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

I took my 27" Mac to the Apple store over the weekend.  They said it was a video card problem and would replace it for free as it is still under warranty.  If not fixed, they would replace the hard drive.  I've had the freeze problem for a couple of weeks, but got worsts with Lion.  I told them of the numerous posts on this community board.  They claim that you all didn't  know what you were  talking about.  Apparently Apple hasn't sent anything the problem.  With my taking the Mac for repair, I extend my warranty which was due to end next month.  At least I have the IPad.

I understand the fury of people but the better is to be patient. Apple released in the next weeks a update for solve this issue, now apple released update for driver print, seem that the prepare to release a big update.

That's why I'm returning my iMac that I can barely use and wait on Apple to fix things.  It might take days, weeks, or maybe months.  Who knows.

If your problem occured prior to Lion, I suspect you have a genuine hardware issue.  I did not experience any such problems with any version of Snow Leopard and that seems to be same behaviour repeated by most owners who report this issue - it is new to Lion.

The staff member at the Apple store is clearly misinformed.  This is a demonstrable, easy-to-replicate issue and one that I feel merits significantly better communication from Apple, especially from their client-facing store staff.  However, just because his paymasters at Apple haven't seen fit to communicate the details of an evolving and technical issue to it's store staff doesn't mean it's Engineering team are not working on it right now.

As an aside, Apple can't hide all corporate communication behind the same veil of secrecy as they do with product releases.  People have spent money on this hardware and deserve a modicum of respect.

To make a positive impact, I've posted a bug report at http://bugreport.apple.com and I suggest everyone suffering this issue does too.

In the meantime, I've set the "Computer sleep" slider to "Never" in Energy Saver preferences and will refrain from manually setting the machine to Sleep.  This will not change until Apple issue a fix, or I downgrade to Snow Leopard and am refunded the money for Lion.

My guess is within days. It's a major bug.

I am not a developer so I can't post a bug report.

Unfortunately for me, my iMac came with Lion so I don't know if it's Lion or the iMac.  I also turned off sleep but still have issues playing videos.  Does Apple make you pay return shipping?

No the HP Printers are not working fine.

Since the upgrade to Lion, the scan to folder doesn't work on my 8500A plus. Try setting up a scan folder (SMB), its impossible and HP say it will not work.

I have been in contact with HP, they are working on the update as we speak to get it fully compatible. This was working in SL.

I do not want to gloat and please do not see it as such but I have a 27 " iMac i7 with 12Gb, SSD and 2TB HHD although Mid 2010 and it doesn't seem to be freezing the same as the new ones for some reason.

I cannot for the life of me understand why Apple are being so quiet on the subjet, surely they are aware how this is affecting people.

You don't need any special Developer account to post a bug report (I posted, and don't have such an account).

The form you need to complete isn't especially user friendly (odd for Apple, almost if they don't want people to post!) but you should be able to find your way around it.

I don't know if they even monitor the bug reports but at least I've done the right thing.

I've only had the problem twice and that was a long time ago. I no longer press the power button to sleep nor do I explictly choose the Sleep option from the menu bar. I just turn off the display with the keyboard shortcut. Whether or not the iMac actually goes to sleep after a period of time (I have it set to go to sleep after 2 hours of non use), I don't know. Disadvantage of a non sleeping computer is that it wastes power.

I think it's reasonable that people are returning their computers if it doesn't work for them. However, a working iMac is a great investment. In my opinion, much better than any desktop computer alternative out there. Honestly, I wouldn't expect the time for a company to fix a major bug to be any faster than Apple. My problem with Apple at the moment is that they are not acknowledging the issue. The issue is obviously quite serious and is being experienced by a lot of people.

I think Apple has a tendency to not acknowledge technical issues because it puts a huge dent in their reputation for making products that just work. As a long time Mac user, it's quite absurd. Someone should email the "great" Steve Jobs himself. Should be amusing to see an actual response.

Given this problem and the other bugs in Lion, it's a given that Apple will be releasing updates very soon. I've read something about the 10.7.2 update floating around the dev circles. It doesn't help that plenty of Mac OS applications are breaking because of the new OS too. Personally, I think this OS release is worst than Microsoft's release of Windows 7. I use both and thought that the Windows 7 OS launch was an example of a great OS release (20 minute install was awesome). Maybe it's karma for Apple's ruthless attacks on Vista.

I think the reason that a 2010 model works and a 2011 model does not is simply down to the different graphics card in those models.

The 2011 model iMac, with its Radeon 6770M graphics card clearly has a compatibility problem with Lion.  The graphics card drivers likely don't recover correctly after a Sleep/Wake event.  Attempting to play any video content after such an event results in an unrecoverable system hang.  Apple need to issue an updated graphics card driver for this hardware.

There we go, I just communicated the issue in a short snappy sentence.  Apple need to give me a job.

I highly recommend this as well.

Defintely related to the sleep mode. I wanted to try what happened in Google chrome 13.

Did just a fresh restart and all movies played fine. Tried playing several movies from different sources, next I tried it again after my system went to sleepmode. First movie freezed my system.

So restarted my system works now fine, but I bet what happens again when the system have been in sleep mode.

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Add me to the list of users this is impacting.