I’ve been a fan of Apple’s computers every since I started on them in my design classes back in 1997. Around 2000 I bought my first Mac, a Power Mac G4 with a 17″ Graphite monitor and fell in love. This machine treated me well for about 5 years until I finally gave it away to my younger brother. Through the years I added extra hard drives, increased the memory, swapped in a Superdrive, and updated from OS 9.0 to Tiger with every major OS X update in between.
Sometime around 2004 I decided I needed more horsepower to do some video editing. I couldn’t afford a Power Mac G5 so I focused on the iMac product line. I can remember holding out for months waiting for Apple to update from the lamp-shade form factor to the new slim and white design. And then waiting a few more months until they updated these new iMac’s once again, knowing Apple traditionally has all kinds of hardware issues with a new form factor. I really wanted to make sure I got a computer that would last me as long as the G4 did.
In February of ‘05 I finally decided it was time. Went to the Apple Store at the Walden Galleria Mall and looked around. Back in 2005 Apple wasn’t putting Bluetooth modules in the iMac’s as standard option, so I had to pay extra for that. I really hate having a wireless keyboard and mouse since they eat batteries, but I wanted the option of Bluetooth in case I needed to wireless sync my Palm Treo with it. I also had them double the RAM which was stupid since everyone knows it’s more expensive buying memory from Apple. Oh well.
For the next 6 months my new iMac worked fine. The 4th of July was right around the corner and I was super pumped for a nice long holiday weekend. When I went to use my computer that weekend the screen was blank and it was turned off. Weird. I turned it on and the white pulsating light in the right corner flashed and I heard the startup chime. Then the machine died. Ugh.
Tried the obvious stuff like unplugging everything, resetting the PRAM, and rebooting. Nothing worked. Called Apple Care and they had me open it up and check some LED diagnostic lights to see what was up. Ever try to unscrew and open a computer while on the phone with some dude walking you through it? Yeah it sucked. After trying everything the customer service rep suggested he told me to take it to the Apple Store for a look.
Blah. Had to carry this heavy 20″ iMac through half of the mall to get to the store and have an Apple Genius play with it. He determined it was dead and I had to send it away for repairs. Everything would be covered since it was still under warranty and I had Apple Care. But it would take about a week to repair because of the holiday.
When I got it back everything was fine again. I was worried my hard drive would have been wiped but all my data was in check. Turned out they had to replace the display bezel, power supply, and a bunch of other innards. The parts cost close to what I paid for the computer, so they probably replaced everything to be safe.
Flash-forward two years later to my 28th birthday. Go to use my computer on my day off and guess what? Blank screen and it’s turned off. Great. After some troubleshooting I decide to take it back to the Apple Store to have a Genius look at it. No way I was sitting on hold for 2 hours again with Apple Care Support.
It was the middle of the day so no one was in the store except for a few goons who had problems with their iPods and were trying to scam new ones. The Apple Genius looks at my machine and says it’s the logic board and power supply. “Umm I just had those both replaced.” Well whatever, Apple Care was covering it and they could do the repair in store this time so I wasn’t too annoyed. Came back an hour later with a new logic board, power supply, and something called an ambient light sensor installed in my iMac. I guess when they replaced my logic board the first time it was with another bad one and before a recall on that part. Everything should be fine with it now going forward….yeah right!
Yesterday I woke up for work and went to check my email. Walked into my office and noticed my iMac was pretty loud because the fans were going strong. “Uh oh…that funny pixelated pattern flashing on my screen doesn’t look good.” I didn’t panic yet since I thought maybe it was software related and just needed a fresh restart. Force rebooted my machine and the gray Apple logo came up fine.
Then the funny pixels and static showed up again. Tried to run the diagnostic disc that came with Apple Care to see what was wrong, but that wouldn’t work either. Everything seemed to be functioning fine except for the display. Made an appointment with a Genius later in the day and hoped that I’d be eligible for the iMac G5 Power & Video Repair Extension Program since my Apple Care Warranty ran out in February.
Got to the Apple Store early after carrying my iMac through the Galleria Mall for the 3rd time! The Genius Bar was an absolute mess with all these people waiting to have their precious iPhone’s and iPod’s looked at because they did something stupid and broke them. One Genius in particular seemed extremely knowledgeable. All the other Genius’ were asking him questions and for help, so I was pumped when he was going to look at my broken iMac.
Fired up the iMac and he knew right away what the problem was. “You need a new logic board.” Come on are you kidding me? How many times can this stupid part go bad? The worst part was this would cost me around $700 to repair since my machine wasn’t under warranty. He wasn’t even interested in the fact that they’ve replaced the same part twice before. The machine obviously has some major flaw if the same thing keeps breaking.
I refuse to pay $700 to have something replaced that would probably break again. After thinking it over I decided to buy a new iMac 20″ Intel Core 2 Duo and pray it doesn’t have any issues. As much as I love Apple products they really need to figure out these quality control issues. Everyone I know has had a major hardware issue with their Apple products. I guess the days of getting 5+ years out of a Macintosh are long gone. =(
The only thing I’m worried about now is transferring all my data and applications to the new machine. I’ve been running Time Machine to backup everything so it should be a non-issue. But we’ll see just how painless Apple has made this. Since my old machine still turns on I’m going to try and put it in Fireware target mode and see if I can move everything over first. We’ll see…
Tags: Apple, Apple Store, Blog, iMac, logic board, repair, Walden Galleria Mall, warranty
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5 Comments
Had the same damn problems. Mine’s still going, just about.
VRAM’s failing, Superdrive doesn’t work, power supplied died completely…
At least I have the satisfaction of my blog posts about it getting 1st page on Google for things like “Apple vram fail”.
Grrrr.
That stinks. Sounds like you’ve had everything die atleast once on your machine.
I might be able to salvage mine. The screen doesn’t work, but I was able to boot into it via Firewire. I’m guessing I could use an external monitor if I really wanted to, but that sorta defeats the purpose of having an iMac. Meh…
Well Idont know what the problem with my iMac G5 is. When i try to start it up its starts fine them it starts to freeze then some static line starts to come accross the screen, then something is going to prompt me to restart my computer, when I do that a black screen just appears and I cant do anything but wait a few hours to restart again, then its the same thing all over again. can someone help and tell me what I need to do. Oh Iforgot to mention when the electricity chips out and come back on my iMac comes on with the electricity then it freezes up and prompt me to restart again.
@Shelly - I think you’re out of luck. Sounds like a hardware related issue and very similiar to my problem. Sounds like you’re able to start the machine fine…I never got past the gray boot screen before seeing the static and black screen.
If you’re still in warranty just take it to your local Apple store to have them look at it. Otherwise prepare for an expensive repair bill. They quoted me at around $600-700 to replace the logic board.
My mom’s iMac G5 slowly failed over a few weeks period. There were bad capacitors in many circuit board being manufactured around the time the iMac G5 came out. See - http://db.tidbits.com/article/8080. Most of the capacitors on the mid-plane are obviously swollen and failed. I went for a new machine as well. During the slow failure it screwed up hard links on both the hard drive and the Time Machine backup. I have recovered what I could from the backup after repairing it. I pulled the old hard drive and put it in an enclosure so I could repair that disk and see if there is anything worth saving off of it. Thank goodness she didn’t have much on the disk otherwise this would have been a real pain. I used the AppleCare from the new machine to get support for the data transfer and they did a good job guiding me through what I had to do.
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