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Here you go bud. Hope your issue gets fixed ... I'm not sure which one applies but thats the whole list ... call Public Relations ... noone likes an irate customer .. .:)


Apple Financial Services (800) APPLE-LN (800-277-5356)
AppleCare Extended Service and Support (800) 275-2273
AppleCare Support - 90 Day Warranty (800) 275-2273
AppleCare Support - Legacy (800) 767-2775
AppleCare Support - Education (800) 800-2775
Apple Disability Solutions (800) 767-2775
Apple Public Relations (408) 974-2042
Apple Software Upgrade Center (800) 785-9445
Apple Software and Volume Licensing (800) 793-9378
Apple Store (Consumer) (800) MY-APPLE (800-692-7753)
Apple Store (Education - Individuals) (800) 780-5009
Apple Store (Education - Schools) (800) 800-2775
Apple Enterprise Sales (877) 412-7753
Apple Government Sales (877) 412-7753
Reseller Referral (Resellers, Trainers, Consultants) (800) 538-9696
Service Provider Support (800) 919-2775
 
Customer Relations is the (800) 767-2775 number. But he asked for their e-mail address...unfortunately, I don't have it. :(
 
Dear Mr. Jobs,

I’d like to start off my saying I am an ardent supporter and big-time fan of Apple Computer. In fact, many of my friends believe I really did drink magic Kool-Aid at some point. I own three iPods, an iBook, a Power Mac G5 and a 30” Apple Cinema Display. And yes, I have an Apple sticker on the back of my car.

Unfortunately, I have spent almost $9,000.00 with Apple over the last 12 months, and only three items: an iPod Photo, an iPod shuffle and an iPod nano have not given me any problems.

In July of last year, I purchased a Dual 2.7GHz PowerMac G5 and two 20-inch Apple Cinema Displays for my burgeoning photography business. Within three months, hairs and dust were appearing behind the protective LCD covers of both displays and in fact, one was so bad (serial # 2A5204N5PKK) I finally decided to take it in for repair. It was fixed under warranty on repair number R5505110. With a couple of hairs in the other display, I decided to cut my losses, sell both displays to private parties and on October 9, I purchased a 30-inch Cinema Display to replace them. I brought the unit home, and within four hours, there were small pixel anomalies flickering across the whole panel (not dead or stuck), so I returned it to the store for an exchange. I brought this unit home, and after an hour of use, it (serial # CY526135PKM) literally burnt up and stopped working. Now counting three trips to the local Apple Store in Annapolis, the second defective unit was exchanged for another new unit (serial # CY5370ES***), which has worked successfully to date.

Now the matter of my Power Mac G5, which quite honestly, has been one of the fussiest computers I have ever owned. Since the day I got it, it’s had more than its occasional share of application shut downs, unresponsive Apple applications and Apple software that had to be forced to quit. Really only minor inconveniences, but bothersome nonetheless, and nothing I felt warranted a visit to the Apple Store here in Annapolis.

In February of this year, the Power Mac started to exhibit some disturbing behavior that I simply could not ignore. When trying to restart the computer from a cold start, the unit would only make it half way through the power on self-test and would only sound a partial “bong.” When this happened, I took all the usual precautions – I ran FSCK in single-user mode, reset the PRAM, reset the NVRAM, reset the firmware in Open Firmware, and as a final resort, I purchased a copy of DiskWarrior and ran it in from the CD. It still had problems both booting and shutting down. Also at this time, the computer stopped sleeping automatically, and in certain cases would not sleep at all. It would shut down, never fully sleep, and then I would return to the computer later to find the cooling fans running at full speed, requiring a hard shutdown via the power button. I reinstalled the OS several times on two separate internal drives and even swapped the drives into different internal bays to rule out the possibility of a bad SATA cable. I’d say I had reinstalled the OS in the neighborhood of about eight times at this point. As a last ditch effort, I ran Tech Tools and Apple’s own hardware test, and the machine passed.

In early April of this year, I finally took the unit into my local Apple Store to find out what the problem was. Unfortunately, the unit would not exhibit these problems and I was sent on my way. I came back a second time when the problems persisted, and again, the computer would not duplicate the symptoms. After these problems persisted, I made the hypothesis that the unit would only exhibit the failed boot/sleep issues when it was warm, so I took the unit back to the Apple Store, and asked Adam Stevenson at the Genius Bar to make an exception and keep it for the day and run it through the paces. Luckily, the unit did fail to boot while it was the Apple Store and a repair order was initiated under repair number R7790826 to replace one of the processors. I picked up the unit five days later (April 14) and was on my way.

While I noticed that the unit was booting properly when I got home on the 14th, it was intermittently locking up on restart commands, kernel panicking and it would not sleep automatically. It would, however, sleep manually from the Apple menu. The morning of the 15th, I woke up to the fans running full blast after manually initiating a sleep command the night before, so I immediately decided to reinstall the OS. Again.

I reinstalled OS X (the disk that came with the unit), and only left the DVI connector from the monitor plugged in (I was trying to isolate a peripheral I/O being the issue). I slowly added peripherals (first the FireWire connection from the Apple Cinema Display), let the unit go into a “deep sleep” (allowing an hour to pass between each wake up), and then continued add peripheral devices hour-by-hour to the chain. By the time I was done, I had the FireWire from the Apple Cinema Display plugged into the back, USB from the Apple Cinema Display plugged into the back, a FireWire 800 external HDD plugged into the back, network cable plugged into the back, an iPod plugged into a FireWire PCI Card and a FireWire Compact Flash card reader also plugged into that same PCI card. Up to this point, there were no issues with sleep etc. I then plugged in my iPod nano into my USB 2.0 PCI card, and the unit refused to sleep. I took it out, and it would sleep, so I removed that card entirely.

At this point, I decided to run all the recommended software updates provided by Apple through Software Update, and slowly add the applications that are most vital to my work piece by piece, trying to sleep for an hour between the additions of each application. Eventually I had all of my applications installed and got back to work. On the April 17, the machine kernel panicked. I restarted the computer and continued working in Aperture, Word, Safari and Mail. I tried to sleep the machine before running some errands, and I found it had run up to full bore on the fans upon my return that afternoon.

Honestly frustrated at this point, I took the unit back to the Apple Store in the Annapolis Mall, and Adam Stevenson ran a full diagnostics test on the hardware (while I waited) that took four hours to complete. It passed all tests. When Adam went to restart the machine, it kernel panicked. When he tried again, the screen started flashing. He told me that since it had passed the hardware test, it must be software related and, again, sent me on my way.

Upon getting home I went through the whole same routine again, slowly and cautiously reinstalling my apps, OS X first. In the middle of the erase and install, the machine kernel panicked, so I tried installing it on a separate internal drive and booting from the lower “B” bay. I also tried running a fresh install from the upper “A” bay. The unit still refused to sleep automatically, and would still lock up on waking from deep sleep.

At this point, I decided to get AppleCare involved (Case #62186661). Tom was the first gentleman I spoke with, and he quickly went down a list of things to try, which I had already done. He decided to transfer me to a specialist, and John picked up the phone to help. We reset the firmware and NVRAM, and it seemed to operate OK after that. About an hour later, I left my desk to run some errands, the machine slept on it’s own, and would not reawake.

I phoned AppleCare again. This time Harley answered the phone and after a series of questions passed me on to Chris. Chris finally recommended that I install the OS as it is on the disc (remember I have reformatted a couple of drives at least a dozen times at this point), not run any software updates, do not install any of my other software, remove all the RAM, except the Apple RAM and see if it will duplicate the problem. He told me that if the problem persists with only Apple RAM and the bare essential OS in the system I would have real merit to take it back into the Apple Store for more diagnostic work.
 
In the period of four months, I probably have 40-50 hours of my own diagnostic work wrapped up in the machine at this point, five days of down time for a repair, hours of time on the phone with techs and it still won’t operate properly. Why the same software performs perfectly and without event on my $999.00 iBook baffles me when a tech tells me that the very same software is what is bringing my $3200.00 flagship G5 to its knees. I talk and chat with people online that have so much third-party off-the-wall software that directly intervenes with the OS itself (appearance haxies, etc) that it boggles the mind – yet their machines work flawlessly.

You know what I would really like? I want to remember what it was like to work on my Power Mac MDD 1.25Ghz and never even have to think about whether it would sleep, or reboot or lock up. It just worked. I’m to the point where I anxiously use this very expensive setup every day waiting for the next failure to occur. It is simply not a pleasurable experience wondering if the machine I paid thousands of dollars for will shut down, sleep, restart or boot when I want it to. The technicians at Apple have chalked all of this up to “software” issues, denying that it could actually be a false positive on the diagnostic test – like a logic board or power management unit. Everything except the machine itself seems to be to blame, yet I have been offered no real way to pinpoint any of the other items “that are possibly to blame.”

What happened to “It just works?” In my many years of Mac use, I have never had to worry about trying to isolate “software” issues (especially when the same software from the same install discs work perfectly on another machine), or swap around eight GB of RAM that passed Apple’s own test – three times. Nor have I had to spend countless hours of my own time self-diagnosing a machine that is less than a year old. I’m not demanding – I just want a machine that I can use to run my business, not worry about and actually enjoy using. This machine, and most of my other Apple purchases this year have not even come close to fulfilling those wishes. I look forward to reaching an amicable solution to fixing my malfunctioning G5 and rekindling my spirit in Apple again.

Sincerely yours,

Gary Reich
garyreich@mac.com
 
iGary said:
I probably have 40-50 hours of my own diagnostic work wrapped up in the machine at this point, five days of down time for a repair, hours of time on the phone with techs...
...and 4 hours writing this e-mail.

I hope something good comes out of this - even if it's just to get this off your chest.
 
Blue Velvet said:
I hope you added the scary iSight pic to the bottom of the email.

I should have. I'm really completely mental over this at this point. Am I wrong to think that I should be able to instal Adobe CS2, MS Office and Macromedia Studio (all apps that Apple sells) and not have issues?

My iBook "just works" with a whole variety of software from Hardware Monitor to Transmit to Onyx....why would a tech blame software when it runs flawlessly on another machine.

I think I'm going to go throw up somewhere. Seriously, I have been on the phone for at least four hours with five different people today, and they all point their fingers at something different.
 
I would keep a log of the problems, the times you went to the Apple Store and who you talked to and noted the problem. Then when it happens again, take the PowerMac and the log of problems and DEMAND that they replace the ENTIRE PowerMac. Talk to the store manager, explain NICELY how many problems you've had, how many times its been here and how much time YOU'VE spend of your OWN time to troubleshoot this computer for YOUR business.

You've been through a lot of crap that you shouldn't have to go through. Maybe even call AppleCare and explain the situation and see if a manager at AppleCare can do something. Hopefully you'll get something.
 
I actually did have a friends send a message to Steve Jobs email and Jonathan Ives about his dead ipod. A week later he got a response from an Apple customer service rep and got an exchange for a new ipod. And this was all out of warranty!

Good luck!
 
Well, 5 hours later, I attached one peripheral at a time to the I/O, and non of them caused problems.

I removed all of the RAM, and am letting the first pair (2X1GB) sleep for 45 minutes and see if it restarts...

Then I get to do that 3 more times. Good thing Netflix came today.
 
iGary said:
Well, 5 hours later, I attached one peripheral at a time to the I/O, and non of them caused problems.

I removed all of the RAM, and am letting the first pair (2X1GB) sleep for 45 minutes and see if it restarts...

Then I get to do that 3 more times. Good thing Netflix came today.

remember to do that and then start over with each slot to see if it is a specific slot.

And any good movies for tonight?
 
eva01 said:
remember to do that and then start over with each slot to see if it is a specific slot.

And any good movies for tonight?

Oceans 12, Crash, and then Me, You and Everyone We Know.
 
eva01 said:
Tell me how the first two movies you listed are, if you don't mind.

Will do.

Are you suggesting I run this test with each pair in all the paired slots?

That's 16 hours for each 2X1GB pair. :eek:
 
iGary said:
Will do.

Are you suggesting I run this test with each pair in all the paired slots?

That's 16 hours for each 2X1GB pair. :eek:

I am suggesting to try a single 2X1GB in each slot before adding RAM in to make sure it isn't a single RAM Slot first. Then Do each additional RAM afterwards.

And if the first 2X1GB don't work in a slot try a different set of 2X1GB in that slot to doubly make sure it isn't that set of RAM

First time didn't make sense -_- sorry and if it still doesn't make sense. Read my signature :p
 
iGary said:
Oceans 12, Crash, and then Me, You and Everyone We Know.


iGary, you'll love that last one. I hope the problems your macs get all sorted out. I've been having issues too -- both with new macs. It gets quite frustrating. This brand new PB's harddrive is making grasshopper noises and I feel like it's just about ready to go. Ah well.

There's a very interesting part in the last movie about a .... poop exchange between butts. Very interesting, indeed.
 
Here's what I have done so far...tonight.

1. Erase and install of OS X via disks included with computer for HDD installed in the lower “B” slot. The HDD installed in the “A” slot at this time had all of my software and 10.4.6 with all software updates installed. Install crashed at the end of second DVD and computer had to be shut down via the power button.

2. Removed primary HDD from the upper “A” slot and replaced it with the newly formatted (erase and install) drive that previously occupied the lower “B” slot.

3. Started computer, entered basic information and allowed wireless keyboard and mouse to pair. Did not set up AirPort at this time.

4. Attempted sleep with DVI connected only. Left machine sleep automatically for one hour, and then restarted successfully.

5. Plugged in USB 2.0 cable from Apple Cinema Display into main I/O in the back of the computer. Let machine sleep automatically for one hour, and then restarted successfully.

6. Plugged in FireWire cable from Apple Cinema Display into main I/O in the back of the computer. Let machine sleep automatically for one hour, and then restarted successfully.

7. Plugged in iSight cable and Mighty Mouse into Apple Cinema Display. Let machine sleep automatically for one hour, and then restarted successfully.

8. Plugged in FireWire 800 cable from external HDD (powered on) into main I/O in the back of the computer. Let machine sleep automatically for one hour, and then restarted successfully.

9. Plugged in USB 2.0 cable from iPod nano into main I/O in the back of the computer. Let machine sleep automatically for one hour, and then restarted successfully.

10. Plugged in FireWire cable attached to iPod photo and FireWire cable from CompactFlash card reader into FireWire PCI card. Let machine sleep automatically for one hour, and then restarted successfully.

11. Computer not making POST “gong” on restart. Reset PRAM successfully.

12. Shut down computer and reset SMU. Removed all RAM except innermost two slots.

13. Restarted computer and allowed it to sleep automatically for 45 minutes. Woke from sleep successfully.

14. Shut down and remove first pair of DIMMS and replace with next pair. Let computer sleep automatically and wake after 45 minutes.
 
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