Their offers for the new 21.5″ and 27″ iMacs are quite intriguing. You can either buy from them, or ship an already-purchased system to them, and they offer a whole host of upgrades that Apple does not. For example, OWC will add an eSATA port for $169 (faster than Firewire 800!), or add/replace internal hard drives with Solid State Drives (SSDs). They’ll even add an internal Blu Ray disc player! And all at costs less than Apple charges (easy to do). But that’s where the fun ended (at least for us).

These sort of upgrades are a bit intimidating for normal users, especially considering that in order to add an SSD or another hard drive, the entire machine has to be disassembled. The glass cover that sits atop the screen has to be removed with industrial-strength suction cups, and handled with extreme care in order to keep dust and fingerprints off. I’ve performed this procedure myself in the past, and it’s not especially fun.

These offers from OWC sounded wonderful since I wasn’t looking forward to taking apart another iMac any time soon…so my buddy went ahead and purchased a 27″ iMac, and had it drop-shipped to OWC to have a larger internal drive and an SSD added, as well as the eSATA port.

To make a long story short, the system shipped out DIRECTLY from Apple to OWC on September 16th, arrived at OWC on the 17th, and shipped back from OWC to us in San Francisco on the 17th as well! WOW! Unfortunately, even though two-day shipping was requested, the system didn’t arrive back in our hands until the 24th. Brutal, especially considering we were essentially computer-less for a whole week, and had several projects that needed to be completed before the 24th (not necessarily OWC’s fault).

So the machine arrives and we are initially (semi) delighted with the job, except for the fact that the ESATA port looked like it was poorly cut into place with a dremel or equivalent tool. The quality of the port installation did not impress me, though it functioned as expected.

After a day of using the machine, we noticed a dead pixel in the center of the screen. We immediately notified OWC tech support and spoke with Devin Predmore. He sent me a stuck-pixel repair application that supposedly would fix my problem. Installed the program, ran it several times, and did not fix the stuck pixels.

During start up of my machine, we noticed what looked to be fingerprints on the glass of the screen. I took out the Apple-supplied screen cleaning cloth and tried to clean the “fingerprints” off of the screen. After looking at the display from different angles and in different light, I noticed that they were underneath the screen. There is no way that these fingerprints came from apple direct. Who ever disassembled my machine obviously did not handle my glass screen-cover with proper care, nor did they clean it thoroughly before reinstalling it.

To top everything off, I noticed a scratch beneath the surface of the screen in the bottom left corner, not obstructing the LCD but below. I also noticed a white dot stuck under the LCD on the top of the screen.

To be honest, we are still quite astonished that after spending over $1000 in upgrades, we received such sloppy and sub-par workmanship. It seems that the OWC technicians were either in a huge hurry on this system, or do not take the proper precautions when performing iMac surgery.

The problems still exist, though the machine is going back to OWC (free shipping overnight both ways), and they are compensating us with a (minimal) $50 gift card. Still not impressed. Guess if you want something done right you have to it yourself…

Pics for clicks.

Those are UNDER the glass!!!:

Stuck Pixels

Scratch on the Glass

Scratch on the Glass

Stuck Pixels

Stuck Pixels
Chip in the Glass

I managed to capture a few shots of this fire…hope you enjoy!

View this photo on Flickr

First, I’ll cover some of Apple’s touted features added to this new product, since Jobs himself claims, “iPhone 4 is the biggest leap since the original iPhone”.

• FaceTime: A much-desired feature, finally added!  Video chats…yes, they work.  Though not up to par with Skype, or even an AIM-based video chat, the quality and clarity of picture and sound is pretty darn good.  Unfortunately, the biggest downfall to this feature is currently the iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 only limitation.  Furthermore, Apple hasn’t allowed any App Store apps to take advantage of the feature, save for Fring.  To make matters even worse, you also have to be on a Wifi network to use FaceTime, so this begs the question: if you already have a video-chat enabled laptop or desktop in the home, what’s the sense in using the iPhone?  Of course, if and when AT&T allows FaceTime over their 3G network, these issues will get put to rest.
• Retina Display: This is perhaps the single best new feature on the iPhone 4.  This display is so sharp that it’s honestly difficult to describe without actually seeing it in person.  Holding it next to the 3GS iPhone makes the 3GS (excellent) screen look just abysmal.  With four times the pixel density of the previous iPhones, text and images are now infinitely easier on the eyes, and there is a whole new level of sharpness and brilliance to the display.  Please, if you haven’t seen this, check it out in person…
• Camera & Flash: Sporting a new, 5-megapixel camera that can record 720p HD video, the iPhone aims to consolidate more of your devices into one — this time the aim is your point-and-shoot camera.  For me, this new camera with LED flash is a much appreciated upgrade.  Photograph clarity is increased significantly — if you don’t believe me, just check out this thread.  The night-time quality isn’t great, but is definitely improved over the nonexistent flash of the past.  Also, the flash is EXTREMELY bright, and makes an excellent flashlight.

My personal experience with the phone has been good overall, but has been severely swayed by the obtrusive problem with the antenna design.  As you may know, the entire metal band around the outside of the phone is actually the antenna.  As reported by many others, the phone does indeed lose reception dramatically if gripped firmly with a hand around the lower section.  This is much more noticeable in low-signal areas, but I have seen it happen when the phone was reporting 5/5 bar signal strength.  Since Apple has offered free cases I plan to update my review when it arrives.  For now, I would recommend it based on the features, but be warned if you live in a low-signal area like me!

While the build quality of this device is unsurpassed, this may be a case where functionality was sacrificed for design.  I can’t rave enough about the slick UI, fast responsiveness to touch inputs, extremely fast browsing speeds, quick app-to-app switching, but simply not being able to place a call in my own office is very frustrating.  One other small note — this phone doesn’t feel as solid in the hand as the 2G and 3G/S models did…in fact, the glass is extremely slippery — if you set it on a curved surface it will slowly slide down it and crash to the floor.

I rate it a 3.5/5, until my bumper case arrives.

UPDATE: My bumper case arrived a few days after posting this article, and my review rating has to stay the same. Unfortunately, the bumper doesn’t seem to help my reception issues — the deathgrip still results in signal attenuation just as without the case. It seems the iPhone 4 is just doomed to have bad reception wherever signal strength is generally weak. Also, the bumper case caused me other problems: in my car, I can’t plug in my aux 1/8″ jack into the headphone port (the bumper restricts the size of cables that can plug in), nor can I plug in my Belkin car charger. BOO!

Be sure to check out and comment on a new photo upload on Flickr!