August 25th, 2008
Vertical line issue also plagues some iMacs
On Friday I posted a piece about a problem with vertical lines appearing on PowerBook G4 17-inch screens just as they got outside of their three-year AppleCare warranty.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that there may be a similar problem with some third generation 17-inch Intel iMacs with serial numbers in the W860****U2N range as reported by MacNN in November 2007.
The same situation exists as with the PowerBook G4s. Apple won’t acknowledge the problem in iMacs and has a track record of deleting and/or locking posts on its message boards. A petition on the issue has over 1,000 signatures and states:
The defect causes vertical lines (cyan/yellow/pink) to appear cutting through the screen and multiplying as time goes by. Unfortunately, the problem starts to appear right after the end of the one year warranty.
One French user was succesful in taking Apple to court in France over vertical line defects in two iMacs and was able to receive a full refund on his machines.
The vertical line defect has been compared to the PowerBook lower memory slot failure (also here) from February 2007 and the PowerMac G5 coolant leaks first reported in June 2006.
