I ordered this machine on the 16th of December knowing there was a 2 week lead time on them. For the first few days I was constantly checking the tracking hoping a miracle would happen and I’d have it before Christmas. I was wrong. I got the ‘Shipped’ email off Apple late on Christmas Eve (24th Dec) which was a week earlier than they had initially quoted. I was pleased and was hoping I’d have it in my hands before the new year kicked off. I kept checking the status online, but had still not been given a tracking number. I went through the usual antics of using Apple’s delivery reference number on a host of courier websites (TNT, UPS etc) but to no avail.
After a phone call to Apple they told me to expect my tracking number on the 4th of January. So yesterday came and went without any sign of an email, I phoned again. This time the representative told me my Mac was on schedule for a 7th of Jan delivery. I asked him regarding the tracking number and he said I won’t get one until the carrier in the UK pick it up! So basically I hear nothing until the day of delivery! I think this is shocking by Apple. I’ve been reading various online forum posts regarding shipment of their i7 iMacs. Many people in the USA have had their orders before me even though they didn’t order until late December! Not only that, they had full tracking info all the way from Shanghai to their front door.
Let me just say, I’m hoping and praying I don’t get a machine with any of the following symptoms
- Yellow tainted screen
- Dead pixels
- Grumbling Hard Drive
- Flickering & Blackout issues
- iSight with dead pixels
- Cracked Glass
Tom, I hope the wait will have been worth it and that you have zero issues with it when it does arrive. I definitely thought you’d have had it before the New Year – I bet the wait has been excruciating especially when you’re reading about others receiving theirs in good time and all with a tracking number keeping them up to date :/
I hope that when the next new Apple product is released they will have checked everything thoroughly before letting it out the door.
The weird thing is, with all my previous Apple orders I have had tracking all the way from Shanghai. The only thing that’s changed this time is I ordered an Apple Remote with it. Kinda crazy how that could hold it up soooooo long! Merge-in-transit, NEVER AGAIN, Apple!
Tom,
I am located Nottingham and ordered direct with Apple Ireland 27 Nov so you can imagine my concerns reading about the many problems. I was given a delivery date by 22 Dec so concerns as to whether Christmas would be happy or not did cross my mind?
I followed shipping and deliver as best as I could with my tracking number, received early on right up to it’s arrival at home on 16 Dec. My wife was ready for the weekly shop and I had this large unopened box sitting staring at me. I couldn’t resist it I had to at least look inside to see if there was a pile of glass lying in the bottom. There wasn’t so off we went shopping.
On return, car unloaded top priority now — get it unpacked and plugged in.
An interesting display as it did its checks I logged in and so on and no problems whatsoever. Ordering on Black Friday I also ordered iWorks, Parallels Desktop 5 and Adobe Elements 8 and all installed without problem. I had lots of luck, all bad, in trying to get Parallels to run. Thankfully I eventually decided not to instal Win XP Pro Virtualisation in Boot-Camp but from the disc as a fresh install (I now have 2 x XP Pro on the one computer – activations not a problem) (In fact with the Parallels problem I reactivated 10 times in total!!!) All is now running as I’d hoped it would.
So Tom, we only read of the bad ones so here is my report on one of the many good ones. No glass damage, no flashing light, no fan noise, no hard drive noise …… it just works and I find it wonderful, especially running some of my old Windows Amateur Radio programmes. I think my only small problem (after getting Parallels sorted – using my McAfee Security Suite not that supplied) is — say after me “I must not think Windows” “I must not think Windows” ….
More than happy with jumping ship and just hope that all continues as is. Basic i7 with 4Gb RAM and 1Tb drive and all is well.
I hope that yours is also to your satisfaction on arrival.
HNY to all
Bryan
Lovely message Bryan, thanks for that! To top it all off I got my tracking number from UPS tonight. It’s getting delivered tomorrow! I can’t wait now.
Here’s hoping I get a good one like you did, and I just know I’ll fall in love with it
Did you know Parallels can use your Bootcamp partition so you don’t have to create two versions of Windows?
Good news for you and hope that you sleep well
Yes I tried running Parallels within bootcamp partition but it didn’t wan’t to play. I tried quite a few times and did read that Kapersky Virus was the problem, tried it again without and still no luck. I then tried running outside of the Bootcamp partition and immediate success.
Reading various forums it would appear that there are problems with i7 and Parallels and they are working on the solution at the moment. Anyway all is working 100% outside of Bootcamp so I will stick for the moment, but thanks for mentioning it.
Have a happy day tomorrow.
Hello Tom and all…
Interesting. I felt obliged to mention my recent Apple purchases seeing as how I ended up here…!
I ordered a 13″ 2.26GHZ MacBook Pro from eBay on the 8th of Dec, private seller of course. It was priced at £724, not bad, especially as the same model was £899 on the Apple site (now £918 I see), I checked the sellers feedback, checked linked buyers feedback, all seemed OK so with a certain degree of trepidation I took the plunge, I paid via PayPal so was “covered” (just in case).
Anyway, I “paid” at 3.30pm, by 5pm I had the dispatch eMail and by 11.30am THE NEXT DAY I had the laptop, all new, sealed and yes, a UK model.
I spent some time in the USA and did the same thing (and non-Apple eBay buy) for a 2.4GHZ “BlackBook” which I then sold 6 months later for more than I initially paid for it…!
eBay can get bad press but if you’re careful and keep your eyes open, check and double check and pay through safe channels you can save yourself both time and money.
Best regards
Richard.
Update on Parallels Desktop 5 which is now allowing Win XP Pro and programmes to run happily within bootcamp. I have a 3 user licence for McAfee Security Suite and I am running that in preference to Kaspersky so all is well. Just waiting my replacement MS Office 2003 Pro disc from Microsoft Direct (I snapped it taking it out of case
) I require Access to run a database and Publisher which I enjoy so I do need this programme as Mac Office 2008 which does not have Access.
At present all of my old amateur radio programmes and USB devices are running perfectly, so a happy cookie.
Best to all
Bryan
hmm – i guess he’s got his new toy now as there’s no update since?