With Mac sales expected to reach as high as 2.9 million this quarter, the last thing Apple needs is bad publicity about its new iMac with 27-inch screen. But YouTube clips of flickering screens on the new units, which went on sale Oct. 20, can’t be good news. As of Monday morning there were 45 such clips on the site, with links on Apple user forums. The forums also had links to clips on other video-sharing sites, like gallery.me.com.
The complaints come at a time when Apple is apologizing for production delays, which it attributes to too many orders, without addressing the display issues. “The new iMac has been a huge hit and we are working hard to fulfill orders as quickly as possible,” an Apple spokesperson told CNET News. “We apologize for any inconvenience or delay in delivery this may cause our customers.”
Writing on the Apple Discussions forum, Jan Sampermans of Belgium reported that his “Screen will go completely black for a second and then come back on. Sometimes two to three times in a row.” He added that in the course of writing his post, “my screen has flickered 13 times and has gone black two times.”
According to an analysis by TechNewsWorld, of nearly 800 recent comments on the Web site iMacsqueaked, there were more than 500 complaints about 27-inch iMacs — 324 about flickering displays; 85 about cracked screens; 61 about yellow screens; 33 complaints of noisy screens; 24 about unbootable computers; and 22 about dead pixels. There were also 628 complaints about issues with the processors.
Another user on Apple Discussions suggested those experiencing the problem connect an input source and use the screen only as a display to determine if the problem lies in the screen or in the processor.
Apple didn’t immediately respond to our…