New to Apple - Very Disappointed

[cb31]

I have just bought a 17inch iMac after browsing this site for the last six months and am a bit disappointed. After coming from the Windows world I was expecting this sublime experience that everyone seems to eulogise about on here. Anyway, my story...

I switched the mac on and went through the setup. I couldn't get the airport going on my 802.11b network at home but thought no big deal as it is going to be connected by cable. What did shock me was the inability to try different settings in the setup process, it basically asked for some simple settings and then came back with an error. To mess with the security settings and the rest you had to start over actually inside os x, not exactly a great start.

Later that day photo booth froze with the beachball but the rest of the computer was ok. I couldn't get it to close and then the whole computer froze, only pulling the plug helped.

Over the next few days front row either doesn't start until after a reboot or it randomly quits when playing something. I asked on here and apparently I am not on my own with these problems.

To top it off I tried to register my Applecare and the website says it has no record of my agreement.

Although all these problems are relatively minor they have given me a very bad impression of Apple. I have ordered another 1gig of ram but now won't be able to install that until I am sure the computer is stable. Having come from Windows this is bad to me, I have never seen a blue screen of death or experienced a crash in a couple of years on any of my 3 pc's, and that is on widely different hardware. To have multiple problems in a week on a closed system mac running only factory installed software is frankly pathetic.

I am no mac hater or Windows lover, I like Unix the best. I want this mac to be good so I can upgrade my laptop to an apple one with the santa rosa chipset next year. The actual hardware is well designed and the whole system is very promising, I'm just sad the software isn't stable.

 

[iGary]

I switched the mac on and went through the setup. I couldn't get the airport going on my 802.11b network at home but thought no big deal as it is going to be connected by cable. What did shock me was the inability to try different settings in the setup process, it basically asked for some simple settings and then came back with an error. To mess with the security settings and the rest you had to start over actually inside os x, not exactly a great start.

Windows would have not asked you at all and left it to your own devices.

Later that day photo booth froze with the beachball but the rest of the computer was ok. I couldn't get it to close and then the whole computer froze, only pulling the plug helped.

Yeah, next time hold down the power button until it shuts down - did you?

To top it off I tried to register my Applecare and the website says it has no record of my agreement.

Did you register your computer with Apple first?

 

[savar]

I am no mac hater or Windows lover, I like Unix the best. I want this mac to be good so I can upgrade my laptop to an apple one with the santa rosa chipset next year. The actual hardware is well designed and the whole system is very promising, I'm just sad the software isn't stable.

Front Row is rather unstable in my experience, it feels like it was rushed out the door too soon. As for the setup wizard, I mean come on its a wizard. Its not really meant for people who know what they're doing -- quite the opposite. I don't even mess with that stuff anymore, just force-quit through everything and then do it myself.

But if you like Unix then you'll be quite please to find that the BSD environment on your mac is very familiar and quite complete.

 

[Cooknn]

I have just bought a 17inch iMac after browsing this site for the last six months and am a bit disappointed. After coming from the Windows world I was expecting this sublime experience that everyone seems to eulogise about on here. Anyway, my story...

To be honest, I think the Intel Mac's are more prone to software issues from my experience. The transition will be worth it in the long run, but right now we are experiencing some growing pains, IMHO. You just jumped in at the wrong time if you're expecting the perfect experience that most of us talk about - most likely regarding our PPC Mac's

 

[Eidorian]

Later that day photo booth froze with the beachball but the rest of the computer was ok. I couldn't get it to close and then the whole computer froze, only pulling the plug helped.

Force Quit the application. (Press Cmd-Option-Esc.) There's no need to power the machine down for one beachballing application.

 

[faintember]

Later that day photo booth froze with the beachball but the rest of the computer was ok. I couldn't get it to close and then the whole computer froze, only pulling the plug helped.

Did you try to Force Quit the application? Command+Option+Esc, select program, press force quit.

I have never seen a blue screen of death or experienced a crash in a couple of years on any of my 3 pc's, and that is on widely different hardware.

For some reason i am skeptical of this previous comment unless the PCs were running Linux.

 

[plinden]

I switched the mac on and went through the setup. I couldn't get the airport going on my 802.11b network at home but thought no big deal as it is going to be connected by cable. What did shock me was the inability to try different settings in the setup process, it basically asked for some simple settings and then came back with an error. To mess with the security settings and the rest you had to start over actually inside os x, not exactly a great start.

Hmm, I know everyone's experience is different, but I set up my wife's Macbook on Monday and all I had to do was enter the WPA password. However, wireless is still a bit of hit or miss - if you look at people's reviews of wireless routers they all get either 10/10 or 0/10 depending on how their computers interacted with the router. It may just be that your router and the iMac don't talk well together. This is true with Windows too.

Later that day photo booth froze with the beachball but the rest of the computer was ok. I couldn't get it to close and then the whole computer froze, only pulling the plug helped.

Over the next few days front row either doesn't start until after a reboot or it randomly quits when playing something. I asked on here and apparently I am not on my own with these problems.

This shouldn't happen. You should report it.

To top it off I tried to register my Applecare and the website says it has no record of my agreement.

Contact Apple customer service directly. I had a problem in January this year with registering Applecare for my iPod - they had in their records that I had bought it in December 2004, but I had bought it in February 2005, so their website was saying I was out of the year's period. Five minutes on the phone cleared this up.

Although all these problems are relatively minor they have given me a very bad impression of Apple. I have ordered another 1gig of ram but now won't be able to install that until I am sure the computer is stable.

Go ahead and install the RAM. It won't do any harm and you can easily remove it again. Let us know if it improves anything. I have 2GB RAM in my 17" iMac and the only stability problems I've had were when running earlier versions of Parallels.

Having come from Windows this is bad to me, I have never seen a blue screen of death or experienced a crash in a couple of years on any of my 3 pc's, and that is on widely different hardware.

Well, the default behaviour in XP is to restart on a system crash, hence the much smaller number of BSODs reported. It's human nature to remember big in-yer-face blue screens rather than system restarts. I only started to notice an occasional restart after I found out about that, although that may have been more to do with the PC dying since it crashed fatally a few months later.

To have multiple problems in a week on a closed system mac running only factory installed software is frankly pathetic.

There's always the chance that one or two computers will have bad components that sour the experience for a couple of people. I wonder if a bad RAM module could cause random problems, although I would think it wouldn't be restricted to one application.

The experience of the majority of iMac users appears to be overwhelmingly positive. Sorry, that won't make you feel any better.

It's maybe a placebo, but you could try verifying your disk and fixing any problems, and repairing permissions.

And, is your software fully up to date? I didn't do a lot of research, but there's a thread here that mentions FrontRow problems with one particular OS X build.

 

[caccamolle]

Force Quit the application. (Press Cmd-Option-Esc.) There's no need to power the machine down for one beachballing application.

man ! ctrl-click on the app in the dock and select force quit. so much easier

 

[Eidorian]

man ! ctrl-click on the app in the dock and select force quit. so much easier

That sometimes doesn't work or is REALLY slow.

 

[PeterKG]

I'm afraid this push by Apple to get more Windows users, is a real problem. They don't know the Mac or OSX so they have issues, and it sours them. Being a long time Mac user first thing I would have done was reinstall the OS. It sounds like this person has no hardware issues.

 

[Play Ultimate]

RE:Network set-up:
Most people have only one set-up for thier internet thus only one option on the Wizard. As you probably discovered you can have lots of different set-ups depending on your location. When I was traveling, using dial-up when wireless was unavailable, I would have seperate setting for the various cities so I only had to input the number and passwords once.

RE Router: Some routers are not Mac-compatible. Check to make sure yours is.

What you are experiencing are growing pains. Every time you try something new, it will feel awkward. Macs, despite their ease of use, is no different. The way the user interacts is different. And you probably know Windows inside out and backwards, and you don't know OSX. Be patient and have fun.

 

[pilotError]

kill it!

Your a Unix dude...

Drop into terminal, ps -A and kill that sucker! LOL

I'm a switcher and I'm still trying to get used to all these damn keyboard commands.

The biggest frustration has been the right click support, but I'm getting better with it...

I didn't know how to kill an application either. I do like the windows task manager for stuff like this, but kill works just as well!

I really need to go buy a dummies book for this thing...

As far as the wireless, i have a belkin pre-N router and this thing is very fast compared to my Dell laptop which is an 802.11g built in.

You might want to upgrade your wireless router.

Mike...

 

[cb31]

Thanks for all the replies. I'm sorry if I came across badly, I didn't mean to. It is just that I've been looking forward to this for a long time and not then getting the experience I expected is difficult.

In answer to some of your questions, in no particular order.

I have been using various computers for the last 25 years, work in IT and do a bit of Unix SA work as part of my job, so I wouldn't consider myself technically incompetent. Granted I don't know os x well but am trying to learn fast.

I tried force-quit but it wouldn't even do that.

I ran the software update as soon as I got the machine so I have the latest of everything.

I will ring Apple tomorrow and get the applecare sorted, report my problems and see what they suggest.

I realise that wireless is a bit of a lottery sometimes but to present you with a pretty retarded wizard that gives you no proper control or errors is not good. They should give you an advanced option or at least decent error messages. This is a bit of a moot point for me anyway as I have connected it via cable now for speed.

I didn't want to reinstall the os as the machine was brand new, only a day or so old.

My pc's have never crashed, which is pretty remarkable given the potentially different configurations and devices that Windows has to be able to support. Granted they have to be rebooted once in a while, applications crash sometimes, memory reclamation and the NT kernels scheduler are terrible. I think Windows gets too hard a time in the mac world and having seen the other side, at least on Intel, Windows is just as stable and reliable.

Having said that I do want to switch, I love the idea of a unix kernel, os x in general and the hardware is extremely well designed. I can't return this mac even if I wanted to so I'm here for good, hopefully I will love it enough to make sure my next laptop is a mac also.

 

[Roy Hobbs]

Never a Blue Screen or crash in 3 years??

Have you ever actaully turned on these windows machines??
Thats awesome if you have gotten those results, but I have never heard of such a thing

 

[electronboy]

Your running the Intel product. That is why we have not upgraded any of our PowerMacs or PowerBooks. Nice folks like yourself can work out all the bugs for us!

AppleCare always thinks you have not paid for it. This seems to be an industry problem.

 

[davede70]

I'm afraid this push by Apple to get more Windows users, is a real problem. They don't know the Mac or OSX so they have issues, and it sours them. Being a long time Mac user first thing I would have done was reinstall the OS. It sounds like this person has no hardware issues.

I just bought a Macbook and I agree with you 100%. I knew going in there was going to be a transition for me to switch to Mac from PC. I knew there would be a lot of "that's not how it works on my PC" as I was tinkering and playing around with it in the first few days.

But because the Mac is so much user friendly I picked up on things very quickly. I've had it for 3 days now and I feel rather comfortable using it. I haven't done much advance work on it and there are a few things that I miss that my PC does that my Mac can't but overall I will probably never own another PC after this. I am hooked.

If I had the luck the starter of the thread had I would probably feel the same way.

 

[dr_lha]

To be honest, I think the Intel Mac's are more prone to software issues from my experience. The transition will be worth it in the long run, but right now we are experiencing some growing pains, IMHO. You just jumped in at the wrong time if you're expecting the perfect experience that most of us talk about - most likely regarding our PPC Mac's

Perhaps, but I have to say with my Mac mini I have not had any issues with Front Row at all, it works flawlessly for me, as does (almost) everything else with the computer.

The "almost" is that for some reason my machine seems to lose its WiFi connection after 7-8 hours on, and I have to turn the Airport off and on again for it to work. Annoying, but a minor inconvience really in what has been an amazingly much smoother transition than I ever thought possible.

 

[howesey]

Never a Blue Screen or crash in 3 years??

Have you ever actaully turned on these windows machines??
Thats awesome if you have gotten those results, but I have never heard of such a thing

Just look after the machine and it should be fine. I have one which has been booted for over 2 years now.

 

[celebrian23]

I'd be disappointed if I was in your shoes too- I'm hoping my macbook purchase in a week or two is a positive experience or I shall have to return to the world of windows.

 

[thegreatluke]

A brand new Core Duo iMac should never beachball, especially on something as simple as FrontRow or Photo Booth.

Try doing the Hardware Test. You can look it up in the included manual. My MBP showed the same symptoms and it was defective; it had a failed logic board. (Not that yours has a failed logic board, it's just good to make sure.)

Macs are amazing when you get a working computer. The new Intel Macs seem to have some quality control issues... it's more (un)luck of the draw.

 

[jlsniu]

New to Mac too

I just purchased a MacBook. I've been fairly happy with it. Still getting used to the different things from Windows to Mac. I did have a to reformat it the day after I got it. I tried installing symantec and it wouldn't install, kept crashing but also wouldn't let me uninstall it. I blame symantec! I'm still getting used to the menus and stuff. I like that programs are contained within in a window. On the mac, such as Office X, I get lost in the different toolbar boxes rather than being toolbars along the top.

I LOVE the transition effects of the mac and some of the other fun little things that Tiger does.

The last thing I I'm very disappointed about is that the edges of the macbook are really sharp. So when I'm typing if my wrists rest on the laptop, its very painful after a while. They should have put rounded edges at least on the bottom half of the laptop where your hand is going to rest.

 

[IJ Reilly]

I'm afraid this push by Apple to get more Windows users, is a real problem. They don't know the Mac or OSX so they have issues, and it sours them. Being a long time Mac user first thing I would have done was reinstall the OS. It sounds like this person has no hardware issues.

Gack! No, this is the last thing you should do, if at all!

Based on the description, how can you tell whether the problem is hardware or software?

 

[faintember]

I tried installing symantec and it wouldn't install, kept crashing but also wouldn't let me uninstall it.

Dont install symantec on your Mac. If you want a anti-virus program there are plenty of free ones for the Mac. Symantec software is crappy for the Mac, period.

The last thing I I'm very disappointed about is that the edges of the macbook are really sharp. So when I'm typing if my wrists rest on the laptop, its very painful after a while. They should have put rounded edges at least on the bottom half of the laptop where your hand is going to rest.

Others and myself have noticed that typing with proper technique eliminates this problem, and it will prevent CTS in the future.

Glad everything else is going well for you.

 

[/dev/toaster]

I am a new switcher as well, and things have been going down hill week by week. I find my self calling Applecare 2 times a week and not getting results.

I am really starting to think that I need a total replacement for my machine. Check out todays newest problem ...

 

[JMG]

Never a Blue Screen or crash in 3 years??

Have you ever actaully turned on these windows machines??
Thats awesome if you have gotten those results, but I have never heard of such a thing

I haven't had a blue screen of death in about 3-4 years. XP is fairly stable. On another note my MBP crashed hard yesterday. It would freeze 5 sec after a reboot. I was able to save it in safe mode however.