New 27" iMac's had issues but is now FIXED!

[jbbutters]

Its definitely something to do with the software and/or Flash. Any flash causes me severe slowdown all around. So even while doing simple browsing if there was a flash ad anywhere on the page (almost all websites have some form of flash ads now) my imac came to a severe slowdown.

Its not the heat I'm pretty sure, while the back of the iMac does get really warm, the highest temp. I've seen it get up to is 47c which is about 10-15 degrees cooler than my mbp runs on average.

Also Windows 7 runs perfectly fine with no issues once I got it installed, so its definitely something software related. Hopefully Apple releases a patch for Flash soon as I'm currently not even booting up into OSX as its nearly unusable.

 

[53x12]

if I hadn't jacked up the fans with smcFanControl. The heat issues are my only real complaint about the iMac line.

I am curious, if you don't mind sharing, what speed you typically had the smcFanControl set at on the iMac?

 

[billyripkin]

This thread is making me hesitant on purchasing my iMac tomorrow...But I still think I will go ahead and buy it. I know that people are having problems, but some on this board have not experienced problems. I hope I won't have problems with my iMac.

This is the reason why I posted this discussion. I have owned every single iMac since they were introduced and never had a problem this bad. I am just informing people of this issue and in return hoping others don't go through the same problems I have been through. I have wasted a great deal of time over the past several days trying to fix my new computer and would hate to see anyone else waste the same amount of time as I have. In my opinion these computers have issues and are not ready for the general public. Maybe some are not affected like mine but given the amount of discussions going on I wouldn't risk purchasing one right now.

 

[Fozzybadfeet]

This is the reason why I posted this discussion. I have owned every single iMac since they were introduced and never had a problem this bad. I am just informing people of this issue and in return hoping others don't go through the same problems I have been through. I have wasted a great deal of time over the past several days trying to fix my new computer and would hate to see anyone else waste the same amount of time as I have. In my opinion these computers have issues and are not ready for the general public. Maybe some are not affected like mine but given the amount of discussions going on I wouldn't risk purchasing one right now.

Most def, your input important to me because I am making a big investment on a product of this price. I may hold back if more and more people are complaining of slowness. Hopefully Apple sends out a fix soon. All this drama with how SL sucks and how the new iMac have problems is killing my excitement on purchasing a new iMac.

 

[NJRonbo]

The problem with Apple as of late is that
is is rushing product out the door without
giving it enough test time.

The first most obvious problem was the
iPhone. It was rushed out to the masses
before it should have. Fortunately, most
of the original issues with the phone were
addressed with software updates.

In the case of the new iMac announcements
I think those were rushed out as well to
coincide with and offset the release of
Windows 7. It's becoming more and more
apparent that these new 27" machines perhaps
should have gone through further real-time
testing.

 

[ipure]

LOL, sorry to hear that. I know I made the right choice not buying the 1st batch of "overhauled" iMacs.

 

[durija]

I am curious, if you don't mind sharing, what speed you typically had the smcFanControl set at on the iMac?

At the risk of hijacking the thread, I'll answer... Normal use: 1500-1800-1800; Intensive graphics card use: 2500-3000-3000. It might seem excessive, but this is what I need to do to keep all temps around 50 C or less. Without control, I sometimes had temps as high as 83 C on the GPU and the power supply, at which point I started getting strange artifacts on screen. I just can't afford to fry the machine and be down for a week while they fix or replace.

And by the way, I agree with some others that there are issues with Flash and OS X, and for me, they seem to be worse in Snow Leopard than Vanilla Leopard.

 

[spsmyk]

Its definitely something to do with the software and/or Flash. Any flash causes me severe slowdown all around. So even while doing simple browsing if there was a flash ad anywhere on the page (almost all websites have some form of flash ads now) my imac came to a severe slowdown.

Its not the heat I'm pretty sure, while the back of the iMac does get really warm, the highest temp. I've seen it get up to is 47c which is about 10-15 degrees cooler than my mbp runs on average.

Also Windows 7 runs perfectly fine with no issues once I got it installed, so its definitely something software related. Hopefully Apple releases a patch for Flash soon as I'm currently not even booting up into OSX as its nearly unusable.

I think there may be something else wrong with your machine or else I just got a good one. Read your email and decided to see if I could recreate the issue you are having.

As I type this, I have 5 safari and firefox windows open, across my 27" imac and my 28" external --- running flash in every window, including multiple tabs in two windows (14 tabs total), hulu video (flash player), youtube video (flash) in separate windows and adob's site in another --- not a bit of slow down, except it's tough typing while listening to audio from multiple windows. I'm running the stock 27" and have about 7 or 8 other apps open (even crappy Microsoft apps) and I'm perfectly stable without any slowdown.

 

[invisionblue]

The problem with Apple as of late is that
is is rushing product out the door without
giving it enough test time.

The first most obvious problem was the
iPhone. It was rushed out to the masses
before it should have. Fortunately, most
of the original issues with the phone were
addressed with software updates.

In the case of the new iMac announcements
I think those were rushed out as well to
coincide with and offset the release of
Windows 7. It's becoming more and more
apparent that these new 27" machines perhaps
should have gone through further real-time
testing.

How do you know apple is rushing these out the door? For all we know this upgrade was done months ago and they were holding back to release them. I don't see apple making an upgrade and sending it off into production without testing it a couple hundred or thousand times.

I'm sure since the announcements that 1000's of these have been sold and there is only a few people on here complaining which is common with any product.

 

[frenchie0101]

I think there may be something else wrong with your machine or else I just got a good one. Read your email and decided to see if I could recreate the issue you are having.

As I type this, I have 5 safari and firefox windows open, across my 27" imac and my 28" external --- running flash in every window, including multiple tabs in two windows (14 tabs total), hulu video (flash player), youtube video (flash) in separate windows and adob's site in another --- not a bit of slow down, except it's tough typing while listening to audio from multiple windows. I'm running the stock 27" and have about 7 or 8 other apps open (even crappy Microsoft apps) and I'm perfectly stable without any slowdown.

well ive just done something similar, just played 8 videos all of you tube in separate tabs all at the same time, opened iphoto, imovie, photoshop, ical, address book, system preferences, pages and keynote and all seemed quick as normal, however i do hear the hard drive working hard which i never heard on the 24"

 

[watchrabbit]

Temps from ISTAT, 27"

I can give you my temps, in Celsius:
HD: 43
CPU: 33
GPU: 34
MEM: 59
Northbridge: 59

That's more than cool in my book. My UMBP 17" gets hotter. So do both my MBAs (Rev A hd and Rev C SDD)

I have Safari and Firefox open, Skype, Entourage and some other stuff.

 

[uuaschbaer]

Could the cause of the slowdown be that the processor becomes so hot that it has to underclock itself severely in a desperate attempt to not melt?

 

[NJRonbo]

How do you know apple is rushing these out the door?

Complaints.

If these were ready to go far in advance then
they would probably have had more real-time
testing.

No, I can't say positively they were but it sure
doesn't seem like these models were fully tested
prior to release.

 

[uuaschbaer]

Complaints.

If these were ready to go far in advance then
they would probably have had more real-time
testing.

No, I can't say positively they were but it sure
doesn't seem like these models were fully tested
prior to release.

If a small percentage of models have issues then one could understand how they ('they' being people at Apple testing products, not the government ) didn't notice the problem. You don't start the manufacturing process until you have tested whether the design works, you don't know whether the design works until you have started the manufacturing process. Hope you catch my drift.

 

[NJRonbo]

I understand you perfectly, and agree.
Not disagreeing nor arguing with you.

It's just rather disturbing the amount of
people coming forward on this forum about
defective 27" iMacs.

I would guess that I would probably find
a few more on other Mac forums.

It's enough to cause great concern to
every one of us that has a 27" on order.
All of us are hoping Apple takes notice of
this which is the reason why I went and
sent a letter to the CEO even before my
own machine arrived. Hopefully the issues
can be addressed before the i5 and i7
models run off the assembly line.

 

[RexTraverse]

Any reason not to believe that the i5/i7's will not have this issue? They haven't even shipped yet, shouldn't we wait for the intial batch to be released before we assume anything?

Double negative hurts my brain.

But the point is valid. The Core i5/i7 iMacs will have a completely different logic board and processor. Of course there's a possibility that problems will affect the first few batches, but unless it's something communal like bad memory or bad hard drives or something causing these issues, I wouldn't expect this exact problem to affect the Lynnfield iMacs.

 

[invisionblue]

I understand you perfectly, and agree.
Not disagreeing nor arguing with you.

It's just rather disturbing the amount of
people coming forward on this forum about
defective 27" iMacs.

I would guess that I would probably find
a few more on other Mac forums.

It's enough to cause great concern to
every one of us that has a 27" on order.
All of us are hoping Apple takes notice of
this which is the reason why I went and
sent a letter to the CEO even before my
own machine arrived. Hopefully the issues
can be addressed before the i5 and i7
models run off the assembly line.

lol you sent a letter to Jobs before getting your machine? And what if your machine is perfectly normal? What if Steve Jobs himself shows up at your door with ice cream and wants to take a look at your computer that you claimed was bad but is perfectly normal?

 

[NJRonbo]

What if Steve Jobs himself shows up at your door with ice cream and wants to take a look at your computer that you claimed was bad but is perfectly normal?

I'd tell him not to let the ice cream drip all
over the carpet.

Seriously, don't take this out of context.
Read my original reply in this thread (should
be second or third in this thread). It isn't
just about a computer I have not received
yet. It's concern over quality control which
is not exclusive of the iMacs.

 

[uuaschbaer]

I understand you perfectly, and agree.
Not disagreeing nor arguing with you.

It's just rather disturbing the amount of
people coming forward on this forum about
defective 27" iMacs.

I would guess that I would probably find
a few more on other Mac forums.

It's enough to cause great concern to
every one of us that has a 27" on order.
All of us are hoping Apple takes notice of
this which is the reason why I went and
sent a letter to the CEO even before my
own machine arrived. Hopefully the issues
can be addressed before the i5 and i7
models run off the assembly line.

It's my primary concern too, although I haven't ordered mine yet. Many countries seem to have some kind of distance selling regulations which give people who have bought something via the telephone or the internet to withdraw the contract within seven days or so. Something you could attempt, perhaps, to be on the safe side.

 

[dwd3885]

I don't understand. My 21.5 runs fine. I can have iTunes , iMovie, iPhoto, Lightroom, Firefox, Safari running hulu, twitlive, etc and I never experience a problem like a system slowdown. It runs much better than any mac I've had before.

 

[robotkiller]

Having owned a C2D 27" that I returned b/c of flickering, I would still say that the number of problems with this iteration seems fairly consistent with past rollouts of new models, IMO. Incidently, I had no problems with memory leaks or slowdown on that model.

The smart thing to do is wait til the next revision. The fun thing to do is buy immediately and hope for the best.

I am a poor learner. I put in an order for an i5 a couple of days ago.

 

[panzer06]

I'd be curious to see if any of these issues happen in bootcamp Vista or Windows 7. If I buy the i5 version in November I want to play games on that great display. I could use my uMBP for work until OS X is patched..

Cheers,

 

[dwd3885]

Having owned a C2D 27" that I returned b/c of flickering, I would still say that the number of problems with this iteration seems fairly consistent with past rollouts of new models, IMO. Incidently, I had no problems with memory leaks or slowdown on that model.

The smart thing to do is wait til the next revision. The fun thing to do is buy immediately and hope for the best.

I am a poor learner. I put in an order for an i5 a couple of days ago.

Screen flickering is not a problem. It the way led looks on white backgrounds. My MBP did the same thing. I think people are just being too anal and think they are seeing problems that don't exist.

And I think you just returned the c2d so u could get the i5 ;-)

 

[zedsdead]

Its definitely something to do with the software and/or Flash. Any flash causes me severe slowdown all around. So even while doing simple browsing if there was a flash ad anywhere on the page (almost all websites have some form of flash ads now) my imac came to a severe slowdown.

Its not the heat I'm pretty sure, while the back of the iMac does get really warm, the highest temp. I've seen it get up to is 47c which is about 10-15 degrees cooler than my mbp runs on average.

Also Windows 7 runs perfectly fine with no issues once I got it installed, so its definitely something software related. Hopefully Apple releases a patch for Flash soon as I'm currently not even booting up into OSX as its nearly unusable.

I wouldn't be surprised if Flash is the issue...it just sucks and needs to really go away. Damn Youtube - they should have converted to Quicktime.

 

[Buzz Bumble]

...

I have a 27" i7 iMac on preorder and for the past
few days have been very concerned with the
issues being reported with these new computers.

...

As the saying goes:

Never buy version 1.0​

All new computers and software (as well as anything else man-made) have problems, that's why it's ALWAYS best to wait at least a few weeks after a new release, especially if the computer / software is a vital part of your work needs. Let the "early adopters" do the bug-testing, and then buy one once the problems have been fixed.

Those "early adopters" having problems will of course get them fixed, either by a software update or a replacement machine (since it will stil be under warranty).