Looks like I’m not the only one whose Intel iMac 27″ beautiful screen is discoloured and dirty, with dark patches, stripes and bands.

I think Steve’s video is worth transcribing because what he said certainly casts a shadow over Apple’s legendary customer service.

—-
Hello everyone… Well, my name is Steven and I used to be a proud owner of an iMac 27″
A state of the art…. their flagship computer.
And basically after 90 days they invalidated my warranty and said that they’re not gonna fix it because it’s been used in a TOXIC ENVIRONMENT.
First of all, let me just take you on a journey… I’ll bring you over here…. to the environment that my iMac is used in.
Erm… let’s see, it’s almost like any normal person’s home office. maybe much smaller of course you know… but… well…

[Here he takes us on an impromptu tour of his humble, yet well kept, and might I say, well kitted… abode.
highlights include
microwave, plasma TV… iPhone and docking station…. and…. heaven forbid, he even has a Cup Noodle in to cupoard!!!!

It is during this tour that he shows us his iMac.

“
My iMac… My iMac… let me show you my iMac. I think you can see fairly well on the right hand side of the screen: Marks running from top to bottom. That’s actually… those seem to be getting worse. But even on a greyish background you can still see it fairly clearly. Bring it in….
Argh!… look at a that man! It’s disgusting!
But, erm… Apple have turned around an’ said I’ve been using the Mac in a TOXIC ENVIRONMENT.
YEAH. MY HOME OFFICE. YEAH. MY BLOODY HOME OFFICE!
Yeah, it might be attached to my kitchen…

”

[He continues the tour]

”
Look, my computer’s running absolutely bloody fine but…
The screen is a complete mess!
And Apple have said, “Go get stuffed, you’ve got a dirty house you’ve got a toxic bloody environment.”
And I will not accept that.
They want me to pay four hundred and seventeen frigging pounds for a new screen!
What? Because of this toxic environment? This toxic environment?
Jeezus! There’s millions upon millions of people around the world who have an office just like this…
Probably guys…. probably guys who have even small offices than this… Jeezus!

”

[Back on the tour]

”
Well. I’m afraid it’s over… You know like Apple… You know like…
Your firm… Steve Jobs….Your representative called my home a toxic environment!
And you need to get that sorted!
If you’re treating customers like this after 90 days… after 90 days… not even a year…
You are BREAKING THE LAW, sir… You are BREAKING THE LAW…
And you are breaking the covenant with he customer.
And I’ll not take…. I’ll not take it!

—-

I sincerely hope they see their stupidity and you get your problem sorted out as rapidly as I did.

I think I’m going to send this to The Register. They always seem to know what to do with material like this!

Intel iMac 27″ developing dirty, dark spots and patches on the screen : The zombie problem that just won’t die!

Like one of those nightmare zombies that never stays dead, the dreaded screen dirty dark patch screen problem has recurred….

Started with this:

My Intel ‘Aluminium’ iMac 24″ roasting with dark spots on screen

Admittedly, it did come  back from repairs in record time.

But that was only the beginning, Since this battle for a replacment continued for over a year!!

Then, my new iMac 27″ started to develop dark patches on the screen too.

FFS Apple, fix it.. I just had a new screen for my replacement iMac  in November!

I’m running it in a cool, clean dry environment.

As usual, the discolouration appears to be behind the glass. Or even behind the pixels themselves, in the underlying lighting panel. So there’s no way it could be dirt from regular use.

This time, the discolouration looks somewhat like hand prints…

Or, forget trying to describe it. Let me show you some pics…

Photos taken with an old D70, so vignetting and sensor dirt is a little bit of a problem.

Please note, that these marks only appeared last week so I’ve upped the contrast of the pictures. But I can assure you that within a month they will be quite visible without tweakage.

Ignore the yellow piss-like tinge at the bottom of the screen, although it’s there, it’s hardly noticeable at honest contrasts.

Here is a closeup of the left hand side. Note that I had to intentionally blur the picture when taking it since the moire effect of the pixels made the final image unviewable. What a mess of dots and a fine patina of blobs! Yuck!

Now for the right hand side:

This looks a little bit like the heel of someone’s hand, perhaps…?!?

What more can I add?… This is my second iMac 27″ screen and my 7th (or 8th) iMac screen in total. Grrrr Arrgh! As the phrase goes.

Apple’s quality control has not improved over the last three years.

I’ll keep you posted.

Zend Server 4.0.6 + Framework 1.9 and PDO_MYSQL on Mac OS X always defaults to /temp/mysql.sock

I always get an error like the one below when I first run Zend Server with a Zend Framework 1.9 app.

Fatal error: Uncaught exception ‘Zend_Db_Adapter_Exception’
with message ‘SQLSTATE[HY000] [2002] Can’t connect to local
MySQL server through socket ‘/tmp/mysql.sock’

Of course, recompiling PHP and so on might fix it, but I found, for time’s sake, it’s simpler to just to issue the command from the terminal. (You’ll need to be admin or know an admin’s password).

sudo ln -s /usr/local/zend/mysql/tmp/mysql.sock /tmp/mysql.sock

If you’re fed up of running this command every time you log in, just download Lingon and create a task that runs automatically on boot or login.

Rev. A iMac 17″ G5 1.6GHz doesn’t sleep or power up consistently

I’ve just been given a non functional iMac which wouldn’t switch on from a friend. It’s an iMac G5 17″ 1.6GHz first edition (Rev A) and on the assumption I could get it working, I offered her some free English lessons!

I opened her up and took a cursory look.

For those of you who have never owned a first ed. G5 iMac, they are a feat of user serviceable engineering. The interior design is as beautiful as the exterior, without a wire in sight.

Three screws and the back comes off, revealing a completely modular design. Practically every component is user serviceable and replaceable, which is a good thing since the Rev As were remarkably prone to failure, apparently!

The machine itself looked rather battered and yellowed with smoke (the previous user is a smoker) but was in really good condition considering its age, since she had thoughtfully opened it up once every few months to vacuum inside!

However, it just would not power up unless the power button was pressed repeatedly.

On plugging it in with the back off, the first of four status LEDs was on, showing a trickle current. But shorting out the power button connectors didn’t power it up like it should until a random number of presses.

Moreover, the machine would shut down the moment it was put to sleep.

After brief research, the main culprit appeared to be power supply, or more precisely a set of blown capacitors which came from a batch of fakes sold under a Japanese brand name to Dell, HP and Apple during 2004.

I pulled out the old soldering iron and replaced them with superior rated ones, one by one, testing in between.

All was hunky dory until I went to replace the final capacitor. In my excitement (!) , I forgot  to discharge the power supply, got a spark when I touched it with the soldering iron, and all was over. The thing was dead.

I decided to give up on the repair and contacted Apple to see if they would sell me a new one. No dice. In Japan, Apple is not obliged to supply user replacement parts since consumer rights are non existent. Instead I would have to ship it to them, looked at, have random parts replaced, all at my expense. They warned me that the cost would be a minimum of 48,000 yen or about 500 dollars.

Pay that? Not on your nellie.

Instead, I ordered one from http://www.macproonline.com for $120+postage on Thursday night at 2am and it arrived at lunchtime on Monday.

A five minute swap later (details available on Aples’s G5 iMac support site) and the thing has worked perfectly since!

A little disappointing, but still cheap.