The high-end iMac is the machine of choice for many graphic and photo professionals, so screen color temperature issues is not a problem that can be treated lightly if you expect to maintain the loyalty of one of your core customer groups. Now, according to Gizmodo, Apple has acknowledged the problem, and is telling people to contact Apple Care to get it resolved.

In case you’re wondering about the specific symptoms of this problem or its the first time you’re hearing about it, a number of owners of the new iMacs are complaining that their screens have an unpleasant yellowish tinge as you move from top to bottom. Since the temperature is inconsistent across the display, the problem is even more noticeable.

Gizmodo managed to elicit a public statement regarding the problem by contacting Apple directly and by repeatedly publishing stories about the specific issue, since it affected multiple machines purchased by one of the tech site’s writers. The statement is brief, but it should be enough to allow customers to bring in their affected machines and receive no hassle from Apple store employees:

We’ve addressed the issues that caused display flickering and yellow tint. Customers concerned that their iMac is affected should contact AppleCare.

I still remember being told by an Apple Store employee that the same color tint issue which affected two of my replacement iPhones was a “cosmetic” issue and wouldn’t be addressed if it occurred more than twice, which it did. At least on the much larger screen Apple is admitting that it is, in fact, a problem, and not pretending it’s just something customers should get used to.

If you think your iMac may be affected, but you aren’t sure or you don’t have a reliable way to prove it once you actually do book your Genius appointment to have it looked at, try pointing your browser of choice at this link. The shades of gray are the same top and bottom, and it should pretty clearly show any yellowish tinge that may be affecting the bottom of your screen, even to dubious Apple Store employees.

It’s unsettling, then, that in recent months, owners of the very latest model of Mac Pro (the “Nehalem”-based machines introduced in early 2009) have been reporting worrying problems with their machines when performing otherwise very mundane tasks.

Let me give you an example. Imagine it’s early morning and, coffee in hand, you take your comfy seat before your 30-inch HD Cinema Display and power-up your gleaming Mac Pro. In no time at all you’re on the Snow Leopard desktop. You fire-up Mail and Safari and, as you prepare to trudge through the messages and articles that have amassed overnight, you decide to play a little light music in iTunes to lift your spirits. Some Beethoven, perhaps. Maybe a little Hans Zimmer. (John Williams is much too stimulating for this hour of the morning.)

Bam! No sooner have you hit Play and your machine inexplicably slowed to a crawl. You hear the Mac’s normally-whisper-quiet fans suddenly kick into high gear. For some unaccountable reason, your mighty Mac Pro is now guzzling power from the mains and getting very hot under the collar. It makes no sense. You’re doing the same things that would present no challenge at all to the most humble of MacBooks (a “mere abacus” by comparison, to quote the late great author and Macintosh-fan, Douglas Adams).

This isn’t just puzzling. It isn’t just troubling. It’s completely and unremittingly maddening. Your Mac Pro cost you an arm and a leg. Nothing less than perfection, remember?

Old Problem

The first reports of this problem appeared on the MacRumors.com discussion forum back in October, but eventually migrated to the Apple Support Discussion pages where they have grown quite considerably in number (and noise).

Users report the problem on machines running both Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6. Symptoms usually include a hefty cut in overall performance (as much as 20 percent in some cases), skyrocketing internal temperatures (excesses of 30 degrees celsius are common) and dramatically-increased power consumption for even minor “low power” tasks.

Software known to reliably and consistently trigger the problem includes heavy-duty titles such as Logic Studio and Flash, plus everyday applications like iTunes. The issue doesn’t appear to affect any earlier model of Mac Pro.

Curiously, the problem vanishes completely for those users who boot into Windows 7, which has led to speculation that Mac OS X itself is the culprit. MacNN reports;

Based on testing it is suspected that there could be a flaw in OS X’s handling of power management kernel extensions, or else the driver that exploits particular Nehalem features, such as SpeedStep and Turbo Boost.

Silence

Predictably, Apple is saying nothing. Users are also finding that even AppleCare Support is proving less than helpful. MacRumor’s Eric Slivka writes;

Despite the thorough investigations by users into the situation, AppleCare representatives have been unwilling [to] acknowledge that any issues exist, calling such temperature spikes normal and within design parameters for the machines. Users continue to be frustrated, however, by the performance hits their machines are experiencing and Apple’s refusal to address the situation. Apple has yet to issue any statements regarding the issue.

Anecdotal Evidence

I am very proud of my Mac Pro, for which I paid a quite obscene amount in April last year. I could have bought a car, or gone on a fantastic, life-changing trip around the world. But I’m a geek, so instead of those things I bought a big metal box with a picture of a fruit stamped on its side. (I regret nothing.)

And I really use this thing, all the time. I run iTunes constantly, and very regularly use audio-intensive apps like Apple’s Soundtrack Pro and Adobe’s SoundBooth. So far, I am relieved to say, I’ve never had any problems as a result.

But I have had one issue, and I’m beginning to suspect it might be connected to these complaints.

You see, in my experience, iMovie 09 is a great, lumbering cow. I need only use it for a few minutes before my machine collapses onto its metaphorical knees in protest. Closing the app doesn’t return things to normal, either. Instead, I have to completely restart my Mac. It’s annoying, certainly, but I spend more time in Final Cut these days, where I have no performance issues at all. I always just assumed that iMovie was a little buggy. Now, I’m not so sure.

If you’re a Mac Pro owner I’d love to know if you’ve suffered any of these problems. And, even if you’re not, leave a comment and let me know – is it just me, or is iMovie ‘09 an uncompromising diva for you, too?

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Something’s rotten in Cupertino, and Apple fans running the 3.0 firmware are beginning to get anxious as a result. I’m talking about push notifications, of course, which have yet to dazzle and amaze most iPhone owners running 3.0. A few apps are trickling in with some push features, but by and large, the headline apps that would provide game-changing push functionality have been left out in the cold.

If you’ve been monitoring “push notifications” on Twitter like I have to try to catch new apps as they come out, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. The majority of talk seems to be vitriol against Apple for not approving the push-enabled version of the popular Beejive instant messenger, which has been under review for at least a week and a half now. Also in high demand is IM+, also currently under review, and AIM. Basically, people really want an IM client with push, and also a Twitter client, though I’ve yet to see any conclusive proof that there is definitely one that is either pending review or in the works.

News now comes from a site that was trying to monitor and aggregate all live apps which include push notification, AppAdvice.com. They received word from an iPhone developer that Apple is to blame for the delays regarding push-capable apps. Dominik Balogh, who worked on the app NotifyMe, which uses push to remind you of to-do list tasks, reportedly received an email from Apple App Store staff claiming that the problems are on Apple’s side of things, and that they haven’t worked through all of the push bugs just yet.

Note that some apps, though, are live and are working fine, such as Tap Tap Revenge 2, among a growing list of others. I’m still running the AIM Developer preview released prior to 3.0′s official launch, and it is working like a charm, with virtually no lag time. That tells me that Apple’s servers are up and running, so the problem is probably more an anticipated one than something that’s already having an effect. Balogh describes a problem in the MacRumors forum having to do with feedback check, which he explains there, but it only happens 4 percent of the time, and probably wouldn’t justify a complete freeze on heavy-use push apps alone.

My bet is that Apple is only now realizing how much it will have to scale its infrastructure to deal with the volume that will come with push support for widely used apps like Beejive, which would presumably be making very frequent calls to the server for each user. The 3.0 release was attached to a pretty fixed timeline, so it isn’t terribly surprising that not everything was ready for launch. Better a little catch-up on the back-end than significant bugs and failures on the user’s side, like with the 2.0 launch. That said, gimme my Beejive push!

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