If you've got a 27-inch iMac that you bought between December of 2012 and September of 2013, go check out whether Apple wants it back. As
MacNN reported, Apple has a new replacement program running to fix hard drive problems in some unspecified number of those machines. Do it now: it doesn't matter if your warranty or AppleCare is finished but you must do it now because the program will not last. You'll need your Mac's serial number and you'll need to
head to this Apple support page. We did –– and right now, our precious iMac is off on a courier's van.
We're not sentimental, at least not publicly, but here's the Before picture.
We
really like that iMac.
That's one reason we want to cover this: when we first looked at Apple's news, it seemed that we might have to end up bringing our affected iMac into an Apple Store. We were remembering and regretting how good we were recycling the box that time, we were pondering the safest way to transport it, we were secretly wondering whether to bother.
We want you to bother. It's important.
It's potentially very important to us because our 27-inch iMac has had some peculiar problems:
MacNN managing editor Mike Wuerthele said immediately that it was a hard disk problem but nothing we then ran on the Mac could prove it. Disk Utility hummed away happily, every third-party app we could think of said well, the screen could do with a bit of a clean but otherwise it's all working.
Yet we did have these strange and exasperating slow downs that sounded like they must be disk-related. Now, we're not that stupid: if your Mac is going wrong and Apple offers to fix what could well be the key issue, you say Yes. However, we'd sort-of solved it ourselves: we upgrade it from 8GB of RAM to 24GB and most of the time the iMac now sings. We could live with that. Except it's foolish to ignore problems, no matter how you've reduced them. Plus, we were also just curious.
Curious to see how Apple is doing this replacement program, curious to find out why it's going on and how many people are affected. Then also, we'll admit this, curious to see how we'd cope without our iMac. At this moment, we're coming to terms with it have just left our office and how fortunately nobody saw us wave it off.
We're unlikely to get the details of how many people or exactly why this is happening: the official word from Apple is just that some number of 3TB hard drives have a problem that means they may fail. All drives fail eventually: it is a very good thing that Apple is doing, it is something that surely few other firms would.
What we can tell you is what you do, what Apple does, and what happens when in the process.
Get your iMac's serial number: you'll find it here when you choose About this Mac from the Apple menu:
The serial number is on the last line of all that text: you can select and copy it. Note that the lines above it say we've got only 8Gb of RAM. There's a reason. For now, you take that serial number and you
head to Apple's website.
Notice that the text on the site says Apple is emailing people who are affected with the issue: we've not had such an email, at least not yet, and our iMac definitely is affected. We know this because we pasted our serial number into that box and clicked Submit. We know our iMac is affected because Apple says so.
It then also says we have several options but really they boil down to two: get Apple to fix this or get some Apple-approved place to fix it. We chose Apple as there are no companies near us that reliably repair Mac gear under Apple's auspices.
If your iMac is one affected by all this, you click through to an Apple support page that is the same as the regular Genius Bar. Where you'd normally type in your question, though, the 3TB replacement program is already entered for you and what you're doing next is arranging for someone from Apple to call you. Just as with Genius Bar appointments, they give you a range of approximate time slots to pick one. The earliest available to us was 14:00 on that day so we clicked there, entered a phone number and at 14:04, Apple rang.
We did have to go through another check of our iMac but that was really just our waiting while the Apple guy sounded as if he were copying and pasting our serial number into the same website. Whatever he had to do, he did it quickly and we were into the important part. That wasn't the issue of collecting or repairing the iMac, to Apple the important part was this: "Do you have a current backup?"
They were stringent about this and when we began to say no, we could feel a six-hour lecture coming on. However, we continued with the words "but a backup is being done right now" and we swear there was a relief sigh on the phone. The Apple guy went through some formalities and nicely, professionally but quite thoroughly dodging any question whose answer would commit Apple to a quick turnaround. Then he was arranging for a courier to phone me. "Do you have the box?" he asked. "And have you got a current backup?"
The call took six minutes and the Apple guy rang off promising that a courier would phone me shortly. It was another six minutes before they did. That call took two minutes and involved the obvious checking of details plus "have you got a current backup?". it is great that they press on this issue, it's so hugely important but we again were able to say one was being done as we spoke.
For some reason the courier couldn't give even an approximate time for collection, just a day. It was today. We worked on the Mac for a few hours and then around 10am, shut it down. We shut it down, we undid the
Mobee Magic Hub clamped to the back, we pulled out the Apple DVD drive we added months ago and never get around to using. We also opened up the flap at the back and removed the RAM we'd added. That's why our serial number screen grab says we're down to 8Gb RAM.
Doubtlessly we could've left that in there but mistakes happen and damage occurs in transport all the time. We were explicitly told that we had to put the iMac into the courier's box ourselves, the courier could not do it because the firm isn't insured until the machine is in their box. We're entirely happy that if anything goes wrong, it will be replaced or repaired, but we've seen issues before where a firm will only replace its own products. That's quite reasonable, we'd do the same thing, but we didn't get that RAM from Apple and we don't want to be out for the cost of buying more just because of a snag along the way.
We grant you, that is the single most boring photograph ever published on MacNN but this cardboard box means a lot to us. We put the iMac into that though once it was sitting in there, we then worked with him to get all the protective polystyrene around it. It was a bit of a puzzle: picture Jenga and Rubik's Cube working together and you can both see what it was like plus picture our pleasure at working it out correctly. Funny we should say 'picture', though, as when the courier then got out paperwork for us all to sign, he and we found that the paperwork included a sheet of instructions for re-packing the iMac – with photographs. We actually guffawed.
It may just have been humor borne of very deep sorrow: the iMac was then driven away. Depending on who you ask, it's going to be gone for either three or seven business days and we'll tell you how the return goes. You can somewhat work it out: unless there's been some almighty problem, we're going to be saying that it came back, we signed more paperwork, we got on with our work. Yet it's not as if we can stop work while we wait for Apple to do its doings.
The fact that Apple is doing this and doing it for free is excellent but we are still out a Mac for at least a week and have to carry on. Next time we'll also look at what it's like having to go from a 27in late 2012 iMac to an ancient 2008 MacBook Pro which has a broken keyboard. One peek ahead: half an hour into using it, we are suddenly finding the appeal of fullscreen apps.
-William Gallagher (
@WGallagher)
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