The Mac is back
April 28th, 2006 YvoWell its official, the iMac 20″ rev B has definitely some issues. Sure it could be streak of bad luck, but really… its gone back now twice for the same exact problem: Logic board & power supply problem. Two times now have they had to replace it. The repair costing $900 (covered by warranty and soon to be AppleCare) each time, already basically paying for the iMac (2x $900).
This time around they, the southcenter Apple Store, was a lot quicker at fixing the Mac but at a hefty cost. First thing I did when I took the iMac out of the box is open up the back to take a look since I have to insert my elsewhere purchased memory (from Crucial.com) as Apple won’t even touch my Mac if I dont take it out. When I opened up the Mac from the back I noticed something immediately. The cable that runs to the HD sensor (which is awfully close to the memory banks) was basically blocking the first memory bank from having any memory inserted, thus the Apple tech put it in my 2nd bank. A simple fix with a flat head screw to push the cable down made this problem go away. However my 2nd observation is when I noticed the power cable to “FAN1″ was completely disconnected. As in, not even close to plugged in. “FAN1″ is the fan to the CPU, aka the blazing hot G5 that Apple is literally running away from. At this point I get worried and do a complete inspection with what I can see without removing any components. I didn’t find anything else, but a lot of the iMac is covered with various pipes, heatsinks and what not.
It worries me that the Mac genuises did such a sloppy job. I know dealing with ipod after ipod can deter you from working on computers, but this was a pretty terrible job. I say this knowing my girlfriend works at that very same store. I am just glad that the iMac rev B (and A) allow easy access to work on the computer, however Rev C & the new Intel iMacs do NOT allow this so if the same Mac genuis had worked on a Rev C and my computer started smoking, I’d be in deeper problems.
So the moral of the story: I’d rather wait 10 days (like last time) for a computer that comes back without flaws then 3 days where my dad could’ve done a better job.
Yvo