“Apple acknowledged on Thursday recent problems with its consumer iMac computer and promised a fix as soon as possible,” Jim Dalrymple reports for Macworld.
According to the report, the issue affects “a small number of iMac users,” Apple said.
“‘We are tracking down the root cause of this bug, and will issue a software update which corrects it as soon as we can — most likely later this month,’ the company spokesperson said. ‘We apologize for the inconvenience,'” Dalrymple reports.
More details in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “NeverFade” for the heads up.]
The admission and apology – not the problem There’s very many problems with lots and lots of what Apple is releasing to the public these days.
Can anyone say Apple=Dell copycat.
And, oh this… Leopard is about to launch and completely take over the “there are problems with this” discussions here and everywhere.
The problem is that everyone wants to compare Apple to M’soft and act lack that the gigantic failure that has now defined M’soft is the standard Apple is suppose to beat.
Well, it’s not. The standard is excellence and Apple, led by the great Steve Jobs, has lost its way.
Too bad.
A good acknowledgment.
@Rare Occurrence
Go back to your winblows pc troll.
@Rare occurrence
The difference is, Apple apologizes and posts a free fix within a week.
MS makes you wait a year for a buggy SP1, and another year to issue SP2 to fix the problems in SP1 which, by the way, they had denied the existence of for the previous year.
Oh, and when they do release version 2, they will say “it’s amazing what these guys could do in just 6 months. Just wait another year and it will be really good.”
I very much disagree with the first poster ‘Rare Occurance’. No, Apple equals no Dell copycat. No, Apple has not lost its way. If you think that, you should go buy a Dell and run MS products on it and see exactly what that has to offer you. I think you’ll really understand that there is a difference between the companies.
Rare Occurence … you sound like a little, squeaking immature baby. Hope your mother has a teat of warm milk to shut your mouth and pacify you.
Go ahead …. quit Apple crybaby. Dell and Vista are right there for you to enjoy.
Asswipe.
According to the report, the issue affects \”a small number of iMac users,\” Apple said.
Sorry CrabApple, the glossy screens affect everyone
Can you say Computer Vision Syndrome from annoying reflections?
CHOICE is all we, the majority of computer users, ask.
Now I got to fidling a shitty Dell monitor on my new iMac.
Thanks Apple you bastards.
What are you talking about? Apple continues to have the highest standard of excellence in the computer industry.
And do something about your breath, it smells like Steve Balmer’s fetid asshole.
I was old in 1996. I remember the problems with the 603e’s. I also remember who was NOT at the helm in 1996. There is a lot of difference between now and 1996.
@I Love Matte. If you don’t like the glossy screen, don’t buy it.
lol, just recently this same thing has been occuring to my old iBook G4 as well(about 4 times now since July). Nothing has happened to my G5 though.
lets hope its just a software glitch……
Real Apple fans would accept criticism of the company in order to keep it on its toes. There is no doubt that the rapid expansion of Apple has led to a reduction in the quality of its products. The fact that its machines are all made in the same Taiwan factory as Dell’s computers probably doesn’t help much either. Same components, same factory, same production staff. There’s less to distinguish a Mac from a Dell than we’d like to believe.
Acknowledging the problem is an improvement over my experience with the early G5s. I had (and still have) an ongoing problem with random freezes on my G5, that can only be fixed by a hard reboot. Many others experienced the same problem (at least if the support forum boards are to be believed), but to date, Apple has never admitted there was a problem.
At least this time, they’re being pro-active. And full disclosure requires that, aside from the occasional reboot, my 1st Gen G5 is still runs just fine.
Glossy screen is poifict fer me.
Matte is for Drudge.
THIS JUST IN:
Quality control and issues with Apple products is proportionately the same as it’s ever been!
OK. Actually, that’s old news.
There are no more problems proportionately with Apple products today than there were with the introduction of the first iMac, G3, G4, G5, or the lineup of 95xx, 85xx, 8100, 75xx, 71xx, 6xxx, 5xxx, and all those other Mac towers, pizza boxes, Performas, Classics, etc., in the long life of Apple’s product history.
Pretty much the same. Product company run by humans. Nothing more. Nothing less.
I’m one of the affected iMac buyers… and I am NO apple fan boy. In fact, I’d be first to admit that OS X crashes almost as much as XP and the hangs are painful, with no user feedback to tell you what went wrong.
However, I must admit, Apple will have these problems. To poster #1 who thinks apple has lost its way, they have to face reality. Apple is not a small company anymore.
In the real world, when you’re dealing with massive production and 10s of thousands of computer throughput, you’re going to have problems. Your timelines and tolerances are much smaller and, although, this is not an excuse, you have to remember that Apple is generally SETTING higher standards not just living up to the older ones.
@ ApplePi,
I pretty much agree with what you’ve said.
However, I use both OSX and XP and neither one crashes that much. I get an occasional app that hangs but that’s about it. Not saying they never crash just not very often…
Despite all the FUD from both camps, to me both OSes seem pretty reliable.
“The difference is, Apple apologizes and posts a free fix within a week.”
Unless you have an iPhone, in which case, tough luck, buy a new one!
Have Apple launched any product line since the intel switch that didn’t have a serious flaw?
“There is no doubt that the rapid expansion of Apple has led to a reduction in the quality of its products. The fact that its machines are all made in the same Taiwan factory as Dell’s computers probably doesn’t help much either. Same components, same factory, same production staff.”
Any sources for this?
(tick)(tick)(tock)…
@ApplePi
I use – for professional reasons – various systems. Mac OS X crashes rarely (it does for example with Sony Ericsson mobile in USB whenever you disconnect it without using the Finder, and some times even then.
Other occasions: pretty rare.
Windows XP: it happens. No pattern, no truly identifiable cause, it just happens: here and there and then.
Linux: pretty much as rare as Mac OS X unless it is a tinkered with distribution. Then ‘hic sunt leones’: can crash a lot, or rarely.
Other Unix distribution: usually well maintained configuration, servers or with users that do not *play* with the OS, period. Again, very rare, almost never.
To say Mac OS X crashes as XP simply means your Mac OS X installation is hosed. A normally maintained OS X installation, the way a PC user would with his XP, crashes very very rarely. Much more stable than the average XP.
Note: “average XP”. Trolls coming with “My XP never crashes” can save the bandwidth. It shows even with help desk calls here: ~85% are for Windows problems, ~15% for other OS. Windows here is at something like ~55% presence thence give more problems than its share presence percentage.
~15% of help desk calls are for the ~45% mix of Unix, Linux and OS X
freezing issue? i thought they were heating up too much.
.”Windows here is at something like ~55% presence thence give more problems than its share presence percentage.”
This just raises the “You’re incompetent” theory if your IT department can’t set up basic XP installations that run for months at a time without problems.
“freezing issue? i thought they were heating up too much.”
This is really surprising given that Apple uses different much higher quality ATI chips than other manufacturers.
They and also get special higher quality Intel processors, hard drives, memory and LCD screens. Most major component vendors have special production lines that they use just to produce higher quality components just for Apple.
People who are saying that Apple produces things in exactly the same factories as other PC vendors are just lying.
“Same components, same factory, same production staff.” “Any sources for this?”
Quanta produce Apple laptops and Dells, Sonys and HPs.
There’s no question that from a hardware point of view, an Apple laptop is just a generic Windows laptop with a nice case design and a higher price tag.
Obviously, you don’t know the first thing about Apple hardware.
If it were ‘generic’ then what accounts for the superior reliablility of Apple products. Hardware and software?
These Micros**t dicks are starting to get on my nerves. Why the *blank* are you in a MAC ONLY site?? What Mac fan would waste their life trolling idiotic PC fan sites to make inane comments like this?
Losers.
Apple quality is rated the highest in the industry in these areas:
Hardware.
Software.
Customer Service.
Security.
Resolution of issues.
ROI of product.
Ease of use measures.
Overall customer satisfaction.
PERIOD
@Consumer Reports
This may be true that you rate Apple Macs highest in those categories. Unfortunately, there is no way, I suppose, in your data to reflect that Mac OS X is favored over Windows anything. When has Consumer reports put operating systems up against each other based on ease of use/crashes/etc? Why not?
I’ve had the same freeze issues with our core duo iMac for several months. I had it at the local service center for a week. They ran several tests, but could not duplicate it. It happens infrequently usually during a graphic operation like minimizing a window to the dock via the “genie effect” or transitioning in/out of Expose. Here’s to hoping this fix works on mine as well.
Um…Your “facts” about where Apple Computers are manufactured are incorrect.
-15 year Apple Employee
@RickP
Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly what my family is encountering on our 24″ aluminum iMac. Any activity that could be classified as ‘graphically intense’ seem to be what trigger the lockup. Exposé, minimizing with the genie effect, scrubbing a movie or set of pictures in iLife, or fast scrolling a list of emails or a web page. Right now we are having clusters of lockups. It doesn’t happen every day, but every couple of days, when it happens, it happens about 3 or 4 times in an hour.
I’m very glad Apple has finally acknowledged the problem and, I hope, will issue a fix soon. I’ve been counting on them doing so, having a certain amount of faith in the company. But I am watching their actions a little more closely lately. Bricking the iPhones and other anti-consumer actions lately prove they ain’t perfect.
Hmmm sounds about right:
A couple marry.
The husband takes the bride upstairs, and they get ready to, umm, have fun. So the bride says “Please, be gentle, this is my first time.” So the husband says, “How can it be ? I know you had THREE husbands!”
The bride replies, “Well, that’s true. But the first one was really old, and he died on the dance floor. The second had a heart problem, and he got a heart attack while carrying me upstairs. The third was a Microsoft engineer, and he used to sit beside the bed, and tell me how good it’s gonna be…”
hahahahahaha!!! That’s a good one @RO! Mac users are not only smarter than Windoze users, they are more clever too!
The issue is related somehow to tha ATI graphics card in the system. Luckily it should be just a firmware update. I used to like ATI but the 7800gt in my quad G5 has never had problems.
@ RickP and Tergenev…
I recently helped a friend who had a new iMac with the same freezing issues. From everything we could find on the discussions boards, the real culprit seems to be the software driver for the graphics card and how it interacts with the iLife suite of software. Specifically, we were reproducing the freeze regularly when using older versions of the iDVD templets. It was freezing else where also, under graphically intensive opperations.
We did a complete uninstall of the ilife suite, by dragging all of the applications, folders, and preferences to the trash. We did a command-find to find all of the files by searching for them by name, i.e. iMovie, iTunes… yadayada…
Then we did a custom reinstall of just the iLife suite from the software restore disks.
Seems to have worked for him, and others on the discussion boards also. 2+ weeks an no freezes.
Hope this helps.
I bought a 20 inch the day they were announced and keep mine on 24 hrs a day since. I have suffered 4 lockups and those happened while playing WOW. Other than that only have rebooted to install updates or fix permissons. So if this takes cares of the 4 lockups I’ll still be a happy camper.
BTW I love the keyboard and the glossy screen.
“then what accounts for the superior reliablility of Apple products.”
Mythology and Fanboy Forgiveness.
Remember most of the surveys where Apple rates highly are Subjective not Objective. A Dell customer feels pissed off when somebody hasn’t turned up at his home or place of work within 4hrs with a new laptop for him. An Apple customer is happy because he “Only” had to go down to he local mall, laptop in hand, be told there’s nothing they can do, have the unit shipped back to Apple and gets it back within a week or two.
Likewise a Nokia customer feels pissed off if his phone locks up once every few months, and would go ballistic if it were ever bricked just because he installed a ringtone.
But an Apple fanboy puts up with his iPhone locking up and crashing, and applauds Apple when they brick his phone and tell him to buy another because he knows he should have known better than to want to use a non standard ringtone.
And finally, if a Dell user gets a machine which locks up when he uses common apps, within 30 days he puts it back in the box, ships it back to Dell and gets a full refund and goes and buys another machine which doesn’t have problems.
The Mac user posts opinions on the Internet about how great it is that Apple acknowledges the issue and how he’s really happy that they’ll probably hopefully have a fix for him soon.
Because Apple fanboy customers worship the company, it gets away with shitting all over them.
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20070801PD209.html
Not sure if this can be updated through software or not. Wait and see…
^^^^ You the link below and ten click on the Digitimes link in the brackets to get to the article without having to sign up…
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/recall/-284931.php
^^^ Use the link below
MDN get an edit option for posts please!
The freezing is just a warning that you’re running software Apple doesn’t like on your Mac. Continue and it will be bricked. You have been warned.