iMac Software update 1.3

[Bozinsky]

NAS share for backups?

If I could only get time machine to see my NAS share for backups. So far no go.

Have you tried something like http://uneasysilence.com/archive/2007/10/12595/ already?

 

[jonnyb]

My new 20 inch iMac was shipped this morning and my elation is being somewhat tempered by all this. The more I read the more I think it has to be a hardware problem. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that I get a good one. If I don't then it's going straight back to Apple for a refund.

I agree with the poster above when he says that Apple's QC has gone to pot recently. My Airport Express died on me just after the warranty expired and I had to take my iPod Touch back because of the negative black screen problem. I'm due some good luck aren't I?

It really shouldn't be a lottery.

 

[gn!uz]

Just wanted to let you guys know I've been running my 24" 2.8GHz iMac for 3 weeks without a single glitch.. Both Tiger and Leopard, absolutely flawless...

(Bootcamp, Vista x32) VMWare Fusion, iLife08, iWork08, Adobe CS3, Logic 8, Ableton 6.0.10, Flip4Mac, Perian, HD movies, all working very smooth (except for some specific Adobe apps - they're working on it! Leopard compatiblity)

As soon as the box arrived I removed the 1Gb RAM and put in 2x 2Gb Kingston RAM. Not the Apple KTA's but regular KTH's..

It might be a RAM issue. I can imagine it's frustrating for you guys.
The easiest thing to do is to swap your memory and see if it does the trick.. If not, return it...

 

[Ice-Cube]

My freezes only occur about once in 2 weeks after the 1.0 update. And usually it freezes right after I restarted from Windows. Now I have to shut down Windows, wait for 30 seconds or so, before booting up Mac OSX. And usually the first boot will have some graphic glitches like icons not displaying properly. I will have to then shut down and boot up again. After which, I will not experience any more problems. So far this solution has worked for me.

As for this 1.2/1.3 update and leopard, I am going to wait for a few weeks before jumping on the bandwagon. So far, judging from the Apple discussion boards and forums, things are not looking so bright.

I bought the rev a macbook before and it gave me random shut downs and the battery problem. I held on to my faith and bought the iPod touch, which gave me the black screen. Finally I got the new iMacs and they screwed me once more. I don't think I will buy another Apple product in the near future after this.

Sure they have wonderful software and nice looking machines. But the core product is not even serving its basic functions. I've been reading through the forums and can't believe people are saying "I'm so lucky my mac is not freezing". Man this should not depend on luck, we all paid a few thousand dollars for a machine that is SUPPOSE to work, not to gamble and see if we got a good working one.

And AppleCare, does not seem to reflect the meaning of that word. It gives me the impression they do not seem to care instead. I have to spend 5 hours on the phone, explaining this issue, when clearly its so widespread and reported in many sites. Apple, pls buck up - I don't wish to gamble with your products anymore.

 

[wilmor42]

i received my machine on september 19th.. upgraded to 4Gb kingston ram straight away, not really had any issues with it, i've only turned the thing off/restarted it about 6 times max since i got it-most of these were required restarts after installing software.. Only one of them was down to a freeze but im not sure it was related to the 'freezing' issue.. Very unsure wether to upgrade to 1.2 (still on tiger).. i mean i dont want to introduce any problems.. So is this actually a hardware fault in our ati cards or what?

EDIT: also i have a 20 Cinema display hooked to it in extended mode.. so the graphics card is handling 2 monitors and i dont seem to be getting any problems..

 

[boer]

Basic maths

Talk of 5% is silly; it is obvious that a huge number of new iMacs are faulty. We know it is in the thousands based on the number of posts across the net, possibly into tens of thousands.

Please. Apple has sold millions of these devices which implicates 5 % being hundreds of thousands of devices. Please provide references to these hundreds of thousands of distinct faults so I can believe 5 %. Then we can talk how much over that the rate really is (supposedly).

 

[risc]

Nothing to report here, my iMac got rebooted and is working the same as before. No freezes, no this, no that... just an iMac.

 

[Killyp]

I don't think Apple has sold 'millions' of the new iMacs yet.

Either way, this isn't good. Apple really needs to test things more thoroughly before they come out. My mk1 MacBook Pro was stupendously faulty, and so many other people experienced the same thing. In one case, somebody I managed to 'switch' to Macs ended up going back to PCs after a few months because his MacBook Pro was so dodgy (despite being repaired by Apple numerous times). The mk1 MacBook had serious issues with random shutdowns and overheating (just like the MBPs), and now these new iMacs. There are other products where this has happened in the past year or two, but they don't spring to mind.

Apple really, really, needs to do something about this. They can't just ignore it because it's one of those things which will at some point spiral out of control, Macs will get a reputation of failing all the time.

 

[Bolteh]

Did the update, reset the PRAM, joy, for the first time ever, artifacts..

Sigh



Edit: I don't have additional RAM, just the RAM my iMac came with.. But I'll be fair here: apart from the occasional colored pixels popping up on near the upper edge of the screen (artifacts) in Front-Row, this machine hasn't frozen.. Even spamming cmd+m in WoW (fullscreen to windowed and back) for half a minute didn't freeze up my machine, nor did it show artifacts.. I'm holding my breath here, but I can live with this minimum of artifacts, as long as it doesn't freeze.

For those who think I'm crazy and that I should send it back: I'll lose it for more than a month due to lack of Apple Stores near.

 

[Mac2004]

My new iMac has frozen 3 times tonight since I downloaded that update. Each time I have had to force shut down the computer and restart. I have the 24 inch model. This is getting so irritating!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[ksgant]

This must be only for the brand new iMacs...as I just did a "software update" and said that everything was up-to-date. I'm on the original 24" iMac here.

EDIT: reading through the other responses, I realize I wasn't the first person to notice this.

 

[Bolteh]

Additional question: for those running leopard, did this update reduce freezing (since people reported that the freezing was far more frequent with Leopard than with Tiger)

 

[spazzcat]

I haven't frozen since I upgraded to leopard...

 

[rotlex]

Same here. 2.8GHz iMac w/4GB OWC ram. No problems before or after Leopard. I've also tried to create a freeze using the methods others have suggested. Installed the update and still, no issues.

For the record, this IS my second iMac. The first one I bought had the dreaded dead pixel issues.

I'm help in any way possible as well (comparisons, etc.)

Same experience here. Received my 2.8 this week. Installed Leoard, clean install. Installed 4GB OWC ram. No issues before or after the update. (Crosses fingers). Although it's only been a few days, I've used this thing HARD, and have purposefully tried near everything listed on these forums to make it freeze. It runs perfectly every time.

Personally, I'm really beginning to wonder if this isn't hardware related. WAY to strange how some have so many issues, and others, like myself, have ZERO.

 

[Bolteh]

I just froze after typing my previous reply -_- Freezing in Firefox, but not when stressing the GPU in WoW.. Sigh.

My last hope (lol) will be Leopard, if that doesn't fix it, this computer will be sent in for repairing, and hope it won't take a month like a friend's PowerBook.

 

[jnash]

I haven't had any freezing problems, I upgraded to 4 GIGs of ram using OCZ ram I also upgraded to leopard, done A TON of things and haven't had any freezes I am installing 1.3 now if I have freezes I will post back sorry to everyone else for having issue I dunno wth it could be

Maybe a bad batch?

 

[Thataboy]

On my new 2.8 ghz iMac (which doesnt freeze), this update fixed the bug that prevented system feedback sounds when switching volume. It was a little thing, but god it annoyed me!

 

[Thataboy]

Interesting discovery...


Removed my extra 1GB stick of crucial memory....

Tried to get it to freeze for 30 minutes... Couldn't. Still noticing artifacts though. Primarily in Time Machine.

Reset the PRAM and now I am trying as hard as I can to get a freeze or even artifacts... Been trying for 20 minutes and nothing...

Artifacts used to be soooo common. They would appear every 10 secconds in Time Machine...



Maybe a PRAM reset is in order after the update?


I am going to put my RAM back in and see what happens.

Holy 1993! "Zapping the PRAM" is something I haven't thought about in over a decade. Does that even still work in OS X? Wasnt it apple option P R? No wait, COMMAND option P R Ahh the memories!

 

[wakerider017]

I really think it is the ram for whatever reason...

Maybe it is not technically bad ram but it is causing issues.


Still 100% stable on apple ram. Crashing like crazy on crucial.

 

[SaSaSushi]

Please. Apple has sold millions of these devices which implicates 5 % being hundreds of thousands of devices. Please provide references to these hundreds of thousands of distinct faults so I can believe 5 %. Then we can talk how much over that the rate really is (supposedly).

Exactly right and I wasn't basing my entire theory of this being a problem for a small percentage overall simply on the posts to user forums. If it was a problem on such a large scale as even 5% of all machines this would be major news in the general media news outlets and not just a tech news story.

Is it a known and proven issue? Yes. Apple has openly acknowledged it.

Is it widespread to the point that one is likely to encounter it in any new iMac they purchase now? I don't think so.

Is it necessarily a hardware issue and not a software conflict or third party RAM issue? Not proven at this point one way or the other.

 

[johnmcboston]

Personally, I'm really beginning to wonder if this isn't hardware related. WAY to strange how some have so many issues, and others, like myself, have ZERO.

Hey, after only 2 months with the brand new imac, my airport card has died - so I wouldn't put anything past being a hardware problem.

 

[Yateball]

I really think it is the ram for whatever reason...

Maybe it is not technically bad ram but it is causing issues.


Still 100% stable on apple ram. Crashing like crazy on crucial.

I'm running 1gb Mushkin RAM, and 1bg Crucial RAM, with JUST the mushkin I have absolutely no problems, but whenever the crucial is put back in there's always freezing.

Wakerider might be correct.

Or this might be a completely different issue

 

[Bolteh]

I can now safely say that 1.2 made everything worse for me (Tiger, obviously).. Have been getting artifacts and about 6 freezes the past 2 hours.

According to the Blizzard Mac tech, the update fixes some issues in fullscreen stability and some optimisation..

Guess this patch wasn't meant to be a fix at all.

 

[jonnyb]

Great - I've bought 4GB crucial RAM to put in my iMac when it arrives. Anyone with Crucial RAM not having freezes?

 

[BenRoethig]

Only 5% of the machines sold before were faulty.

Unless it is a fatal design error like the G3 iBook I had before this iMac. Apple is pushing things right to the edge to make things just a little bit thinner ot better looking. Sometimes they go over that edge.