On Saturday Pronych reached out to the resellers on Computerworld 's behalf, but both declined to comment on the record. "I don't want to hurt my ties with the Mac community," one of the resellers said in an e-mail to Pronych that he forwarded in part to Computerworld . "As you may or may not know, Apple is strong-arming resellers since opening their own Apple Stores," the reseller continued.

Earlier this week, Apple changed the shipping status on its for both 27-in. iMac models from "Ships: 5-7 days" or "Ships 7-10 days" to "Ships: 2 weeks." Although high volume sales could account for the change, Pronych said he had been told by some users that Apple had pushed back the projected ship dates for their already-ordered iMacs.

Some U.S. resellers were out of stock. A Mac Connection sales representative, for instance, said that the e-tailer's next shipment of 27-in. iMacs was expected Dec. 18. "I don't have any information regarding a reason for the delay," the representative said in a live chat Saturday. reported that a new 27-in. iMac would ship "within 1 to 2 months." , meanwhile, said it wouldn't have 27-in. models until the end of the month. A sales representative from the California-based e-tailer said only that "Apple is not able to get us our shipments."

Both the dual-core and quad-core iMacs are affected by the flickering screen issue, according to reports filed with Pronych's site. Those models use AMD's ATI Radeon HD 4670 and Radeon HD 4850 graphics cards, respectively.

The 27-in iMacs were , when Apple refreshed its desktop lines. According to Pronych's data, fewer than 10% of the total reports are from users of the less-expensive 21.-5-in. iMacs. The entry-level $1,199 machine uses the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics chipset rather than an ATI graphics card.