Dear Mr Jobs & Executive Relations Team,
I work as a clinical photographer, dealing with medical images used for diagnosis and treatment tracking, and have been purchasing Apple's computing products for years now, including a large number of your excellent Cinema Displays of various models (ranging from the 20" ADC model, and every release since up to the 30" currently on sale).
Upon your announcement of the new Quad-Core iMac I was impressed at what Apple were offering - a large, high-resolution LED backlight screen coupled with plenty of power under the hood, so to speak. As such, I sold my 2008 model Mac Pro with a 2009 30" Cinema Display and purchased a 27" i7 iMac from the UK Online Store. As normal, the service was excellent, although your shipping to the UK is far inferior to that offered to your US customers (ie: takes a week or longer to get here, with no tracking until the night before delivery versus full 2-day courier shipping with tracking from Shanghai).
Based on my previous experience with Apple, whom I have not hesitated to recommend in the past, I was expecting a flawless computer with a superb display - indeed, your own website touts the prowess of the new screen with the phrase "the new iMac display looks great from any seat in the house, thanks to a premium display called in-plane switching (IPS). IPS gives you a bright picture with excellent colour consistency - even if you're viewing the display from the side". Unfortunately, this is not what I received.
The iMac began "flickering" within a short time of being turned on, and even began to demonstrate a complete shift in the image on screen. Later on, the iMac also began to go totally black for under a second, before returning to normal. Obviously this was not satisfactory and your phone team organised a replacement iMac.
In between the time of ordering and the replacement arriving, Apple issued a Firmware Update for the ATi 4850 GPU in the iMac, promising the resolve these flickering and blackout issues. I installed this, yet the problems continued apace with no change, begging the question of what exactly did that firmware update do?
I took delivery of the replacement iMac on the 31st December (this now over a month since my original order), and in short order this machine demonstrated a yellow tinge towards the bottom of the display - certainly not the "bright picture with excellent colour consistency" that was promised. I organised yet another replacement, optimistically hoping that this was the only issue. As I write to you now however, this second iMac has developed exactly the same issues as the first - the flickering screen, tearing and half-second blackouts. As an imaging professional, I simply cannot use a screen like this.
As such, it appears that there is an issue with the iMac 27" models and I am no longer confident that Apple will deliver a working machine that I can use for its intended purpose. Your telephone support teams offer no reassurance, simply stating that they believe there is "no widespread problem" - which is obviously not the case from research online and also the very chances of receiving two faulty machines from two separate production weeks. At this point, I am now unsure whether to accept another replacement from yourselves, or to simply buy elsewhere. I have experienced nearly a month of productivity loss, and also lost time dealing with these issues.
Ultimately, I would like to know what Apple is doing to address these issues with the 27" iMacs, and whether there will ever be any acknowledgement of the widespread issues with these rather expensive paperweights. At this point in time, I simply don't know whether I can trust my next replacement to be issue free.
Order number (UK Store): W91xxxxxx
Also attached is an image of the screen-tearing issue occurring on both iMacs, taken on the first within an hour of delivery.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/824940/ - Just one example of the complaints being generated
