Concerns about iMac Reliability

[MattSepeta]

I have owned and used professionally 2007 24", 2009 27" and 2010 27", all maxed out with an SSD + HDD jammed in there DIY.

2010 27" 2.93GHz iMac was the best comp I ever had the pleasure of using. Not a single problem other than a HDD failure, not at all related to the iMac.

Much prefer the experience on my iMacs to what I get with my 2011 15" MBP or my girls 2011 MBA.

In fact, I am diligintly waiting for new models to swap in my macbook pro for a imac for my office and a MBA for home.

 

[minisuds7]

I've got a 2009 27" 2.66 GHz i5 with a 1TB HDD, only 4 GB of RAM, and ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB graphics, and it's still holding up very well! Can't wait for the new iMacs though so I can run Mathematica, Matlab, CAD programs, and a few games a little faster… Overall an excellent 3 year old computer though. I always know I can rely on it… Can anyone say that about a 3 year old PC?

 

[MacSignal]

My iMac experience was not good. I will avoid them in the future. After zero problems with a 2009 Mac Mini and half a dozen 2009-2011 MBP's, my singular Mac hardware problem was/is a 15 month-old 2011 iMac suddenly and completely failing. No love and no trust for iMac reliability here.

 

[CrickettGrrrl]

2004 refurb 17" G5 PPC iMac: Still Running. Blown capacitors in 2008, logic board etc. replaced for free by Apple, had no Apple Care.

2006 refurb 17" Intel Core Duo iMac: Still Running, hardly ever turned off. *Many* vertical lines on the display in 2009, display replaced for free in January 2010 by Apple, had no Apple Care.

2011 21.5" iMac: I upgraded the RAM myself to 16GB. I love this iMac! --And this time I bought Apple Care because of the great customer service in the past.

 

[tomegun]

I've got a 2009 27" 2.66 GHz i5 with a 1TB HDD, only 4 GB of RAM, and ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB graphics, and it's still holding up very well! Can't wait for the new iMacs though so I can run Mathematica, Matlab, CAD programs, and a few games a little faster… Overall an excellent 3 year old computer though. I always know I can rely on it… Can anyone say that about a 3 year old PC?

I had a total cost of ownership discussion with a co-worker yesterday and I mentioned the fact that most PCs will be e-waste long before Apple products stop working. He mentioned an 11-year old computer he has. I asked him about upgrading RAM, video card and monitor. He claims he hasn't upgraded any of those components. The only thing I will give him is he is a very good System Administrator so he cares for his system in a way the normal consumer will not.

Oh, I have one 2011 iMac and one iMac (I think it is 7 years old) that I may have to give away to replace...otherwise it will still around for several more years.

 

[Johnny Vegas]

I am the administrator of seven different 30+ iMac labs. In my experience they are very reliable machines. These computers are always on and being used by children. Over the years I've had zero DOA. One warranty repair (screen). And one HDD failure in the oldest lab. However, I still recommend AppleCare. ~$150 for two worry-free years is worth it imho.

Oh and two aluminum keyboards that needed replaced (under warranty).

~JV

 

[mzd]

my 2007 C2D 2.8GHz iMac is still running strong. the only thing i've done with it is add more RAM. hard to believe it is already a 5 year old computer.
my main uses are Lightroom, graphics (Photoshop/Illustrator), and some music recording and video editing.
nothing too major, but it certainly isn't just a dedicated internet/facebook machine either.

 

[mmomega]

All of my iMac machines have thus far been rock solid, added ram on all of them and SSD's in some, but other than that they have been great are used daily.

I have an '08 24" and a "10 27" at my office and an '09 and '11 27"ers at home and they have given us zero problems and have yet to be taken in for service of any kind.
I am know running in to the jealousy factor at work where more employees want the iMacs to work even though their current computers may be slightly more powerful, lol. My wife (the big dog) has the 27" and one of my better performing has the 08 but noone knows how old they are they just ask"when mine breaks down can I get an iMac as a replacement?".

 

[Yamcha]

I would say iMacs are pretty reliable, much more then Apple's notebooks.. My parents own a 2006 iMac 20" and It's still working without any issues..

 

[ihuman:D]

I've got a 2009 27" 2.66 GHz i5 with a 1TB HDD, only 4 GB of RAM, and ATI Radeon HD 4850 512 MB graphics, and it's still holding up very well! Can't wait for the new iMacs though so I can run Mathematica, Matlab, CAD programs, and a few games a little faster… Overall an excellent 3 year old computer though. I always know I can rely on it… Can anyone say that about a 3 year old PC?

Yes.

 

[cyclotron451]

Agree with other posters about the reliability of iMacs being adequately good.

Still have a 512k/5MB HDD fat mac with OS3 that works and I have the iMac266, then DV400, eMac, PPC MacMinis, 2007 & 2008 Aluminium iMacs, most of these have been DIY upgraded beyond the original spec.. (Even upgraded my Newton OMP!)

I have just bought the 27" current base iMac on the basis that I am aware of all of its likely problems and it will do everything I need it to do. When I phoned Applestore to order they *immediately* talked me into qualifying for the educational discount! I happily accepted a discount.

I did have a 2007 iMac optical disk failure recently, after 5 years, I'll either ignore it or replace with an SSD; some iMac HDD's have degraded months after the 2 yr warranty, usually allows me to upgrade in capacity and technology.. I'll probably change the 27" iMac CPU to quad i7 when the price is right.

The future?, for playing and educating the kids have got the Raspberry Pi ($30 BYODKMOS) which lives in a Lego case. The R.Pi is likely the Mac of the future with TV as the display.

 

[bobr1952]

I haven't done a thing to my 2008 iMac--runs all the time--just sleep when I'm not using it--never gets restarted--basically 100 percent reliability for the almost 5 years I've owned it.

 

[Paulywauly]

No, the problem was a well-published case of industrial espionage where the Chinese copied a Japanese manufacturing process for capacitors except they missed a step and the capacitors they made would start leaking after a year or two.

This affected an untold number of electronic products around ~2004. Personally I had a TV and a computer motherboard stop working and I'm sure it was because of this problem.

Anyway, it had nothing to do with shoddy engineering on Apple's part.

Yep this is totally true, the issue with the capacitors in G5s was with the capacitors themselves.

I work in IT and my company installs and supports around 10000 new Dell pcs and laptops a year. From 2004 to 2007 we received numerous tech support calls everyday which resulted in PCs being sent back to Dell due to blown capacitors. It got so bad we would wait until there were a large batch of them before getting an engineer from DELL to sort them out otherwise we would have been on the phone to them all day.

 

[chevalier433]

My iMac is the best computer i ever own i am in love with it for casual or professional use and after some mods i done its perfect and it will exceed my need for years to come the only downside is some internal parts is low quality or very sensitive.