Or as a kind gesture to the Apple community, it would be helpful to spare other potential users/buyers of the same fate.
OK here's the thing. You want to publicise these failures to force Apple to fix their design and/or manufacturing, right? Then publicise them! Send emails and letters to tech writers and bloggers. Most importantly, don't accept any bad iMacs. Return every one and don't "give up" like you did with your 24" iMac.
Apple are a public company and are therefore sensitive to shareholder concerns. Further, they are in the business to make money, and product returns cost them dearly. A small percentage is acceptable, but at a certain point it is going to be worth actually fixing the underlying issue.
These are the ways to make Apple change. Not gossiping with those already affected, and posting meaningless polls.
Chances are that the failure ratio for the remaining 90% buyers (who are not here) is not that much off.
Sorry but this is simply wrong. I'm not trying to be mean. For the following reasons:
a) The percentage of owners who are on these forums a tiny fraction the total, not 10%. It might be 0.01% or something like that. That means the error on whatever poll we take is going to be huge when extrapolated to the whole population. Simply put, the sample size does not represent a high enough proportion to be valid. Now I could be wrong, but the point is we don't know and therefore cannot assume it.
b) On what basis do you make the claim that the failure rate of the rest of the proportion of people who own the iMacs in question is the same as those on this board? In fact there is very good reason to think the opposite, because anyone with access to another computer (or who's iMacs are functioning albeit faulty) is likely to look it up on google and find links to sites such as this, and thereby report it. As I said before, these pages are honeypots to people with problems. And if Apple can't help (on the spot) the natural thing to do is to complain to anyone who can listen, which means us on these forums. I'm not saying its wrong, I'm just saying its human nature to vent.
c) Not everyone who doesn't have a problem but who does read these forums has voted NO, just as not everyone with problems voted YES. We don't know the relative proportions of those two populations, but have no reason to think they would be same, and therefore is another source of error.
Thus it is very unlikely that the failure rate reported on these pages, even if they were honest and not subject to trolls, is in any way indicative of the failure rate of all iMacs.
As both myself and MacinDoc pointed out, if the real failure rate was even in the same ballpark as that shown on this poll
a) It would be huge news on Tech sites and would probably get a mention in some non-tech news
b) Stock would tank
c) Apple would lose a buckload of money
d) (Ironically) Apple would fix the problem faster!
The fact, that the problem was reported repeating itself on the replacement iMacs would confirm high failure ratio as well
No, statistically it cannot, but it
is extremely disturbing. As I mentioned before, it looks like Apple have several problems here and need to lift their game. My issue is with people who believe that a poll such as this has any statistical meaning and therefore can be used as a basis for a purchase decision. Unfortunately, it can't.
Or do you have hard proof that the stats are wrong?
We can absolutely prove that the method of collecting the data is statistically invalid. It might be the case that, by coincidence, the data is actually correct. But the fact that the method of collection was invalid, means it cannot be used for statistical purposes.
So you would still buy a new 27inch imac, after reading about all the problems they are having?
That is precisely the question that we are trying to address. It is up to the individual to decide whether to buy. Assuming you need the machine, the question is whether you think it's worth the hassle to take it back. Solman quite rightly broke down that hassle in detail and I agree that it can be a real pain. That is a factor that we all need to make in the purchase decision, and I think Solman has certainly helped us in that regard.
If two planes from the same company crashed in the same month, would you still fly on that airline? Or would those stats be wrong too?
That depends on the reason for the crashes.
Apple could produce a complete dud of a machine and you would still rant and rave over it saying how good it is because it was made by apple.
We are trying to make meaning of the information at hand. There certainly are plenty of problems and Apple is going to incur significant cost in rectifying them under warranty. Obviously they will also investigate the reasons why they happen. Our hope is that they deem the cost to rectify the production issues is worth the investment, and that they don't deem this sort of failure rate to be acceptable.
Apple, do they make great computers? or are they great marketers?
Good question, but something that is beyond the scope of this poll to establish.
