is great, but I keep my fingers crossed. I would imagine it cost about $1000.00 to have a tech come to my house and replace my screen (new screen, shipping, tech's time) and if this is the problem, it's going to cost apple a lot of money to replace all of the bad screens. My Apple Care payed for itself already and the service I received gave me another reason why I buy a Mac over a PC. I the screen isn't the reason for the problems,, I will update my post.

Hey, that's great news!

I'm starting to see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

Let's hope its not a train!!!

Hi pazuita - I'm the one who posted earlier about recalling having seen someone complain that they still weren't fixed after a third replacement.

Here's my original post - I'd love to hear your thoughts on my math & analysis:

Brian_1338 wrote:
There's been some amount of debate here about the percentage of units that are affected. I don't know more than anyone else, but based off high school math I'd guess that it's higher than a 1% defect rate.

Let's say it's a 1% defect rate. If you're a person who will buy a new model but exchange it over and over until you get a working unit, that means that there's a:

1 in 100 chance you'll still won't have a working unit after your first purchase
1 in 10,000 chance you still won't have a working unit after your first exchange
1 in 1,000,000 chance you still won't have a working unit after two exchanges
1 in 100,000,000 chance you still won't have a working unit after three exchanges

There have been many reports of folks on this forum alone who still don't have working units after two exchanges. I think there was even someone who still didn't have a good unit after three exchanges. Doesn't matter if these people are more vocal or not - all that matters is if they're reporting it. And certainly not everyone is exchanging, either.

So a 1% failure rate + only the anecdotal reports on this forum from people who did exchange over and over would imply, mathematically, that there have been at least tens of millions sold, if not more.

How many units have actually sold so far? Hard to say, but likely not that high. 3.05 million Macs (of all kinds) were sold last quarter, most of which were laptops (laptops have sold more than desktops for a while now). Supply issues have kept the 27 inches out of many customers' hands for most of the last quarter. The smaller iMacs usually sell better than the larger ones, too. So even factoring in holiday sales + an increase in demand due to the model refresh, I'm doubtful that they've sold even a million 27 inch iMacs.

If I had to take a wild guess, I'd peg the failure rate anywhere from 2% to 5%, depending on how many people never reach this forum at all.

And now we have 1-3 folks confirming in the last day that they've had no luck after two exchanges (three total machines). Apple certainly hasn't sold 3 x 1,000,000 = 3 million of these machines, nor is it reasonable to say that these 3 people the only ones in this situation, so odds seem pretty low that the failure rate is only 1%.

Of course, this assumes that broken machines are distributed evenly, and Apple isn't deliberately sending broken machines to the same poor saps over and over.

Small correction in my original analysis:

Brian_1338 wrote:

How many units have actually sold so far? Hard to say, but likely not that high. 3.05 million Macs (of all kinds) were sold last quarter, most of which were laptops (laptops have sold more than desktops for a while now). Supply issues have kept the 27 inches out of many customers' hands for most of the last quarter. The smaller iMacs usually sell better than the larger ones, too. So even factoring in holiday sales + an increase in demand due to the model refresh, I'm doubtful that they've sold even a million 27 inch iMacs.

Meant to say that "3.05 million Macs (of all kinds) were sold in Q3." And then "Supply issues have kept the 27 inches out of many customers' hands for most of Q4."

The math is much simpler than that.

If the defect rate is 1%, that means 1 unit out of every 100 is defective.

The odds of one person getting a bad unit remains 1 in 100, no matter how many units they buy, or whether or not any units they previously owned were defective.

The odds remain the same.

Just like flipping a coin.

The odds of a coin landing on heads the first time you flip it, is 50-50.
The odds of it landing on heads the second time you flip it is still 50-50.

You have to be aware that Apple's sales in the final quarter rose 74% over the previous seasonal quarter. Sales in the fourth quarter are substantially higher than the third quarter, driven by the holiday season.
Analysts were only projecting a 20% increase from the previous quarter prior to the announcement of the new models.

The 27"ers of all models are the bulk of those increases, and Apple has admitted to being overwhelmed by the demand.

Certainly hundreds of thousands of units, and easily in the millions.

10,000 bad units would barely represent 1% of that total. All of the evidence on the net indicates the numbers are only in the hundreds, not thousands, even disregarding the troll factor in the totals.

2% to 5% is possible, but I do not think likely. 50,000 unhappy customers would make a lot more noise than the dozen or so who are currently posting on this thread.

Certainly, the defect rate is nowhere near the 50% mark that some have claimed.

The odds for any single replacement is indeed 1 out of 100 in our example. If I've had 2 replacements already, you're right that I have 1 out of 100 odds of getting another bad one.

But that's not what I said - the question is "what are the odds that decide to buy an iMac, but then need to replace it three times before I get a working unit?" That's not 1 in 100 - that's 1 in a million, if the failure rate is 1%.

And I'm also skeptical that sales of 27 inch units are easily in the millions. 74% increase of total unit sales is great, but we don't know where that's starting from. We know 3.0 million total Mac sales in Q3. Apple traditionally sells fewer desktops than laptops, so that means that the desktop Q3 basis is less than 1.5 million. Oh, and most desktops are cheaper (smaller) iMacs - or might be Mac Pros - so 27" sales are now likely considerably even less than 1.5 million. Oh, and they weren't even on sale all quarter, and they had supply issues too. I agree with hundreds of thousands, but likely not millions. In my humble opinion.

Also, if the defect rate is 5%, we likely wouldn't see 50k unhappy customers on this thread since most of them would be resolved with a single replacement, as you've pointed out.

Agreed it's not 50%. What's your guess at the defect rate?

I guess I should correct my numbers a little.

The 74% increase in Mac sales is not for Apple overall, but strictly the iMac. The new models alone increased in sales by that percentage over the previous quarter, and that was by Dec 18th, which would only include about the first six weeks sales of the new models.

Laptop sales increased by 5% during the same period.

Although the article does not contain exact numbers, just percentages, it is impressive, to put it mildly.

http://www.pbcentral.com/news/viewnews.cgi?id=EkyEEVFAyZSYXxoabP

I have personally had 2 flickering machines, the first also had yellow in it. The third machine was on the shelf at best buy, it had bad yellow in it also, so out of the 4 or 5 I have had my hands on 3 were defective.

The iMac is traditionally the third best selling product in Apples line. The MacAir leads the way, followed by the MacBook, the iMac, then the MacBook Pro, however, with the release of the new models, the iMac has dwarfed all of the others.

As more sales figures are released, it seems that a million units may be conservative.

As for your question...."what are the odds that decide to buy an iMac, but then need to replace it three times before I get a working unit?"

I don't know about you, but if it's me doing the buying, my odds are still less than 50-50.

I would suspect that Apple's actual defect rate is less than 1% on varying issues, when you add that to the defect rate of the yellow tinge, and flickering, it well could be 2%, far higher than Apple would deem acceptable.

1% is extremely unacceptable to those who are a member of that 1% club, and that 1% will make more noise than the other, satisfied 99% by a factor of......who knows......