[yongfook]

I've been a happy mac user (ibook 600 -> Powerbook 15" Al) for a few years now but my recent experience with a brand new iMac 20" 2.0ghz has left me with a sour taste in my mouth. I know I've just been unlucky, but I guess I just need to vent.

My beautiful iMac worked ok for the first week. I say "ok" because really, the performance was not outstanding. Granted, I was running on the standard RAM, but honestly, Tiger was crawling. If iPhoto was open (I have some 10'000 photos) I would enjoy a lovely 5 to 10 second lag before ANY GUI element on screen responded, be it in iPhoto itself or Finder or whatever. That was really unacceptable, I felt. iPhoto took about a full minute to close after choosing quit, and some other applications felt equally sluggish. Is this what the user experience is like on stock RAM? On thing I was wondering - I'm pretty sure my Powerbook HD is massively fragmented and messed up due to my latent obsession with downloading and erasing huge amounts of data from *cough* bittorrent *cough* now and again. When I bought my iMac I cloned the powerbook using the "copy from old mac" start up wizard. Would it copy the data EXACTLY? I.e. all fragmented? Or would it go into the iMac "fresh"? I'm just wondering if that could have contributed to the sluggishness...because honestly I really want to believe that the user experience I got out-of-the-box was NOT normal for the G5 iMac. I checked Activity Monitor - CPU and Memory seemed to be normal. Spotlight was not indexing. It was just running like a dog for no apparent reason.

ANYWAY

So yesterday I decide to try and remedy it by going out to buy a 1GB RAM stick from my local mac store. I had left the computer at home switched on, downloading stuff.

I get back and it had gone to sleep. "odd", I thought, since I distinctly remember setting the Energy Saver preferences to "never" sleep for the time I was out. Oh well.

I pressed a button to wake it up. Bzzzt, everything fired up correctly but oops - no image on screen. I could hear the volume go up and down if I hit the volume keys, so everything was working properly...I just couldn't see it.

Instantly I thought of the "wake from sleep" bug that plagues some macs so I just shut down and restarted. Nothing. The computer goes through the motions and the backlight of the LCD turns on, but there is nothing but black....

I turn to my powerbook and look up what to do on the Apple support pages. I go through the motions and find that wahey! My screen is most likely dead. Applecare are coming to pick it up on Thursday for repair.

What kind of quality control lets a computer like that get into the hands of a consumer? One that works for a week then dies? Was I just a freak incident or has this happened on a larger scale?

I can't say my experience with the G5 iMac has been a great one so far. Sure, it's a beautiful object of ultimate desire, but the performance was seriously choppy and now my display has died. Apple, please pull those socks up.

[johnzoidberg]

Sorry to hear what happened. I guess it's a combination of bad luck and Apple's awful quality control of the last few years (i.e. "the commodity years" because to the iPod's success).

I seem to remember that you've also had trouble with your iBook too a couple of years ago. I remember this when you also posted on MacDebate back then.

[yongfook]

Amazing that you would remember! That must be about 3 years ago now. My first mac, an iBook 600 had near-perpetual problems with the screen. It was one of those models with the very sticky, cracking hinge and as such the screen was under constant stress when closing/opening the thing. Eventually the screen just gave up. Apple repaired it though.

I have to give it to Apple on their after-sales service however, they really are very good.

[Ozzpot]

My comments:

• The standard RAM Apple supply with all their machines is better than it was, but still woefully inadequate.
• Apple's standards are slipping a little in an effort to be competitive on price in order to gain market share unfortunately.
• You have been very very unlucky in your Mac life. I hope you're not cursed, and I hope it does not turn you to the dark side. I'm sure you've had your fair share of bad luck by now. I hope things get better.

[johnzoidberg]

My iBook 500 had the exact same problem with the hinge, actually. I eventually moved to a 12-inch PowerBook, and just recently got a 17-inch iMac.

AppleCare is indeed really good, if only they would put in the same amount of resources when manufacturing their machines, too...

[Ozzpot]

The only problem I have had with a Mac (and my only experience of AppleCare) was in 2001 when my iMacDV 400 was struck by lightning. A direct hit on the phone line immediately outside my bedroom blew me 10 feet across the room, fragged my phone socket, made an extremely loud bang and fried the modem in my iMac. Applecare sent someone out 2 days later to relace the modem, and I have not had a problem since. Not with that iMac, not with my iBookG4 (which has had a pretty tough life) or with my RevB iMacG5 17" 2.0. My RevA iMac at work has had no problems either. In fact, I have not even seen a Mac crash since the days of Jaguar, and I use Macs practically every waking moment - at home, at college and at work. I also have a 2nd Gen iPod that is still working fine.

Some people are so unlucky...

[Sparkletron]

You mentioned 10,000 pics? The Mac OS X GUI has problems dealing with 10,000 of anything. The underlying UNIX has no problem but I believe the GUI Finder is still single threaded.

-S

[yongfook]

in iPhoto. I thought iPhoto was rated up to 25'000 now?

[dru]

Originally Posted by yongfook

in iPhoto. I thought iPhoto was rated up to 25'000 now?

Well, I'll tell you this much... if you have iPhoto 5.x (iLife 05) you don't want TIFF images in your library. It'll grind iPhoto to a hault because they are corrupted on import. You just have to delete them. Even one is enough to do it. I don't know WHY because the photos were fine in iPhoto 2; caused no problems.

No one should use "standard RAM" and any experienced Mac user ought to know better.

Did you remove the RAM you bought and see if the screen can work now; I don't see that mentioned?

Frankly it sounds like you're cursed or a troll.

[yongfook]

a troll? send me an email at [email protected] and I'd be glad to discuss that with you.

you'll be able to see from the fact that I have put my site up for everyone to see which has blog entries from the last 3 years detailing (amongst other things) my mac life, that I'm not a troll at all.

And yes, I tried taking the RAM out. The screen is just dead. Apple have already confirmed this.

Thanks for your input.

[johnzoidberg]

I can vouch for yongfook. He's not a troll.

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by johnzoidberg

I can vouch for yongfook. He's not a troll.

His name made me *lawl* though...

-t

[greenG4]

My family has had 12 Apple computers over the years and all of them have worked great for MANY years. I have never had any service on any of them. We must remember, however, that the more complicated something gets (anything, not just a computer), the possibiliy for something to go wrong. My dad's Apple IIGS still works great (even had the 10MHz upgrade card) after God knows how many years. This is why there is a warranty. At least you get it fixed.

[SSharon]

I can't really offer any help, but sorry to hear about the dead imac screen. If it's any consolation consider the fact that it may have been inspected and perfect upon leaving the manufacturing location and then some tiny little bit got knocked loose in its multi-thousand mile journey to your residence. Is it a longshot? Maybe. But I have heard of cars that get saltwater damage in transport and considering the crushed corners I often see on new Mac boxes it's really not that unlikely for it to work for a week and then die.

Also, every Mac user knows that the stock ram is not enough, hopefully more will help your GUI experience.

[yongfook]

well good news and bad news.

I got my iMac back today. Display is working fine. I put in the extra gig of RAM and wow, did that make a difference! iPhoto is usable once more, and my computer doesn't grind to a halt if I'm trying to do more than 3 things at once. I guess the rule of thumb must be that if you have a crapload of photos, you MUST have more than the standard RAM if you want to be able to actually move them around etc.

So I'm very happy.

BUT

My iMac has developed a new idiosyncrasy in repair! Periodically, I will hear a metallic "clunk" sound coming from the back. Sounds like it might be related to the fan? Does anyone hear this sound too?

I AM CURSED.

[johnzoidberg]

Clunk?

Every now and then, my iMac makes a weird popping or creaking sound when I'm using the machine, which I'm almost certain is due to the plastic case of the iMac expanding when it warms up or contracting when I'm not. What does the clunk sound like? Any distinct qualities?

[rwhiffen]

There isn't much to clunk in the fans.... That sounds more like the hard drive heads. Any chance it sounds like a metalic clunk? Also do you have the power saving settings set for turning off the HD? Some drives make a 'clunk' when they park the heads...

Here's two links about HD noises....
http://www.pcguide.com/ts/x/comp/hdd...lunking-c.html
http://www.ehmac.ca/archive/index.php/t-2486.html

I'd be diligent about backup up data until you know for sure where it's coming from....

Cheers,

Rich

[jon l. dawson]

Yeah, a clunk definitely sounds hard drive related. I'd be really careful, any unusual noises tend to be a sign that it's about to fail, but it may also be a normal power down of the hd after inactivity. I'd suggest getting a utility to do a full scan of the drive. (The free command line utilites 'smartmontools' are really useful on Windows and Linux-- I'm not sure if there's a port for OS X)

[yongfook]

oh

my

god.

Do I feel stupid. I seriously thought it was a metallic clunking sound coming from the back. Do you know what it was? It was some weird GUI event sound effect for whenever I drag/dropped a file somewhere. doh!

I swear that wasn't on when I sent it off to Apple - I hate gui sound effects!

Anyway, switched it off in system prefs and now and everything is fine.

Thanks for your help everyone!

[johnzoidberg]

Wow, those built-in speakers must be better than I thought...

It's good that everything's alright now...

[rwhiffen]

I'd take a little internet egg on my face over a failed hard drive any day.

cheers,

Rich