The 2012 27" iMac is a fantastic system marred by poor quality control.

[Hexley]

That is how I wake mine also. I found it a bit weird at first, actually I thought the computer was dead, then my husband showed me. I suspect it is because I use bluetooth accessories, and the iMac can't "see" them when it's sleeping!

At first I tapped the on button on the wireless keyboard and magic trackpad then tape their respective buttons with no response.

Ultimately I tap the power button of the iMac. I sometimes forget that iMac falls asleep and I worry I would do a hard shutdown thus damaging the iMac.

I know it rarely damages the iMac or the files there in but this is a really new iMac... I want to baby it for a few months and treat it like yesterday's news by its 3rd year.

 

[WilliamG]

I dont know if this is a feature or a flaw with the 2012 but when the computer goes to sleep I cannot wake it up by merely typing on the wireless keyboard or the magic trackpad.

With my 2007 I can wake up my iMac by typing on the wired keyboard or mouse.

I wake up my 2012 by tapping the power button. I am not used to it but that's the case.

Could you guys list all the failures of your 2012 iMacs so I can use it as a checklist?

I have less than 48 hours before I can RMA this iMac. When it lapses I have to put up with repairs and not a replacement.

I am glad I got my iMac 12 weeks after I ordered. It gave enough people enough time to report back possible flaws. Whether they are factual, fictional, trivial or deal breakers.

Mind you my iMac sat in one warehouse from 1/24/13 until 7 days ago in Singapore.

That is how I wake mine also. I found it a bit weird at first, actually I thought the computer was dead, then my husband showed me. I suspect it is because I use bluetooth accessories, and the iMac can't "see" them when it's sleeping!

I wake my 2012 iMac with my Apple BT keyboard just fine. Check the Bluetooth options in System Preferences to see if you have the option selected to let BT devices wake your iMac from sleep.

 

[Yebubbleman]

Here is a tale of woe. I'm not crying foul, or expecting sympathy or anything of that sort. I just wanted to express on a forum how disappointed I am with Apple's quality control on their 2012 27" iMac.

So here's how it started.

Ordered a 27" i7 iMac on Apple.com the second they went live back in November, 2012.

Received iMac December 15. All was fine. The screen was a tad yellower than I would have liked, but I was willing to live with it because I had no screen bleed or other screen issues. I had the typical IPS "glow" in the corners, but no bleed.

However, I started to experience a terrible buzzing from the graphics card whenever I would be playing games that taxed the GPU. It drove me nuts to the point of setting up an exchange. However, that took about six weeks to organize.

The first replacement had a nasty piece of "dirt" of some sort under the glass, right in the middle.

The second replacement, third replacement, fourth replacement had absolutely ghastly screen bleed, and I've been forced to basically stick with my the fifth replacement, which - while not perfect (I don't expect perfection anyway), is "acceptable."

I took some pictures of three of the replacements. I know this is not scientific, but the bleed on these LG panels was beyond acceptable, especially when watching a movie. My wife even peered in a few times and had several exclamations when I asked her for her opinion on whether these panels were acceptable.

All these pictures were taken at 65% iMac brightness, which is "normal" brightness level. Also note that the "bleed" in the top left and right of each iMac is NOT bleed, but simply the IPS glow. All iMacs will glow like this in the top left/right of the display. If you move your head directly in front of the glowing top left/right corners, the glow will disappear.

Anyway, here was one of the replacement systems. Note the outrageous screen bleed in the lower left region. Watching movies on this was, in a word, awful. Just awful.

Image


The next iMac wasn't any better, but just smeared that bleed around the left side of the screen. There was literally NO black levels on the left side of the screen, and this was by far some of the worst bleed I've seen on a consumer electronics display:


Image


And then the last iMac I took pictures of, you can see how there's reasonably better black levels on the lower left, and then the lower right is this insane hotspot of bleed. Crazy...


Image


So there's my tale of woe. To Apple's credit, they were able to see the issues themselves in their back room under "normal" lighting at the store, and apologized profusely for the issues. It is is possible to get a mostly yellow-free/bleed-free iMac, but it may take quite a few exchanges.

Oh, and none of the replacement iMacs experienced the terrible buzzing noise of my first one, so that's something at least.

It's just a shame, the whole thing. The 2012 27" iMac is simply fantastically powerful. That Apple managed to stuff an Intel 3770 CPU, a 680MX 2GB GPU, PSU, RAM, several drives etc, and have it cooled by just one extremely quiet fan (in normal use) is a testament to fantastic design. It's a shame the LCD panel is by far (to me at least) the weakest link in the whole setup.

I can't speak for other people, but I'd be happy paying several hundred dollars more to guarantee a higher quality panel.

I really hope nobody else has to go through the nightmare of iMac exchanges. Thankfully my boot OS is on a Thunderbolt SSD, so I didn't have to spend hours reinstalling my OS. Just connect my drive and away I went! Still, lugging an iMac back to the store over and over was not my idea of fun.

Thanks for reading.

The really sad truth of it all is that lately (Mid 2007 through present), the iMac, while being a fantastic machine for many and the perfect Mac for a lot of people in theory, really is marred by poor quality control and by an overriding attention to design at the expense of proper engineering, leading to many of the problems that have been had with them.

 

[Hexley]

I wake my 2012 iMac with my Apple BT keyboard just fine. Check the Bluetooth options in System Preferences to see if you have the option selected to let BT devices wake your iMac from sleep.

Tonight I was able to wake it up without changing any settings. I checked my Bt and it the feature was activated.

----------

The really sad truth of it all is that lately (Mid 2007 through present), the iMac, while being a fantastic machine for many and the perfect Mac for a lot of people in theory, really is marred by poor quality control and by an overriding attention to design at the expense of proper engineering, leading to many of the problems that have been had with them.

I've been a Apple customer since 2000. And I know that "revision A" Macs often are the most problematic revisions. Seeming this is the first iMac with the new design it isnt surprising it had problems.

Having said that my iMac's close to perfect.

My target tomorrow morning is to "churn" it.

 

[MacAlien]

Dunno. A faulty computer is always going to happen when there's a mass production. I would take any complaints on a forum with a grain of salt since for every one faulty iMac, there's probably a dozen or more non-faulty ones. And as somebody said, First gen computers always rear their ugly heads and things improve by the second gen computers. However, I think the biggest gripe I could have is the enormous wait time on these new iMacs, both directly purchased through Apple as well as through resellers. But that's attributed to the fact their screen process isn't very efficient it seems.

 

[hfg]

I dont know if this is a feature or a flaw with the 2012 but when the computer goes to sleep I cannot wake it up by merely typing on the wireless keyboard or the magic trackpad.

With my 2007 I can wake up my iMac by typing on the wired keyboard or mouse.

I wake up my 2012 by tapping the power button. I am not used to it but that's the case.

Could you guys list all the failures of your 2012 iMacs so I can use it as a checklist?

I have less than 48 hours before I can RMA this iMac. When it lapses I have to put up with repairs and not a replacement.

I am glad I got my iMac 12 weeks after I ordered. It gave enough people enough time to report back possible flaws. Whether they are factual, fictional, trivial or deal breakers.

Mind you my iMac sat in one warehouse from 1/24/13 until 7 days ago in Singapore.

On the wireless keyboard, simply pressing the "Shift" or "return" key will wake the iMac up on mine. Other keys or mouse/trackpad have no effect.

 

[WilliamG]

On the wireless keyboard, simply pressing the "Shift" or "return" key will wake the iMac up on mine. Other keys or mouse/trackpad have no effect.

Weird. Pressing any key for me on the Apple BT keyboard wakes up my iMac.

 

[hfg]

Weird. Pressing any key for me on the Apple BT keyboard wakes up my iMac.

I wonder if that is a setting somewhere. I thought I read somewhere that by-default only the "large keys" on the wireless keyboard would wake the 2012 iMac. Of course, I can't seem to locate it now...

 

[mixart]

If only the iMac screen had the same EIZO's digital uniformity equalizer (DUE) technology, that ensure no backlight bleeding, I would be buying an iMac. Just look at this video, where they are filming the Eizo ColorEdge CX240 from besides. Looks wonderful I'm going to buy an Eizo ColorEdge CX270 or a ColorEdge CS270, if its coming and a Macbook Pro Retina later this year instead. Hopefully the Haswell MBPR will have the 32GB option.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XuM7Ck1Qsg

 

[WilliamG]

I wonder if that is a setting somewhere. I thought I read somewhere that by-default only the "large keys" on the wireless keyboard would wake the 2012 iMac. Of course, I can't seem to locate it now...

The only option I have selected is the one in the image below for letting the keyboard wake the system up. I've never heard of "large" keys waking up the system. If that was ever true, that's news to me!

 

[3460169]

...
I just wanted to express on a forum how disappointed I am with Apple's quality control on their 2012 27" iMac.

...

I really hope nobody else has to go through the nightmare of iMac exchanges.

Hate to revive an old thread but I'd like to just share my similar experience. Apparently the QC issues remain.

I purchased the 1TB Fusion/680MX configuration a few days (the high-end model offered in-store). It had absolutely atrocious screen bleeding and went back to the Apple Store the next day for replacement.

I unboxed the replacement in the store to check out the screen quality. It looked OK, although it's hard to tell in a environment that's as brightly lit as an Apple Store. Being optimistic I took it home where it became apparent that this unit had bleeding as well but not nearly as bad as the first. OK, great, but WTF is that buzzing?? This unit has the same graphics buzzing as the OP's first unit; depending on what application is in the foreground and/or the brightness of the screen, in a quiet room this thing sounds like a bug zapper.

One more trip to the Apple Store later this week, assuming they get newer builds of this configuration in stock. Hopefully third time's a charm.

 

[WilliamG]

Hate to revive an old thread but I'd like to just share my similar experience. Apparently the QC issues remain.

I purchased the 1TB Fusion/680MX configuration a few days (the high-end model offered in-store). It had absolutely atrocious screen bleeding and went back to the Apple Store the next day for replacement.

I unboxed the replacement in the store to check out the screen quality. It looked OK, although it's hard to tell in a environment that's as brightly lit as an Apple Store. Being optimistic I took it home where it became apparent that this unit had bleeding as well but not nearly as bad as the first. OK, great, but WTF is that buzzing?? This unit has the same graphics buzzing as the OP's first unit; depending on what application is in the foreground and/or the brightness of the screen, in a quiet room this thing sounds like a bug zapper.

One more trip to the Apple Store later this week, assuming they get newer builds of this configuration in stock. Hopefully third time's a charm.

Sorry you're having a bad time.

To be completely fair, the buzzing on my first iMac had nothing to do with what was in the foreground or the brightness of the screen. It was to do with GPU load. The higher the load, the louder the buzz. Either way, yours shouldn't be buzzing!

Good luck with the next one. You'll get there in the end.

 

[3460169]

Sorry you're having a bad time.

To be completely fair, the buzzing on my first iMac had nothing to do with what was in the foreground or the brightness of the screen. It was to do with GPU load. The higher the load, the louder the buzz. Either way, yours shouldn't be buzzing!

Good luck with the next one. You'll get there in the end.

Thanks for the moral support. I've had bad luck with iMacs in the past (see my signature which hasn't been updated in a few years), but that was pertaining to the Apple Store's ability to do repairs (said ability is nearly 100% absent at my local store).

So it's a different kind of buzz eh? Mine comes is either on or off depending on the foreground app, whether it's full-screen or not and so on. The brightness affects the intensity of the buzz: the brighter the display, the louder the buzz. All in all, pretty ridiculous considering the price tag.

I'm waiting a few days for the store to have a new shipment; this doesn't necessarily mean the machines will actually have been manufactured very recently but I'm hopeful. The two 2012 iMacs I have tried so far were manufactured in March and April of this year according to serial number lookups. Who knows, maybe they worked out some QC problems in May or Juine.

 

[WilliamG]

Thanks for the moral support. I've had bad luck with iMacs in the past (see my signature which hasn't been updated in a few years), but that was pertaining to the Apple Store's ability to do repairs (said ability is nearly 100% absent at my local store).

So it's a different kind of buzz eh? Mine comes is either on or off depending on the foreground app, whether it's full-screen or not and so on. The brightness affects the intensity of the buzz: the brighter the display, the louder the buzz. All in all, pretty ridiculous considering the price tag.

I'm waiting a few days for the store to have a new shipment; this doesn't necessarily mean the machines will actually have been manufactured very recently but I'm hopeful. The two 2012 iMacs I have tried so far were manufactured in March and April of this year according to serial number lookups. Who knows, maybe they worked out some QC problems in May or Juine.

Yeah my buzzing = very different.

Really, nothing is perfect, but keep the faith.

 

[tekmoe]

In case anyone is getting worried about quality control issues, I will leave this here...

Just got my 27" iMac 3.4 i7/1TB Fusion/680MX Graphics and it is absolutely fantastic. No issues here. Sorry to hear about the bad ones but there are plenty of good ones out there too.

 

[Lava Lamp Freak]

I had the same issues earlier this year with the 2012 27-inch iMac. I had four, and all of them had screen issues. Three of them had image retention, one had a noisy fan, and all four of them had horrible backlighting. I finally gave up, returned the iMac, and bought an XPS 8500 and U2713HW. This Dell monitor has the same backlighting issues as the iMac, which leads me to believe it is the same panel. It doesn't have any image retention, though.

I'd like to get another Mac, but I really don't want to take another chance on the all-in-one iMac after the problems I had. I may get a Mac Mini, once they're updated, and use it along with my current setup.

 

[KaraH]

Oh how I wish Apple would simply put iMac internals in a box that I could just hook up to a monitor.

Same here. Not just say 'we have the mac mini' ... it is not the same thing. I do not want to collect more monitors every time I upgrade one of my computers and do want to be able to upgrade/replace the monitor if need be.

 

[3460169]

Yeah my buzzing = very different.

Really, nothing is perfect, but keep the faith.

I discovered yesterday that the buzzing on mine is also directly related to temperature of the machine. I woke the machine from deep sleep (15 hours or so) and there was absolutely no buzzing, regardless of the application in use. Once it was up to normal operating temperature, the buzzing would come and go depending on brightness level and/or the application I was using.

I'm attempting a second exchange tomorrow.

In case anyone is getting worried about quality control issues, I will leave this here...

Just got my 27" iMac 3.4 i7/1TB Fusion/680MX Graphics and it is absolutely fantastic. No issues here. Sorry to hear about the bad ones but there are plenty of good ones out there too.

Thanks for re-kindling my hope.

 

[3460169]

I visited the Apple Store for a second replacement this past Saturday. I was told if I need yet another replacement it'll have to go through the Genius bar, rather than just a straight exchange within the 14-day period. I absolutely dread the "Genius" bar at this store.

Fortunately this unit is better off than the previous two. Light bleed is virtually absent; there's very faint bleed at the lower right corner. Honestly the IPS glow is more annoying.

The GPU buzzing, however, is still present -- or maybe it's a finicky inverter. I'm suspicious of dirty power in my residence but haven't had the opportunity to try other power sources.

 

[WilliamG]

I visited the Apple Store for a second replacement this past Saturday. I was told if I need yet another replacement it'll have to go through the Genius bar, rather than just a straight exchange within the 14-day period. I absolutely dread the "Genius" bar at this store.

Fortunately this unit is better off than the previous two. Light bleed is virtually absent; there's very faint bleed at the lower right corner. Honestly the IPS glow is more annoying.

The GPU buzzing, however, is still present -- or maybe it's a finicky inverter. I'm suspicious of dirty power in my residence but haven't had the opportunity to try other power sources.

Are you sure it's GPU buzzing? The PSU can definitely be buzzing, depending on the power you feed it. I'm suspicious, too, since the chances of getting two buzzing iMacs are slim.

 

[3460169]

Are you sure it's GPU buzzing? The PSU can definitely be buzzing, depending on the power you feed it. I'm suspicious, too, since the chances of getting two buzzing iMacs are slim.

I am definitely not certain it's the GPU; I'm merely lead to believe it is because of the factors that affect the buzzing (brightness level, foreground app, whether or not that app is fullscreen, etc).

I am not discounting the PSU but I haven't had the opportunity to change any variables around (namely the power source) in order to come to a conclusion about it. I have an APC UPS that I've been using (and have used with all previous iMacs) but it's a lower-end unit and I'm not sure it's doing anything to clean the power. I gotta look up the specs. FWIW the iMac behaves the same (buzzing) when plugged directly into the wall.

 

[WilliamG]

I am definitely not certain it's the GPU; I'm merely lead to believe it is because of the factors that affect the buzzing (brightness level, foreground app, whether or not that app is fullscreen, etc).

I am not discounting the PSU but I haven't had the opportunity to change any variables around (namely the power source) in order to come to a conclusion about it. I have an APC UPS that I've been using (and have used with all previous iMacs) but it's a lower-end unit and I'm not sure it's doing anything to clean the power. I gotta look up the specs. FWIW the iMac behaves the same (buzzing) when plugged directly into the wall.

Still can't say for sure that's GPU-related. It may still be power-related. Can you try loading an intensive game up and seeing if the buzzing is there even with the brightness turned down? Just trying to troubleshoot here..

 

[imurdaddy]

The GPU buzzing, however, is still present -- or maybe it's a finicky inverter. I'm suspicious of dirty power in my residence but haven't had the opportunity to try other power sources.

Yeah...just continue the insidious cycle without checking your acknowledged doubt of clean power...what's the common denominator here...

 

[3460169]

Yeah...just continue the insidious cycle without checking your acknowledged doubt of clean power...what's the common denominator here...

Insidious cycle? WTH are you talking about? I don't exactly enjoy lugging a 27" computer back to the store to deal with not-so-Geniuses.

The previous two units were returned for light bleed which, being a build quality issue outside of my control, trumps the buzzing issue entirely and thus my clean power "doubt" didn't need to be challenged with respect to those units.

This unit is nearly pristine and only has the buzzing, which all three 2012 iMacs. You're right, I acknowledge the power could very well be dirty. It's suspect #1 but I have not had the opportunity to verify it yet other than ruling out my UPS as being culprit. I'll likely pick up some model of line-conditioning UPS.

 

[michelg1970]

I discovered yesterday that the buzzing on mine is also directly related to temperature of the machine. I woke the machine from deep sleep (15 hours or so) and there was absolutely no buzzing, regardless of the application in use. Once it was up to normal operating temperature, the buzzing would come and go depending on brightness level and/or the application I was using.

I'm attempting a second exchange tomorrow.



Thanks for re-kindling my hope.

Mine is one week old and perfect! (tested all aspects)