I have this iMac that I have been trying to make it work GOOD for a long time without much success. The machine works, however, its performance is much poorer than it is expected/supposed to be. Why do I say this? Well, we only use Macs in my enterprise and even the oldest ones (2010 and 2011) work so much smoother and faster! This newer Retina computer “hangs up” unexpectedly and takes much longer to do any basic everyday task. Please note, we are a small company selling vintage car parts and all we use our computers for is Internet (Chrome browser - no we don’t keep a lot of windows open at the same time) and Excel spreadsheets (this is why I like to work with big screens in high resolution - love to see everything on our Excel sheets!).
This iMac is still under warranty (Apple Care). I took it 4 (yes, four times already) to Apple and they STILL don’t fix the issue nor give any satisfactory answers. I will try to summarise:
So, that’s exactly where we stand now. I have a 4K retina iMac with Apple Care that’s not even able to run Google Chrome and Microsoft Excel at the same time without hanging up. And Apple doesn’t stand behind their products any longer I guess. Too sad, I have been a happy customer for over 10 years now. If I wanted a slow computer and a bad customer service I would have gone with another brand… much cheaper by the way. I did not expect this from Apple. Can any one help? Can Apple really leave me out in the dark on this one?
Thank you.
This iMac is still under warranty (Apple Care). I took it 4 (yes, four times already) to Apple and they STILL don’t fix the issue nor give any satisfactory answers. I will try to summarise:
- First time I took it to an authorised service center. They received the computer and called me back 2 or 3 days later saying it had been fixed and that I would pick it up. I went there and talked to the lady who gave me my computer back. They said they only reinstalled the operating system and that solved the problems (at this point I was already frustrated since I had already done that and that did NOT fix the issue). Came back home, turned it on and that’s exactly what happened. Computer was still running slow and hanging up at certain points.
- Second time I scheduled with Apple again and took it back to the same authorised service center and BEGGED them not to call me back saying it was fixed and saying it was already fixed and that all they had done was simply reinstall the operating system. Well, you guessed right. Thats exactly what they did 2 days later. To have of course the issue not fixed one more time. I was pretty pissed off so I asked to talk to the technician / owner or whoever it was. He finally admitted to me the computer was indeed having a poorer performance than expected but that was all they could do - since they were only able to run some Apple-approved tests and my computer passed them all. Again, nothing.
- This third time I decided I was done with the authorised service centers and took it to the only Apple Store in town. I had to wait around 10 days for a slot since it is pretty busy. I went there, I was treated very nicely, my computer was received for repair and they said - this time no other questions asked - that they were going to replace ALL defective parts at no cost (computer is under Apple Care as mentioned earlier). I was pretty happy with the outcome and thought this would solve it all since they promised to refurbish the whole computer (except power supply and display). Thats exactly what they did. Did this solve the problem? Well, unfortunately not. The computer started acting even weirder on top of the slow performance. (At this point I started making videos of the computer behaviour).
- Fourth time I took it to Apple. This time I didn’t want to wait 10 more days for an appointment so I went directly to the Apple Store. They didn’t want to take my case however seeing how pissed off I was they called Elton, who is one of this stores technicians. Elton was very friendly as well, I showed him the videos and explained the whole situation. He agreed this was indeed very strange and he asked me to leave my computer with him, that he would try to “stress out” the computer to find out what the deal was. He called me next morning just to say he ran all the tests and that everything was fine. But that he would try harder to find out what was going on. He did call me a few days later. He confirmed the computer acted weird in certain situations and that he called some other technicians (?) and they concluded the problem is the graphics card which shares the memory with the computer. He asked me if I used the computer at the highest resolution which I do. He said that was exactly the problem. And that I should lower the resolution to use this computer since it was “the first generation of 4Ks”. I told him that was the reason why I bought this computer in the first place, as I wanted a big screen on high resolution for our Excel sheets. Again he said this computer was not good enough for my tasks. He suggested I should get an external dedicated video card. At this point I was pretty lost, I never thought I would hear this from an Apple technician. I asked him if there was another solution and he said “well you can always sell it and buy a newer computer”. I don’t have to explain how disappointed I was with his suggestion, I guess. I asked him if Apple would solve the problem for me somehow and he said unfortunately they couldn’t do anything else, as they had already replaced the hardware and that didn’t solve the problem.
So, that’s exactly where we stand now. I have a 4K retina iMac with Apple Care that’s not even able to run Google Chrome and Microsoft Excel at the same time without hanging up. And Apple doesn’t stand behind their products any longer I guess. Too sad, I have been a happy customer for over 10 years now. If I wanted a slow computer and a bad customer service I would have gone with another brand… much cheaper by the way. I did not expect this from Apple. Can any one help? Can Apple really leave me out in the dark on this one?
Thank you.
