No luck on keeping an apple working. what a load of crp!

[roadkill401]

So far I have managed to keep a 100% failure rate on all my apple computers.

I bought a refurb mac mini, and imessage didn't want to retain it's settings. So after 2-3 hours of testing, they concluded that I should just wipe it and start again.

3 months later, that mini started to get panic crashes. Again, only solution was to wipe and reload

This week, that same mini has now decided that it simply won't wake from sleep mode cleanly. Refused the wipe and reload solution and insisted that it goes in to be repaired before the waranty runs out. Sorry, 3 strikes and it's hardware

Bought a new factory iMac 5K in start of Jan.. out the box, the screen kept on blanking and had to hit the power button to wake it. Ship it back DOA

Got a replacement unit last week. Now imessage will not work. it's convinced that I am offline and won't let me change it.

I've actually had better luck with my $300 HP windows laptop in keeping it running. So much for the saying that apple charges a premium becuase you get a premium product that just works. So far it looks like all i got was CRAP.

 

[Nosferax]

You mad bro?

 

[mojolicious]

DOAs and jinxed computers are always a slim possibility and I guess some very unlucky souls will end up with two duds in a row, but the recurring Messages problems suggests the possibility there's something funky with your Apple ID?

 

[roadkill401]

My apple ID seems to work just fine with my ipad, and it's not as if I can do anything to the ID from my end. Not like I stuck it into a Windows box and it got reformatted or something...

I guess there is always a possibility that dud computers can get shipped out. The probability that I would get three of them in a row i'd hope would be infinitesimally small but it may have happened.

I spent a good 2 hours on the phone with a Sr. support person from Apple, and tried just about everything under the sun to figure out what is going on. They are looking to see if it is something in the backend that is killing this machine, as it turns out my Facetime also is not working, and neither is my icloud or contacts will not sync. So there must be something going on that is stopping this particular iMac from correctly registering itself with apple so that the services will work right.

But sometimes all you really need is just somewhere to vent and then you can sit and wait for the experts to figure it out.

 

[mojolicious]

Three duds in a row is like winning the lottery. A not particularly rewarding lottery, I grant you.

The most likely options would seem to be a) a banjaxed Apple ID record somewhere in the bowels of the iCloud, which as you say is beyond your control, or b) your router is firewalling something. You've factory defaulted the router? Have you got a friendly neighbour whose wifi you can 'borrow' for testing purposes? Or a friendly neighbour who you can persuade to come round and try logging in using their Apple ID on a fresh user account?

Although your friendly senior Apple support person will have suggested these things, obviously. Two hours? Sheesh.

Not like I stuck it into a Windows box and it got reformatted or something...

I'm sure I don't know what you're referring to...

:winkysmiley:

 

[andy9l]

You've had one refurb that may or may not have a hardware fault (possibly the reason it was a refurb), and one bad first-gen product. That's not hugely against the odds.

If you want a $300 HP - go buy one. I'm sure it will deliver the same experience*.

Your iCloud issue surely can't be hardware related. I'd bet my own money on that.

* it won't.

 

[roadkill401]

The most likely options would seem to be a) a banjaxed Apple ID record somewhere in the bowels of the iCloud, which as you say is beyond your control, or b) your router is firewalling something. ?

Well, I know it's not anything to do with the network on my end. I have three ipad's and they all work perfectly fine. One would hope that the imessage protocol that is used over ip would be the same for whatever platform that you are on. But just to be on the safe side, we did try logging into the mac mini and it does do imessage just fine. So that pretty much also eliminates my apple id as being the culprit as if imessage works fine on both my ipad and the family mac then is should work fine on my new imac as well.

The part that I can't control is the other Apple ID record that is used with imessage and facetime. That is the serial number registration that apple puts onto all their hardware that they use to verifiy that you have an actual mac product. These are I gather sought after by the 'hackintosh' people who need to spoof a serial number to get their fake box to work.

My microsoft comment was more a joke to say that there is not much on my end that I could have done wrong with just an apple id to make it not work. Not like I could have done anything on a windows machine to foul it up and make it no longer apple friendly.

----------

Yea, it just is a string of bad luck.

On the brighter note side. I did talk with a different apple support guy about the mac mini that hangs when it goes to sleep overnight.

He told me that I can try an internet recovery that took me back to the original OS that was on the system. (Mavericks).

Wouldn't you know it. I put on a second temp partition and loaded Mavericks back onto this computer, and it works fine. Seems the issue has to do with Yosemite. (Now that is no big surprise).

So I am going to let it see if just sticking with the older OS solves the issue, and chances are with this one that it's a software bug. But an Apple Mac computer (hardware) without a working Apple OS is just a very expensive windows or linux box.