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Hey, who wants to hear me bitch about iMacs! I don’t care, here I go:

Switching to a Mac has been great in every way except for like… the hardware. I should point out that I began this switch by buying a refurbished 27″ iMac from Apple.com to save $300. I’m not made of money you guys. I’ve bought many things from there before and all the devices have been flawless. Except for iMacs I suppose. A rundown of the iMacs I have known:

iMac #1: Worked great! Then I went to install an additional 8gb of RAM. One of the RAM slots was so out of alignment I couldn’t get one of the sticks in there. I contacted Apple Support, they offered to let me buy another one and then refund my money for the first when I returned it. Fair enough.

iMac #2: Right away I noticed the hard drive was noisy (even when idle). I had iMac #1 and iMac #2 beside each other before I returned #1 and could easily tell the difference. Turns out it was a noisy Seagate drive. Since I’m recording with this thing, that’s kind of a big deal but bleh I didn’t want to return it yet again. Then I noticed the left internal speaker kept making annoying intermittent crackling/static noises even when the audio wasn’t in use.

I talked to Apple support and they suggested I unplug the power cord and plug it back in and see if that helps. The iMac didn’t immediately make the noise when I started it back up, so the friendly Apple guy said to call back if it did.

It did later, but it took me three days call back. I was out of my 30 day return window at that point and was told I’d have to take it in for repair + be without a computer indefinitely. I told them that made me so so sad so they talked to various managers and eventually agreed to replace it, plus gave me $150 credit back for my troubles. Nice!

iMac #3: This is the one I have on my desk as I type this. The RAM slots are fine. The internal speakers make no unwanted noise. But I’ve noticed the fans getting loud a lot whereas I realize now I never even heard the fans on the other ones. When I’m recording for instance or watch a few Youtube videos in a row, the fan turns on and is pretty loud in this small office. After an hour of mixing just now the top of the case is too hot to leave my hand on for more than a second or two. The others were pretty warm but not at all like that.

So. Do I have the energy to complain about this one? The fan noise is annoying and maybe not tolerable. The extreme heat worries me that it’ll be prone to failure over time. But I’m getting pretty tired of swapping these bastards out. Basically I want to give up on buying refurbished and go buy a brand new one, but what if they’re prone to the same issues?

So: ugh.

Update: well, that resolved itself. The display on iMac #3 died last night. So now I’m on hold with Apple support. Woo hoo hoo.

Update #2: Here is what the display looks like! (The lines move!)

Update #3: Talked to four supervisors. They’re taking iMac #3 back and refunding my money. I’m gonna drive to the Ottawa Apple store and buy a new iMac that hopefully isn’t a piece of junk.

iMac #4: Seven hours later my Time Machine backup is restored and I’m back where I was almost 24 hours ago.

Posted on - January 27, 2011 [at] 4:25 pm by Brad
Tagged in - computers, mac, nerdy, rant

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8 Comments on this post

fluffy on Bitching about iMacs
January 27, 2011 at 4:48 pm

Yeah, iMacs are pretty crappy, and not a very good value. Unfortunately, it’s the only thing that fills in the ridiculously-large desktop performance gap between the Mac mini and the Mac Pro. Your only other choices are the laptops, which are pretty good but have their own downsides as well (such as pretty slow hard drives which is of course terrible for audio work).

I’m still debating whether my next computer will be a mini, a Pro, or just buying a Hackintosh-capable PC (which would end up costing nearly as much as a Pro anyway in order to get the same noise level out of it).

Basically, Apple only designs for two kinds of user: consumer, and ridiculously high-end professional. It’s pretty frustrating.

Brad on Bitching about iMacs
January 27, 2011 at 5:29 pm

Yeah, the gap is super annoying. I’d be suuuper happy with something Mac Mini-like if they’d hop the power up a bit in them. Or a Mac Pro if they’d bring the power (and cost) down a bit in them.

One of the frustrating things is how shitty this iMac is to open. The dude at Apple said the internal speaker issue was likely just a loose connection. Well shit dog, gimme a screwdriver and I’ll take a look. But no, gotta take it in for slow repairs.

Also I could have easily swapped out the noisy internal drive with another one around here.

Blehhhh I’ll stop.

boolean on Bitching about iMacs
January 27, 2011 at 5:38 pm

sorry your foray into the mac has been less than stellar.

telling you that Apple has one of the lowest defect rates and highest customer satisfaction in the industry is probably going to sound pretty weak in light of 3 duds in a row.

Were they all refurbs?

the heat problem is probably not good. There might be a faulty fan in the case or a heat sink that isn’t doing it’s job. You should probably take it in, though it is painful and might mean more time without a machine but better that than having a meltdown when you’re trying to get something done.

I couldn’t disagree with fluffy more about the value of iMacs but I don’t want to cause a scene on your nice blog.

Brad on Bitching about iMacs
January 27, 2011 at 5:41 pm

They’re all refurbs. And yes, the Applecare guys are all “zomg this never happens!” and I’m all “sorry to blow your minds dudes”.

I think the value’s good on the iMac, like in dollar-dollars. Quad core with gorgeous 27″ screen alone would make up the bulk of the price. But I could certainly handle it being less of an alien mystery box.

boolean on Bitching about iMacs
January 28, 2011 at 9:16 am

yeah, the Mac Pros are a little easier to deal with (and kind of a joy to open up).

If you already had your own monitor, it’s not a big jump from the 27″ iMac to the quad core Mac Pro. They tend to keep their pricing overlappy like that.

anyway, hope it works out for you.

Ronnie on Bitching about iMacs
March 2, 2011 at 3:30 pm

Once upon a time if you were making music on a DAW you needed an Apple computer.

This is no longer true. Still it blows me away why so many would pay a premium for substandard hardware just because it looks pretty.

fox on Bitching about iMacs
October 11, 2011 at 11:25 am

have u seen the hazro screens ? The are hlaf the price of apple and look nearby the same , plus they have a dvi connector so that you can plug it to any computer you like

fox on Bitching about iMacs
October 11, 2011 at 11:27 am

btw these days windows 7 even looks more beautifull (transparent windows) than osx (all gray???) and it is even more stable than OSX ….just my studio experience