[geeks] Dead Mac Pro

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

On Nov 11, 2007, at 5:48 PM, Mark wrote:

>> No, they were not running loud enough, or rather, not fast enough.
>>
>> They would stay at 600rpm even when the machine was getting hot.
>>
>> Of course, that could be the problem right there.
>
> Right, I thought you had some issue.

...and Apple agreed.

They replaced my machine without any hassle, and I'm typing this on a  
brand-new Mac Pro.

As a bonus, it came with a Leopard installation DVD.

I went to the store after rehearsing how I was going to demand a new  
one, and I even called my bank to prepare for a charge reversal ahead  
of time... :)

But they said the problems I had were abnormal and there was no point  
in trying to repair the machine.

> There have been a couple of reports this was sue to RAM risers working
> loose in a lot of cases. I can believe it - mine had an ungodly-loud
> vibration when I first powered it on because the hard drive carrier
> was loose. I think a few have genuinely been DOA though, but unlike
> iMacs they are all BTO so they get tested thoroughly before dispatch,
> but it doesn't show up ALL issues :)

It also doesn't account for freight companies that beat the crap out  
of the machines in transmit.

I've heard that some Apple and Dell failures are caused by that.

I guess that's the only way to ship large numbers of units coast- 
 >coast cheaply, and there are bound to be a few that get slammed.

> It's been patched twice, the last one relatively recently. It doesn't
> seem to have made mine work any faster but then we've not exactly had
> high summer this year in the UK. The hottest days of this year I was
> out taking photos not processing them on the Mac Pro so I guess it's
> not very fair to look at mine.

It gets a little bit hotter in eastern Virginia I imagine.  We went  
over 100F twice this summer.

It was in the 80s F well into October.

Now suddenly it is 40F.  Gotta love Virginia weather... :)

>> The SMC issue can usually be fixed with a small program where you
>> can speed
>> the fans up to keep it cooled off.  smcfancontrol I think.  Apple
>> needs to
>> fix this on the board though.
>
> You shouldn't need to - SMC is supposed to be a smart temperature/
> power/system controller.

Well, we'll see how the new one does.

>> The new iMacs are dying even when idle.  Lot's of people in the
>> Apple store
>> and CompUSA are coming in and they are *very* ticked off.
>
> I don't blame them. I'd be pretty peeved too.

The iMac issue, unlike the rare Pro failures, it pretty serious  
stuff.  It's hurting Apple's reputation, and I really think their best  
course of action right now is to punt and call it a mistake.

Right now they seem to be still telling people everything is OK, but  
I'm not sure it is.

There was an Apple guy in CompUSA the other day, and he was telling  
two users there to just sit tight and they'd be issuing a patch that  
would fix it.

Yeah, I'd be ticked off too.

The weird thing though, is I talked to another guy who has one, and  
his is fine.

Even in the store, CompUSA guys said two of their display models are  
screwed up, but one is perfectly fine.

I think part of the problem is that the iMacs are basically funky  
laptop-ish machines, and they are hard to build.  Maybe this is one  
case of design pushed too far?

> Well they do say it's a bad idea to buy Rev 1 Apple hardware, and
> technically the Mac Pro is a Rev 1. I guess these kinds of glitches
> and hang-ups are the reason why...

Well, supposedly the Mac Pro I got today is a revision 2 or 3 machine  
with the same power supply as the 8 core units and some motherboard  
changes.

I don't really know how to verify that right now and I've got too much  
work to do to worry a lot about it.

>> The fancy designs don't mean jack when your machine dies on you.
>
> Or if you want a separate monitor...

My beef exactly.

I actually wanted a Core 2 unit to start with and save some money, but  
it just wasn't good enough.

Oh well, done deal now.

> Actually, to the average home user it causes almost as much stress,
> mostly because they don't understand what's going on, or they lose
> their photos, or music, or whatever.

True, but data loss is really their fault, and they don't lose  
potentially hundreds of dollars a day in revenue when their machine  
goes down.

I'm not yet at the point where I can afford much redundancy except in  
backups. Hopefully next year I'll have a bit of money to buy another  
machine or otherwise protect myself against that problem.

> Figures, they use all the same manufacturers and push their limits
> much harder than Dell, HP or IBM.

I talked to a guy who uses freight to ship batches of machines out to  
company locations, and he says it is rough freight handling that  
causes a lot of the problem.

Makes sense I guess.

Big companies like Apple and Dell probably assume a certain number per  
10K units will die in shipping, and budget for it.

>> Right now my Mac IIci is a hell of a lot faster than my dead Mac
>> Pro... :)
>
> Darn straight. So is mine :)

I should get rid of mine, but it's hard...