When released earlier this year, the new iMac was the darling of the tech world with the 27-inch Core i7 model hailed as the fastest, best value Mac to date. That is if you can turn yours on.

A growing number of complaints about the 27-inch iMac’s screen issues has forced Apple to hold shipment of the popular desktop until it can figure out what’s going wrong under all the chic brush metal. The computing giant will hold off on shipping new iMacs for 2 weeks, just as people scramble for last-minute Christmas gifts.

Apple changed the shipping status on its online store for both 27-in. iMac models from “Ships: 5-7 days” to “Ships: 2 weeks.”

Problems began with customers finding their iMac was dead-on-arrival, entirely refusing to power on. Other customers received iMacs with cracks in the screen or with flickering graphic problems which could only be paired nicely with trance music.

The most common graphic fault seems to be a 3 inch horizontal bar intermittently appearing across the screen, which would be annoying on every site except the X-Factor’s.

A thread on the Apple support forum is solely dedicated to the flickering screen problem with almost 1,200 separate messages and a view count of over 173,000, making it easily the top-read thread on the iMac forum.

Apple’s support forums lists almost 350 iMac issues which also includes hard drive failures and dog-whistle noises- we hope Apple isn’t trying to say something about its clientèle.

This thorough list of iMac stuff-ups has prompted one annoyed Mac fan to create a site purely to collate all of the iMac problems faced by new owners around the world. The Apple iMac (Fall 2009) Issues site is going strong with the number one complaint being a faulty screen that “tore” or just went black. This issue accounts for 179 cases- over half of the total reported problems.

Have you had a problem with your shiny new iMac? Leave us a comment and let us know.

Buy 27-inch iMac at the Apple Store.