What the!! Macs don't break :( (what about the mac mini?)

AH! Just have to vent a little here. Thanks to Unity I became a mac convert with a 17" iMac (the older white ones)I fell into this problem over the last few months, http://imaclines.blogspot.com/ . Out warranty, called up Apple and they finally recognized this hardware failure as a "known problem", got it fixed for free as result last week. Only a week after the dang lines popped up again! Needless to say I'm a very sad panda Macs aren't suppose to break! lol dang

</vent over - breathing back to normal>

Me thinks it's time to upgrade to the new line, but why? Nothing wrong with this one I have. Ah well

 

All computer hardware can fail. rough to get the same problem again, though. Unlucky. I guess the only plus is that they have already recognized a "known problem" with this machine. Maybe it will be faster to get it taken in.

 

ack

I also had a number of disappointments when I first got to grips with my Mac.

When I use it I feel like I'm using a computer. I expected to feel like I was at a party or at the least watching a decent film. Sometimes I have to set things up, and occasionally things go wrong! It's should work first time, every time, for everything. Most annoyingly, it looks kinda like a computer. From the talk I was expecting a supermodel.

Anyway once I got over all that I found it was quite good

 

Heh macs do indeed break like everything else. Handling my hardware very roughly, I believe I've stress tested it quite well.

My old iBook has been tossed around, beat up, drowned and worse and whilst the DVD drive has given up (computer active, asleep in water-proof bag which was left open in the rain :roll, it still runs leopard pretty well with the occasional kernel panic over a spot of rust on the logicboard from same drowning accident.

My mac mini refuses to power back on when having been powered off unless the power cable is removed for a few minutes. I'm blaming that on some nasty home-made wiring.

My mbp has been beaten badly as well and as a result has some disk surface damage - causing hardware lockup when that area is addressed. That damage was sustained a year ago though and apart from a few TimeMachine system restores prompted by system updates being written to the damaged area, everything is groovy. I really should take some vacation at some point and get it replaced though (like that is ever gonna happen :wink.

Unprovoked hardware failure I only think I've experienced with a drive failure on a PowerMac G4 running server for a year, but drives and stability is really a question of chance if you ask me.

As a rule I never buy hardware before its third revision though.

 

Yeah I know it's hardware and it will break regardless, but it's just annoying even more so with macs because of the whole mac genius bar thing. If it was a PC, I could strip it down and tinker with it. I think my next mac will be a Power mac, I've never been a fan of all-in-one electronics.

At least they're looking at it again for no charge.

 

This is a pretty common problem and I have a line on my monitor too but I am too busy with work right now to be without my machine for a month while Apple "fixes" it.
A thread on the Apple support forums on the issue it here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9063835#9063835
Apparently when Apple is willing to fix it (they often are not, it seems) they just replace the display which often does not work. One guy writes:

So, maybe it's that. Whatever it is I hope Apple will figure it out soon and admit the problem universally so that people will not have to fight them to get it fixed.
lildragn, you might want to hang in a little more before upgrading. The white Intel iMac weren't the first machines to have this problem - there have been several others. Buy a new Mac, wait a year or two and you might see those lines again...

 

I had heard this was from a certain batch of LCD's from Korea, I cross referenced my serial with some blog post somewhere and sure enough my serial was one of the dodgy batch.

I brought an intel imac with about 6 lines down it for $300 NZ, and ran an external monitor. The lines slowly increased until it was around 100 lines then one day it just wouldnt boot. I sold it as parts for $275.

I couldnt access the HD so maybe it was unrelated HD failure, though some tech guys had a look and salvaged my HD data (whew- thanks Hans), so I never found if they were related.

Basically if it happened again Id sell pronto just in case. Was great to go from a g4 to an intel imac tho.

Sorry to hear it happened to you
AaronC

 

Well for what it's worth, they at least took in the iMac again and are fixing it free of charge because of the 90 day warranty. Hopefully it doesn't return cause I really dig my iMac.

On a related note, I'm thinking of snapping up one of the new mac mini's so I don't have to deal with the combo iMac again. Mac heads, what are your thoughts? They seem pretty capable now. The only caveat and what I have to read up on is if it can support dual monitors. If not I'll just have to get a 24"

thx