“Widespread anecdotes, including those of MacNN’s own staff, indicate that many owners of Apple’s new aluminum iMacs are experiencing severe interface lockups,” MacNN reports.
“Multiple discussion threads in Apple’s own support forums suggest that many iMacs are occasionally ceasing to accept input, despite programs and Mac OS X itself continuing to run in the background. Some users are reporting that cursors and some keyboard commands may remain functional, but that interaction is extremely limited. In all cases, the only firm solution has been a manual reboot,” MacNN reports.
“Users who have spoken with Apple technical support say that the company is aware of the issue, and that the problem has been narrowed to the ATI Radeon HD cards that power the new iMacs’ graphics,” MacNN reports.
More in the full article here.
I don’t have one, but that’s not happening to me!
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Sounds like a bunch of FUD. The new iMac is Just Gorgeous!!!
I’d still buy one today even if it doesn’t work at all… Goooo Steve!!! Wooooo Hoooo!!
No freezes on my Aluminum iMac in the past week.
2.4 Ghz, 20″.
I had this happen to me once a couple of days ago on my MacBook Pro 15″ 2.33GHz. Wonder if it’s maybe related to the new firmware update that came out last weekend? In my case, I could move the mouse, but not click on anything and the keyboard wasn’t responding. Had to force shut down.
If there is an issue, I hope Apple can resolve it via a firmware or software update. I use my MBP for 8-10 hours every day and it’s only happened once to me, so I can’t say it’s even intermittent, since it could very well be a one time thing for me. Didn’t think much of it until I read this report and noticed the similarity in symptoms. Could be unrelated.
Nothing out of the ordinary here. A bad batch of components (built too close to tolerances), a manufacturer that acknowledges the issue, narrows it down to the particular component and, I’m sure soon to follow, deliver a solution to those affected. It seems to me that this is fairly standard and not unheard of. After all, it is still only ATI (assuming the diagnosis is correct), which is kind of beyond Apple’s quality control.
I haven’t got one either, but it’s happening to me!
My 2.4 GHZ – 20″ iMac froze 3 times yesterday, which required a hard shutdown each time. One time, one area of the display was pixellated.
Actually, my G5 Quad lost it’s keyboard yesterday. Yet the mouse, plugged through the keyboard, continued to work fine. After doing Final Cut and Photoshop all day, a restart seemed in order anyway (to plug any possible memory leaks).
It’s Global Warming™ .
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No FUD. This is a real issue.
I experienced freezes using the iLife apps.
Solved it by deleting the iLife apps and doing an install from Install discs over the existing system.
No freezes since last week.
24″ 2.4 GHz Alu iMac is a beautiful machine. Came right in time to replace my 7 year old G3 iMac. I hope the next 7 years will be as happy.
I had this problem several times on my MacBook Pro (Core Duo 1.83 GHz). I think the problem is reasonably reproducible if you attach any external USB (like mouse) and leave it for a while.
It doesn’t happen all the time tho. So, not sure what’s causing the problem.
I’ve had my 2.8GHz 24″ iMac for a month….No problem here.
the same thing occasionally happens to me on my G5 which has an ATI Radeon card. I was wondering why that happens.
No problem here. 68030 Performa running 7.6
I just returned my new 24″ iMac because there was a “hotspot” on the upper side of the display! kind of a white glow!!
Anyone experienced that?
Had it happen a few times to my 24″.
It’s not just the iMac’s having the issue. My dual G5 has experienced the freeze even though iTunes will continue to run even as the rest of the OS becomes unusable.
I chalked it up to iTunes itself, or the fact that I have both a USB and Firewire drive plugged in. I really suspect iTunes.
I love how some people automatically assume FUD. Gimme a break. It’s a real problem. Apple will fix it soon I’m sure.
That’s why Apple should go with NVIDIA.
It’s not only the iMac…
It’s nearly the whole latest patch of Apple hardware that has taken a serious hit on quality.
1: Crooked and otherwise shoddy new iPod screens.
2: Mandating glossy screens, look attractive, but annoying reflections bother longterm users. A choice of matte or glossy would be better.
3: New iMac’s with LESS graphics performance than previous versions!!
It’s looking like Apple is getting shook down to buy:
1: A decent LCD maker
2: Manufacturing plants
3: Nvidia
Apple has always been vunerable to their suppliers.
Take for instance glossy screens, PC makers “decide” they are going to go even cheaper to sell more hardware, attempting to get to “disposable status” where they would make enormous profits.
So Apple now has to go along for the ride because the same manufactoring plants producing PC’s are producing Mac’s.
Apple’s stance on quality has been slipping considerably.
Also there seems to be less “thinking ahead” going on in regards to the iPhone, pricing, inventory and useability. The iPod Touch doesn’t allow “disk access”? WTF??
It’s like Apple is getting worse, it’s “cool” status wearing off, becoming too dominating and controling?
“You’ll take what we give you?” WTF???
I had a similiar scenario were the keyboard didn’t accept the commands or the mouse only made right clicks…
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Reason: we got the new wireless keyboard, the small one, set it up, but did not de-authorize the old wireless one nor switched it off.
And depending were the old laid around, stuff got thrown on top of it and keys were pressed… taaadaaaa
It’s happened to me “intermittently” on a Black MacBook. (Core2Duo.) It’s happened maybe 5 or 6 times over the past 6-8 months.
Only one freeze since I got my 24″ Al iMac. Oddly enough it happened yesterday. The mouse cursor still moved around, but everything was basically frozen. No keyboard input worked.
Had to reboot. No kernel panic on reboot or anything like that.
I have a 15″ Dual Core w/ATI Radeon X1600. It has happened to me on several occasions. (although not since I have rebuilt my machine with the latest beta, and stopped using MS products.
There I said it.
No freeze ups to report here. Had mine for about 2 months now. I keep it on 24 hours a day. It’s worked, dare I say…perfectly.
I have the 20″ – 2.4 Gigger. 1Gig ram.
I have not run any games on it. Photoshop works great.
I have a first generation 20-inch iMac Core Duo 2.0GHz. It has had random freezes as described by the current Core 2 Duo iMacs. Apples customer services has been unable to isolate why these random interface freezes occur. If anyone has had similar issues, please post here. Thanks.
Is this such a big deal??? It happens to windows PCs every hour!
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The only time my wife’s Al iMac has frozen – AFAIK – has been when I’ve run it out of memory while playing WoW. Why run it there, rather than on my dual G5? Well, my G5 is in my basement office while her Al iMac is upstairs … and her 20″ screen is much prettier – sharper, brighter, more colorful – than my 17″ LCD. But … when you use up the memory it is stone cold dead. Symptoms? I’ve been talking to Blizzard about this. WoW grabs a chunk of RAM, then keeps it. Won’t release it, even if I log out. Requires a restart to get it back. Higher level characters grab more than lower level characters and travel is hungry, as well.
Activity Monitor is your friend!
DLMeyer – the Voice of G.L.Horton’s Stage Page Pod Cast
Macintosh… It just works (sometimes)!
I have a 24″ 2.8 model and found that if I increase the all standard fan speeds I do not have any freezing issues. I use smcfancontrol.
SGreen – the first question is: did you have freezing issues prior to increasing fan speeds via smcfancontrol. If so, the second question is: when you now decrease fan speeds via smcfancontrol, do the freezes come back.
Y’all get smcfancontrol if SGreen answers Yes to both.
“It’s nearly the whole latest patch of Apple hardware that has taken a serious hit on quality.”
Impossible. They’re GORGEOUS!!! We can’t sell junk which is why you pay a little bit more for a BMW!!! Wooooo Hooooo Steve…. I’d pay $5000 for a NEW iMac today!!!! So what if it freezes up, it’s BEAUTIFUL and only uses high quality parts!!
See: it’s actually not an aluminum case, it’s cardboard painted with lead paint. It isn’t glossy glass either, it’s a new form of solid diethylene glycol; very tasty. And it’s not actually running Mac OS X, it’s running iPhone OS X.
She has the answer.
i got lots of freezing… every other day it seems. I feel like I’m back on a PC, except that on a PC, they let you know what the error is.
When you think about it… when a Mac freezes, requiring a hard-reboot, it’s like a BSOD, so this is a BIG issue.
M/w : issue. hilarity ensues.
FINALLY . . the story is breaking. I’ve been fighting this for the past 3 weeks. Ever since the aluminum iMac software update.
Prior to placing my order for the 24/2.8 I had been following this story with great interest and decided it is more than likely a driver issue that can be solved with a software update.
ATI/AMD has NOT acknowledged the problem even exists. In fact, MacNN reported “Users who have spoken with Apple technical support say that the company is aware of the issue…” is NOT true at all.
Anyone who has been following this issue in the Apple Discussion forums knows that those who have called Apple support have been told by Apple “this is the first we heard about it” and this is the prevailing response and not what MacNN is reporting!
Why hasn’t MacNN contacted Apple directly? If they did why not report what Apple said? Wouldn’t we be better served if MacNN pursued this story with great gusto from both sides? I appreciate the fact that MacNN has took this story public but it’s time for Pogue to take it to the next level.
You know Apple isn’t going to say anything about the matter but I would like to think that there are people behind the scenes working fast and furiously to 1) validate the problem, and 2) get out in front of it before it becomes a PR nightmare that could spoil the debut of Leopard.
In the meantime I hope to take delivery of my new iMac come Wednesday. When I start it up for the first time, I hope to be one of the lucky ones who will be unaffected by this fiasco.
People, people. Stop complaining about Apple’s decline in quality and focus on marketing and mindshare. Don’t you see, this is representative of the benefits of the Free Market™. Capitalism is good for everybody (with capital). Now bend over.
I can confirm what Combitron said. I’ve got two friends that purchased new iMacs a couple of weeks ago. One had this problem, the other didn’t. Fixed it the same way Combitron did, by deleting the iLife apps and reinstalling them from the install disks. It was the best solution found in the discussion boards.
I should say, that the specific culprit seems to be previous themes for iDVD and how they struggle to work with the suspect graphics card.
So when you delete the iLife apps, also delete all of the supporting files.
because of the glare, I can’t even determine if it is on…
Had my 24″ Alu Imac for 3 weeks. Lots of photo editing in iPhoto
So far, no freezes! Keeping my fingers crossed
I’m here. I have no answers. ;P
“Macintosh… It just works (sometimes)!”
Macintosh–It just works! Except when it doesn’t…
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These freezes are rather a “feature” of MacOS 10.4.10 than a hardware issue. I had the same freezes some time ago on my PowerBook 1,67 until I trashed /Library/Caches.
New graphics drivers in both the new imac and the new MBP are the likely culprits here.
Everyone else here with machines other than these, are very likely encountering completely different freezes.
ATTN Apple… ATi sucks… and has for some time
Their drivers suck, their cards suck.. and now they are AMD… so time to leave them in the dust…
NVidia here we come.
I have an x1600 in my imac.. and it occasionaly gets core image, and quartz errors
I have one of these. My new iMac is completely locked up — a cinder block if you will. But what the heck do I care. I’ll just buy a new one to go with the new iPhone I just got to replace my bricked iPhone.
I have a new iMac and have had occasional partial lockups requiring manual restarts. Maybe three times in the past two weeks.
I bought an ATi 2900XT for my PC. The drivers were so bad I took the card back and exchanged it for an nVidia 8800GTS 640. That works perfect!
My MacPro has the ATi 1900XT and seems to be okay…no probs in almost 2 years of use.
@Unhappy Camper
If you were anymore full of crap it would be oozing out on this page. Go back to your basement along with the other trolls!
TIme for a new Ad….
…Freeze PC… …Not this time…
Ending: Buy a PC, same performance, same problems, cheaper…
Can you imagine if there were news reports around the tech world every time a number of Windows users experienced a freeze? Makes me chuckle….
I’m glad to report no freezes at since I bought my new computer five months ago – a Lenovo running Windows XP. It just works.
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
This is typical behavior for all Macs!
The only solution is switching to a Vista PC, NOW!
How can this be? OSX cannot crash. Apple uses special high quality ATI chips. How can it be that these Macs are locking up?
Apple OFFICIALLY acknowledges there is a problem and promises a fix. Sit tight.
http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/10/04/imac/index.php
Apple just announced that if you brought an iMac that locks up, you should throw it away and buy another model.
has hapend to me a couple of times
alum imac 20 inch 2.4ghz Ati graphics
24″ 2.8gig iMac
2gig RAM
500GB HD
happens at least once a day…
Give me a free copy of Leopard and we’ll call it even
2nd iMac 2.8ghz 24″
I originally ordered the white 24″ iMac and in the process of shipping, etc. the system was “upgraded” to the aluminum, without my knowledge. I only found out after complaining about them setting back the ship date and was told that they were switching to the new versions.
My first iMac 2.8ghz 24″ had constant freezing problems and after a week and a 1/2 of too may PRAM suggestions, I sent it back for a replacement.
I’m on my 2nd iMac and it ‘s doing the same thing! It’s all over the map re. which program is running but since I mentioned Photoshop as one of theproducts on my last support call the response was: “Apple is not responsbile for any 3rd party software compatibility”. This supoprt person said he had not heard anything about the freezing problems.
From what I’ve read out” there” it there were a number of articles about a possible recall of a bacth of defective ATI Radeon 2600 cards: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/recall/-284931.php.
Then came the 1.1 update. One poster had the osx 1.1 update decoded and the entire update was for for the ATI card.
My original order was in July and now it’s October and I still don’t have a functioning system to be able to launch my graphic design business.
I was a convert from Windows and have been using a 12″ powerbook for 3 years without any problems and have sung Apple’s praises. My graphics needs grew beyond the little box, so I excitedly opted for a new iMac.
I’m stuck in the water – literally. I can get about 2 hours of workdone before I have to forcably shut down the machine. I’m not sure what to do (keeps me awake at night!). Apple has not been helpful at all. I think if they even ackowledged it, I would have som ehope about a resolution.
After having been on my 2nd machine with freezing problems, I definately suggest that people wait for some assurances about the efficacy of these machines from Apple before buying one of these new iMacs.
24″ 2.8ghz freezes up every other time my wife tries to run Iphoto. If I boot XP, It black screens on me.
Good times!
Would this have anything to do with it?
AMD SOFTWARE LET DEFECTIVE GRAPHICS CARDS SLIP INTO THE CHANNEL.
Monica Chen, Taipei; Joseph Tsai, DIGITIMES [Wednesday 1 August 2007]
AMD’s official graphics card diagnostic and validation software was recently discovered to have a bug that failed to detect defective ATI Radeon HD 2400 and 2600 graphics cards, according to sources at graphics card makers.
Channel vendors pointed out the problem with the cards was due to an error in the BIOS application process.
The issue was not only encountered by small makers, Asustek Computer, Micro-Star International (MSI) and Gigabyte Technology all experienced the problem too, noted the sources.
Although the problem can be easily solved by reapplying the BIOS, because AMD’s software did not detect the defect before shipping, the cards will now need to be returned to the makers to be restored. One first-tier maker has recalled over 20,000-30,000 units already, noted the sources.
It is believed that most of the defective cards are still in the channel or on their way back to the makers with only a small number of having already been purchased by consumers, noted the vendors.
AMD responded that Radeon HD 2400 and 2600 chips are throughly inspected before being shipped to graphics card makers. This was an isolated incident and measures were taken to solve the issue as soon as it was detected, the company said.
Digitimes.comNEWS