March 6, 2007

Trouble in iMac City

Filed under: TMUP-Blog — Victor Cajiao @ 9:20 am

UPDATE:

Unfortunately the story gets worse. I spoke to Apple customer support and they deemed my iMac as (Dead on Arrival D.O.A.). Then I got sent to sales who told me I only had two options.

A. I send the iMac back via Fed Ex and get a refund 5 days after it scans

B. Send the iMac back and get a new iMac (built to my specs) 5 to 7 days after it scans.

I asked if I could simply take the iMac back to a retail Apple store near by and get a refund or another Mac. They said “No.” The Apple On Line Store and the Apple Retail stores have “two different accounting systems, and that is not possible.”

Well, a few good learnings for me on this one. I am back on my Powerbook and don’t have a lot of podcasting tools on this machine so I will try and put something out tonight or tomorrow, but you will NOT hear the same audio quality you are use to. As for Sunday’s show, I will see if I can make that work.

More to come. . .Victor

——————-

Well folks yesterday my new 24″ iMac decided not to play nice and crashed. I had noticed on Sunday a bit of erratic behavior in that the “start up chime” was not audible. I did all the troubleshooting on that and could not find the answer.

Yesterday when I got home the iMac was frozen. I rebooted and got the grey screen with the ? folder (ouch). Good thing I had just done a show on troubleshooting.

I tried Tech Tools pro that found the HD was corrupt and could not repair it. It did repair the volume but I still could not boot. I re-installed the OS (yes I have a back up (I believe)) and that went very well. However, still no “start up chime” on boot. So I suspect there is somethign going on with the Logic Board etc. Believe me a did a bunch of troubleshooting on what that could be.

So, it’s time to take this 7 day old iMac to Apple and let the Geniuses figure it out. Needless to say I may not get out a show tonight or tomorrow at all. We will see.

I wanted to let you guys know in case I’m slow in replying to emails etc. Thank and I’ll keep you posted.

Victor

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  • http://www.cupofchai.net Arjun Muralidharan

    That’s very sad. So contrapunctuous to the usual Mac experience. I for one, am still very skeptical about the whole Intel architecture. Hardware failures have gone up since the move.

    Oh well, let’s hope it gets fixed soon. I darn have to save up for an external HD for backing my stuff up. I live dangerous. I DO have backups in case software does stupid things to me (as it has in the past: I remember opening iPhoto & iTunes and both being mysteriously empty).

    Which reminds me: If I bought a piece of music on the iTMS, if I delete the file, can I redownload it because I paid for it?

  • http://www.typicalmacuser.com Administrator

    The story continues Arjun. I’ve heard a few people have been able to get ITMS music back , but their policy is generally NO. You are suppose to save or rip your purchased music to CD or DVD.

    Victor

  • Vic Schmidt

    Strange… I bought an iMac just about a year and a half ago, had problems in the first days of ownership, took it to my local Apple Computer store (where I bought it), they said it couldn’t be fixed and I left the store with a brand new iMac in an un-Opened box.

    Did your store not have any new iMacs and that’s why they couldn’t just replace it? This was an actual Apple branded store wasn’t it? Not CompUSA or some other store that sells Macs? If it was an actual Apple Store they should just replace it as long as they actually have one configured like yours is configured… I’ve had similiar things happen with other Apple products over the years and have ALWAYS left the store with a replacement product…

  • DonQ

    Bummer – sorry to hear the bad news. I know you were so excited when you got it. What I am surprised about is that you can’t take it to your local Apple store. Makes no sense since I thought you had also purchased the Apple Care.

  • http://www.typicalmacuser.com Administrator

    Vic I bought it on the on-line store with a Build to Order. I just simply did not know that build to orders could not be exchanged at the real Apple store.

    Also since they declared it DOA it could not be taken into the Apple store as a repair. I do understand that, but I would have been happy if they took my memory and HD and just put it on a new iMac 24.” That was not an option. Thanks for writing.

    I did buy Apple care, however because the Apple Support people declared it something called “Dead On Arrival (even though it was not totally)” they would not just repair it under Apple care.

  • http://philbridges.com Phil Bridges

    I am so glad we now have an Apple store now here in Southampton UK. I bought an Iomea Minimix hard disk which had faulty Firewire ports. I just took it back and got an on the spot refund on Apple UK ‘s 14 day no quibble returns policy.

    The lesson here seems to be if you possibly can buy your major items from the Apple store, not mail order.

  • http://www.typicalmacuser.com Administrator

    Agreed Phill, however when you want bigger HD’s and more memory, here at least they often tell you , you have to go to the On-Line Store.

    I will be podcasting about all this tonight for sure.

  • http://philbridges.com Phil Bridges

    It’ll be interesting to find out an Apple store can build a ‘special’ machine to order as you asked in this week’s Podcast …. I’ll put a post up on the SceenCastsOnline forum and see what comes back… I want to buy another mini next month so have a vested interest here!

  • http://www.everythingtech.tv Jason Tucker

    The same thing happened to my 20″ refurb iMac. I took it back to Apple Store in Brea and had them fix it. 4 days later my mac was repaired and all was well.

    http://www.abstrakone.com/archives/2007/02/19/weird-mac-occurance/

  • http://philbridges.com Phil Bridges
  • david

    i work for the university of california. i am a workstation support tech. i support 3 depts on campus. one of these depts wanted to replace their 3 old imacs and choose the 24″ intel core 2 duo. the first 3 apple sent were all DOA. each one of them booted to the “startup manager” randomly. one of them right out of the box after applying apple updates. then the other 2 began to boot to the startup manager. those were sent back. yesterday i received 3 brand new 24″ imacs….and once again all three of them boot to the startup manager. 2 after applying apple updates, and one right from the box…..after going through setup and restarting. the only apps installed on 2 of them are MS Office, the 3rd one is a clean system w/ nothing on it….not even the apple updates.

    i’m a mac user myself….my main workstation here at work is a 20″ imac G5….at home i have the very last generation 20″ imac G5 w/ the isight camera…..i have not had any issues w/ either of the G5 imacs. why does it seem like everything fist generation from apple is filled w/ flaws?

    is anyone else out there have issues w/ the 24″ intel core 2 duo imacs? it can’t be only me.

    frustrated in paradise

 

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