I just found out that one of the USB ports is not working.
I'd like to know how Apple will handle this? Do they expect me to ship this monster because of small usb prob?
I purchased this through apple.com right when it came out (Dec 1st) and bought 3yr apple care :O
Please share your experiences!
Since you have Apple Care, they will send a service company to collect the machine from your house. But you first have to call Apple.
Chances are that you will get a different machine back.
A malfunctioning USB port is not a small problem in an all-in-one computer; they will probably have to exchange the entire main board for that, and in order to get to that mainboard, the entire computer has to be disassembled. That's work for a clock maker.
I'm in a similar situation with my new i5 iMac: Apparently, my model does not have an Airport card. At least neither the diagnosis software nor the operating system reports the existence of an Airport card in my Mac. Apple support advised me to RMA the machine and they've told me that I'd probably get a new machine in return.
The problem is, I cannot afford to do that right now -- I'm working from home a lot at the moment and need that machine. Also, I don't want to go through a full re-install of that system AGAIN; that usually keeps me busy for at least three full work days, and that is only the Mac OS X side of things. I also have Windows 7 on that machine.
And except for that Airport card, the iMac works perfectly fine. No yellow tint issue. Powerful. Quiet. Fully configured. And I'm using an external USB wireless stick anyway -- as we all know, Apple's Airport cards no longer really work since Snow Leopard, at least not with non-Apple WLAN routers.
But I really, really do not want to have that machine replaced.
Now if this was a Dell, a service technician would come to my house and fix it right there. Unfortunately, Apple does not have that sort of service. And that sucks.
But well. I have three years time to let Apple fix this. Maybe I'll do it when I've finished my current working-from-home project.
