Apple Fails Me. Again.

September 17, 2011 at 9:31 am | No Comments »

Feel like I’ve seen this episode before. I bought a new Mac last night. The 21.5″ iMac in the slightly more steroided standard configuration. Got it home. Spent a few hours setting it up just so. And realized it’s defective—right out of the box.

Side note: If you trust off-the-top-of-my-head finger counting, this marks the 10th Macintosh I’ve paid for with my own cash. Not to be confused with an equivalent number of Macs provided by various employers and assorted benefactors over the decades. I’ve been pushing that white-outlined, black arrow around since the 128K and System 1. The point of which is to say, I’m far from a newbie.

The issue this time, as illustrated by the photo above, involves the display. Namely wildly uneven color temperature. The top left corner is crisply cool while the opposite bottom right has a dingy warmish yellow cast.

Yeah, I know the bright-eyed young Apple store boys and girls will exchange it, blah, blah, blah. Still I’m cranky about having to box the thing up and drag it back. My track record with Macs of late (meaning since the switch to Intel) has been horrible. Three of the 10 cited above have been Intel Macs. Of those, two manifested serious defectives immediately. That’s a 66 percent failure rate.

Maybe I’m the exception. All that glowing PR can’t be made up, right?

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