Q: OSX Lion + 2011 iMac 27'' + Video = Freeze

Ditto to your comments jmarchalonis! As they are censoring everything I right now, this is ridiculous!

On a good note, my Mac Mini seems to be running nicely with my Apple Display and I am impressed with how well the Mini works, but I miss the power of my iMac for using Final Cut Pro and rendering.

If they would like to credit me for a full blown Mac Pro to replace my now unusable iMac, I'll take it.  Otherwise, they better fix the problem ASAP.

joeygillis: Well Apple Care is excellent, and if they can not fix the issue and or repair it correctly they will give you a instore credit. They finally gave me one, and I was quite happy, my only gripe was not having the confidence to buy another iMac right now.

@Gandalf the Grey send me an email incase i get ban again, that way i have a way to reach you in case i do decide to get something going off site. Just use my username and add me.com to it.

I would try using a mac mini, but it just isn't powerful egnough for me. Plus, i don't have a spare moniter to use on it. My Macbook Pro Late 2008 has Lion and doesn't have any issues, but the d a m n battery swelled up and Apple refused to replace it, so i don't have a battery.

@Gandalf the Grey just took a look at the Mac Minis, the problem is the ram on them... 8GB max just won't cut it for me... Mac Pros are way too much and its kinda barebone compared to the top of line iMac at the same cost. I am right there with you with no having any confidence in getting a new Mac. I need to think long about that one before i go and do it.

@2rodee I believe the top-left of the 2008 iMac was a fan, which also give credance to the over heating theory. For what it's worth, it was the same on the Mid-2011 iMacs, case was hot to touch on top left and fan was extremely loud. Go to http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iMac-Intel-27-Inch-Teardown/1236/2. You will see that it is a fan i belive if you read the teardown.

And no, i am not kidding, we are being censored and having posts removed. It is getting rediculous when all you are trying to do is help others and add in advice on what you think could be done to solve these issues.

You know what is getting me the most angry:

I spent a lot of money to have my iMac custom built in 2007.  I had 1TB of memory put in (the max at the time I believe), as well as a higher speed processor and maxed out my RAM.

I did this because Macs are supposedly excellent products that last a long time, and since iMacs aren't very upgradable, I wanted to have something that I could use for a long time.

My iMac is in pristine condition, so the thought that I should get rid of it is absolutely ludicrous to me.  If it was not compatible with Lion, Apple should've just said so.  A simple system check could have prevented this if that is indeed the problem.  Of course- if not everyone can upgrade to Lion then you also need to keep support for at least Snow Leopard, and third party programs should as well.

For the price we pay for an Apple machine, it should not become outdated within a year or two like the iPods or iPhones or whatever else.  There's NO reason why my iMac shouldn't be able to function today.  I haven't even used half the hard drive, and that's with Parallels installed, as well as Snow Leopard (which I installed to try and work around this problem).  If Apple is going to make products that degrade that quickly with time, they need to price them like Dells so we can replace them as quickly as they expire.

jmarchalonis: The new Mac Mini will run on 16gig of memory, I am using one right now with 16gigs. I was using Mac Pros for years but it was overkill for what I was doing. Hence I switched over to a decked out iMac which I loved but now my confidence is gone.

I am using the Mac Mini 2.7 GHz Intel Core i7

16GB 1333 Mhz of DDR3 memory

Graphics AMD Radeon HD 6630 256 MB

256 HD Flash Memory Main Drive

750 HD Second Drive.

Very impressed with the preformance of this little machine.

Of course I miss the DDR5 2Gig memory of my previous iMac

and the i7 Quad Core.

I wish they made the Mac Mini i7 Quad Core with a better graphics card as that

is what I wanted but there isn't an option for that on the Server version.

Regardless this thing is a screaming stop gap computer for me!

Thank you for the link - I'll check into that.  Just moving from Leopard to Snow Leopard made my graphics go haywire (spotty)  Then the machine would get extremely hot..  I'd attempt to go to disk utility and the minute I touched the toolbar (along the bottom..)  the freeze would hit.

I had already tried the pram, permissions etc.. zip, nada.

My extra RAM arrived (trying everything..)  What I'll do is install that, then try to boot up on the clone of Snow Leopard and see what happens.  Someone mentioned that might be a cause back a few pages.. 

I'll report back.

I really hate to hear about the censoring..  Apple can thank themselves for putting us ALL in such a tough spot to begin with.  I too, am trying to run a business... and have been "winging it" since the end of November.  Just wait until the CPA needs my reports.  ugh..

thank you again for the tip!

2rodee@g*ail.com  (in case my @me gets censored too.)

< Email Edited By Host >

@Gandalf the Grey did you do the memory update yourself? on site it claims only 8GB and i am pretty sure the Mini isn't user-serviceable but i could be wrong on that one. 16Gb is great thought. The i7 is only 2.7? wonder why they didn't give it the 3.4GHz i7?  The rest is great except for the GPU as you mentioned, i wish it was at least 512MB if not 1GB minimum. I just feel, it would chugg through video editing and graphic intense processes. Thats what worries me about the Mini, otherwise, i would go and buy one today haha.

Thank You for your reply. It sounds to me that your Mac Mini is a great machine.16GB of Memory is great. I wish you luck with it!

@2rodee if you need to reach me and like you said, for any reason things start acting up with @me... you can reach me at jmarchalonis*stromnex*com

Try installing this application on it... http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/magicanpaster/id427378978?mt=12. I have one that cost $4.99 but this one is free and should serve the pourpse. Post back the tempatures, memory usage and cpu levels. Do this first, before proceeding.

It won't be the ram, i posted a few post back saying the sympthems of faulty ram. The freezes wouldn't result from it; especially if the cursor is still moveable, meaning finder is just unresponsible (open windows, toolbar, application bar). Go ahead and proceed with the clone though. I have had progess when i created a bootable clone of lion from the iMac and booted from external. It still froze, but not as offen; perhaps twice in a weeks time. I am not sure what this means, perhaps there are some faulty Hard Drives in the iMacs in addition to the other issues. I was told, Apple is using Seagate hard drives, but i haven't heard anything about a recall or anything since the bad run in 2009.

jmarchalonis:  With the combo of the Thunderbolt display and the DDR5 video memory it does a very good job and with the combination of using a SSD drive speeds things up as well. Can I open up 20 videos all at one with this machine like I use to be able to with my decked out iMac, yes but not nearly as well. This machine is more of a stop gap for now, but a very impressive one, I still would rather have my decked out iMac or a new Mac Pro. What makes it fast is the combo SSD drive/Thunderbolt display and faster video memory, of course I wish I had more than 1gig of video memory!

Ben: So far so good on the machine running 16gigs. If this unit had the i7 Quad Core I would be very content for some time, but for some reason Apple chooses to use the less expensive graphics card in there server model for now.

If it is not overheating with Lion and the Graphics are good I feel it will be OK. Which Graphics Card did they supply you with on the Mini? Is it an ATI 6740 or 6750?

Ben,

Here are the specs: But the non server model comes with the AMD 6630 using DDR5 memory combined with the i7 dual core/SSD Drive and Thunderbolt display makes this unit a good pocket rocket. But like I said for now a stop gap, because the decked out iMac I had was the most you could add onto a iMac for the money, and that unit screamed when it was working right! But freezes and hardware issues killed my dream machine for now, so I settled for this pocket rocket. Runs around 92F to 145F depending on what I am doing, but I tend to use SMC fan control.

http://www.apple.com/macmini/features.html