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

Dino......

You might be interested to know that the 21.5" models were the #1 selling desktop in the US in October.

The 27"ers weren't available yet, and the total numbers aren't in for November and December.

pazuita wrote:
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.

How so? A 74% increase in iMac sales still doesn't give us a raw number. Hey, maybe they sold 100 iMacs in Q3, and sold 174 in Q4 - that's a 74% increase. But I haven't fully done my algebra on the released numbers; if you think there's enough info there to derive total sales as being over a million, let's see your work!

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 should hope it's less than 1 in 2! That would be one incredibly faulty computer.

Just like flipping a coin ten times - the odds are pretty astronomical that you'd get 10 heads in a row.

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.

I could get on board with 2%.

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......

Noise, schmoise - we know there are enough anecdotal reports to safely assume the failure rate is above 1%.

Also - the Macbook Air is the best selling product in Apple's lineup? Do you mean Mac Mini?

Some of those numbers, you have already posted yourself, and they are available all over the web.

In q3 09, Apple sold 3.5 million units.....

Even if you want to take those numbers extremely conservatively, 500,000 iMacs would be on the low end since they represent the third best seller in that group.

Add in the increases in sales of the new models, easily 750,000, possibly a lot more since for a large portion of that time, the i5's and i7's weren't even available yet.

Hundreds of units is simply ridiculous.

A million new models sold might be stretching it a little, but not by much.

"Also - the Macbook Air is the best selling product in Apple's lineup? Do you mean Mac Mini?"

No

As I stated..... "The MacAir leads the way, followed by the MacBook, the iMac, then the MacBook Pro"

The Mac Mini is farther down the list.

Apple's press release says they sold 3.05 million units in the most recent quarter, not 3.5. (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/10/19results.html)

Not sure how 500k is on the low end - we don't know the distribution of their sales, e.g. maybe it's 1.5 million Mac Minis, 1 million Macbooks, 200k iMacs, 200k Macbook Pros, 100k Mac Pros. Plus, not all iMacs are 27 inches.

Sorry dude - don't mean to press you too hard on this stuff - I just don't think we've yet had much hard evidence to be able to derive actual sales, let alone say they're high. We can wave our hands and guess, but even under that method nothing yet reasonably says it's over a million.

pazuita wrote:
"Also - the Macbook Air is the best selling product in Apple's lineup? Do you mean Mac Mini?"

No

As I stated..... "The MacAir leads the way, followed by the MacBook, the iMac, then the MacBook Pro"

The Mac Mini is farther down the list.

That seems hard to believe. The MacBook Air is a very niche, expensive laptop. I don't think it'd sell more than a $999 laptop. Past media reports seem to agree:

http://www.slashgear.com/macbook-air-sales-dropping-fast-1310243/

Where are you getting your list from?

You can stick with your "hundreds" if you like, we will soon know. Apple traditionally releases it's 4q sales figures in the second half of January, which is approaching.

I'll stick with my expectations of hundreds of thousands, and possibly, and optimistically million.

A few more weeks, and we should know for sure.

But for now, we should really try and stay on topic.

I guess I copied and pasted from the wrong article, without checking the date. High sales of the MacAir was a brief thing.

After it's release, the MacAir did outsell all of Apples other models, but dropped off of the list not long afterward.

That would bump the iMac up a notch to the second largest share of that 3 million plus machines, just behind the MacBook, and just ahead of the MacBook Pro. The positions do change slightly, month to month, but over time, that is the way they balance out.

http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/03/03/air-outsells-macbook-imac -pro-sold-out-in-boston-ny-sf-says-report/

Brian and Pazuita: You guys need to get out more.

We're all here on

Jan 13 2010 ...
5:00 PM ... GMT
(= 11:00 AM ... US Central Time)

GOOD MORNING AMERICA ... and of course GOOD MORNING WORLD


Dear Apple-Techs,

please don't forget us. We would like to have some answers, even if we're just 77 customers. We know you can survive without us, but maybe we're important enough for you, that you give us 5 or 7 answers.

Thank you

Yes, I thought I read that somewhere. Thanks!

Very funny HiFiRobbie. All this crunching of numbers gives me a headache! Bottom line is: There's a problem. There are too many defective units out there. Get them off the shelves. And also get the defective parts off the shelves. If a person gets more than one defective unit, something is drastically wrong. Period. All the number crunching in the world is not going to prove to me, that this is just a very small problem. I look at it like most people. If it affects me, it's a big problem. $1200. -$3000. is a lot of money to some people. You buy Apple, because you want Quality. When you don't get Quality, once again, something is drastically wrong. If this has affected 500 People, that is too many. Supervise these products being built and run some tests on them. Yea it costs Money to do that. But they have the money. Let's stop making excuses for a corporation, even if it is our favorite one. If we let Apple get away with this, their quality will continue to go down. It's a major problem for people to be exchanging product after product. Not everyone has an Apple Store down the block. I don't have one for 300 Miles. This was my big Christmas Present, so it put a damper on my Christmas. I will always remember Christmas 2009 as the defective iMac Christmas! No use in anyone trying to change my mind. I'm a stubborn Italian from New York. It ain't gonna' happen! This forum alone has made me see what's going on & I don't like what I'm seeing or hearing.

HiFiRobbie wrote:
.....
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.
.....

HiFiRobbie - I think you are dead on with this observation. This is good news if it's indeed the case, as it may indicate Apple is trying to correct the problem at it's source (ie. production).

Hi all,
I thought I was in the clear as I have been operating my new iMac since early November without incident, but last night I experienced this flicker issue for the first time after 2-3 hours of gaming. Now I am on the fence as to what I should do next...I have Applecare and made my customized purchase online. My closest Applestore is like 50 miles away.

I guess I should make a formal complaint and go from there?

I will take some time to read this thread to see what different people have done and with what results, but any recommendations are welcomed.