Slashdot Mirror
Apple to Accept Returns of Mac OS X on Some G3s
An anonymous reader writes "A class-action lawsuit was filed over Mac OS X not working correctly on some of the older G3's, and Apple has tentatively agreed to refund the purchase price of the OS ($129) to people who purchased it for use on those computers, and wish to return it." The agreement is not final. If you wish to continue using the OS on your computer, despite it not working fully, you can instead receive a $25 coupon. The deal will, apparently, apply to the iMacs through the fruit-colored models; the pre-chiclet iBooks; the PowerBook G3s; the first three Power Mac G3 models; and the all-in-one Power Mac G3.
How come you have to class action these companies to be responsible. Isn't there laws that say they need to deliver on their product claims. I am about ready for some tougher legislation I pretty much feel powerless as a consumer and I doubt I am alone. Although this particular mac issue doesn't affect me.
***I GOT NUTHIN***
A "news that doesn't require discussion" section with comments disabled. Is there really anything worthwhile to say about this article? Apple's doing the right thing, roughly. Sure you can nit-pick details, but what a waste.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
so . . .
Apple said in Tuesday's court filing that it "continues to vigorously deny all of the material allegations" of the lawsuit but is willing to settle to avoid the costs of continuing to fight the legal action. An Apple representative declined to comment further.
. . . but . . .
"If you are completely dissatisfied (with Mac OS X), you can return it and get your money back," Ferlauto said. "If you want to keep OS X, but are kind of annoyed that you don't have full support, you can get (a $25) coupon."
. . . and of course, the winner is . . .
Apple has also agreed to pay up to $350,000 in legal fees to King & Ferlauto.
everything in moderation
So, the customers get their money back, and the legal weasels get $350,000. That seems like par for the course, nowadays.
Windows NT won't work on my PCjr. I'm going to sue.
Nice troll, but its a pretty simple case of Apple not delivering on promises it made in order to get people to give them money.
If you had a G3, were promised OSx would work great, and your video card is STILL not supported (and Apple said now they changed their mind, it never will be) PLUS you can't play DVD's on your OEM DVD drive (same situation) then you might want the $129 you spent to "upgrade" back as well.
That is why they are settling, idiot. They are basically admitting they fucked up.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I think it was more along the lines that Apple had promised G3 owners that this would work fine even on the older ones, then didn't support the video properly. The lawsuit was purely around not delivering on promises made. Now, had Apple not made the promises in question, then I'd be calling this a frivolous lawsuit.
I'm in partial agreement with this case. While I currently use Jaguar on a Powerbook DVI, formerly I used earlier versions of OS X (10.0 and 10.1) on a Powerbook Lombard (the model with the bronze keyboard). While DVD players were an option with that model, the one I purchased (or rather, the university I work for purchased for me) was the model with the DVD reader. Thus, I used it quite a bit to watch DVDs in OS 9 and was pleased that I could do so. I took it on a few trips and carried entertainment with me.
... we'll have to see. A partial refund was more my expectation since a lot of other features DID work as advertised, but hey, I can use the cash for a discount on a new iPod (I want the backlit-buttons version in part because I plan to use it in my Volkswagen, and the red illumination of the controls in the car matches. It'll look really spiffy. :) )
When 10.1 came out it was quite a big deal that it finally added DVD viewing support, and there was no mention of the fact that it was not going to work fully as advertised on all systems. In fact, Apple made a big deal of the fact that you could run OS X on a lot of older systems going back to some of the old beige towers (I'm pretty sure about that) and implied in the "usable on older systems" was the fact that all features would work as they were advertised to on all of those systems. I was in full expectation that all of the features would work, and I can't possibly have been alone.
I was quite disappointed to discover that apparently hardware acceleration, which I have long been told from many sources is actually better because it offloads a lot of the processing tasks onto the video system instead of the CPU, was actually the reason why DVD playing did NOT work. I couldn't play DVDs -- if I tried I'd get a message stating that my system wasn't compatible -- even after Apple released a DVD player update! How was I supposed to fix this? "Go buy a new Powerbook". That was unacceptable given the fact that Apple had always given the impression that OS X would be fully supported on G3 systems. That apparently meant "some G3 systems" even though no qualifiers were printed on any preview materials.
I'll be returning my discs for a refund since it didn't work as advertised (which did bother me) and because I don't use OS X on that old Powerbook anymore. It's just relegated to Photoshopping in OS 9. It sounds like what I've seen so far is indicating a full refund, which I won't argue with if true
The point of this case was (rightfully) that if there are going to be exclusions for "it works with existing stuff" the exceptions need to be listed so nobody ends up disappointed like I was. It's just fair. It's a real shame there had to be a lawsuit to make it happen.
i am a soviet space shuttle
...are the minimum specs for a reason. I wouldn't expect much out of Windows Xp with its minimum specs of running a 233mhz Celeron with 128mb ram. Newer OS run faster on faster equipment. Trying to run the latest and greatest OS on older equipment is a trying experience. In general I would recomend sticking with the OS the computer came with, its cheaper, and most likely beter suited for the machine. It may sound like Apple is being all great by refunding all or part of the purchase price, but they're only doing that 'cause they got sued.
They way I see it, the consumer is definitely coming out on top with this one.
ANd I don't see any issue with the lawyers getting some money for their "win" (qualified, of course, because Apple vigorously denies all the material allegations... but hey, I like to save face in public, too).
Let see, without those lawyers and their legal fees (who only work on contigency) let me calculate what you and the average consumer would get back. Let's see, add for the user base, divide by 2, carry the 1.... ah yes. ZERO DOLLARS and zero cents.
You can get all of your money back! Or if you still want to use it, you can get some money back!
That is what I like to call having your cake and eating it too.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
I use one of the "pre-chicklet" iBooks. (I'm running OSX 10.3 Jaguar on a 466mHz G3 iBook SE with 384MB RAM) Other than it being a tiny bit slow, OSX works great.
I think this is really a statement about how Apple's customers have come to expect so much from the fruit company... yeah, Apple said they would support G3's. And they do. It's just when you try and scrape by with the minimum recommended requirements, things don't usually work as well as you'd like.
Sure, refunding the purchase price on a product that didn't work as expected is understandable, but it's too bad it had to happen in court. I guess that's just the way of doing things these days. Too bad.
It seems better than par to me. The usual outcome to this type of suit is the lawyers getting millions rather than a few hundred K, and the customers getting no cash, only a rebate on a future purchase (ie, an inducement to give more money to the folks who ripped them off). The Zip disk "Click of Death" lawsuit, for example, ended up like that.
Under the circumstances, a refund seems like a reasonable outcome for the customers involved. I'm not bothered by the lawyers' fee, either. It's much smaller than I expected, and they appear to have earned it by really representing their clients, rather than just throwing them a bone & running off with all the money.
A hardware/software vendor actually taking responsibility for the code they write?! Is this a joke?
Microsoft would NEVER do this.
Everyday it looks more and more like my next machine will be an Apple. What Microsoft fails to understand is that their customers hate Microsoft's "Screw the customer" attitude more than the bugs in their products.
You must have missed the fact that it took a CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT to acheive this end.
Apple ATTEMPTED to utilize the "Screw the customer" attitude, but failed.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Yeah, right...and toss out all the Adobe tools which were the reason you bought the machine in the first place.
Microsoft would NEVER do this.
Let me remind you the sad and long story of the USB support in Windows 95. To cut the long story short, it never went beyond alpha quality, even in the last OSR patch for Win 95. Microsoft's only answer for all the complaints was: upgrade to Windows 98! And they did what Apple never did with OpenGL for the older ATI cards - they promised explicitly it will work. I can still remember a Windows 95 CD with "USB support" written explicitly on the label...
I know this is mainly to drive hardware sales, but it seems a little disingenuous to not take care of their customers.
I've been looking at getting a PB, but stories like this where Apple just drops support on a whim, or doesn't 'make it right', make me look for a Latitude or Thinkpad. Couple that with hearing stories about the $500+ repairs on Apple laptops, and I'm getting more leery. I rarely hear about problems with other laptop makers.
OS X is a powerful draw, but the 'closed-source' hardware and the constant ditching of support have me wondering. Make it easy, Apple!
Maybe I'll go find a P2 to put Zeta on..
a CRT with dead pixels? i would love to see that.
How did the LCD "die?" If it just up and died with no outside event causing it to, Apple WOULD cover it. Something tells me there were other extraneous circumstances that you're not telling us.
Trooolllllll
They way I see it, the consumer is definitely coming out on top with this one... You can get all of your money back!
It doesn't take a lawsuit to enable consumers to obtain refunds for products that do not function as advertised or described. That's covered under UCC and the like.
Before the lawsuit, the average consumer would get back either the cost of OS X or 0. Now, they get either the cost of OS X or a $25 discount, redeemable when they spend more to buy more Apple products (which many are likely to buy because they are so pleased with their recent Apple OS X purchase...)
So, Apple gets more eyes and volume to its store, lawyers get some change (which otherwise would have gone into R&D, shareholders, customer support, or whatever at Apple) and consumers little more than a pat on the back and no increased functionality.
Truly, the consumer came out on top in the lawsuit...
That argument is stale (ie. "that's not a fair comparison - Apple supports limited amounts of hardware so it works whereas Microsoft has to support everything and that's why it crashes") and unsupported by facts. Do you have an Xbox? Mine's crashed before. And Microsoft has a single hardware platform there. PocketPCs crash? Yep. Again, essentially all the same platform. What about Microsoft based cell phones? Yep. They still crash. So its not just that Apple has limited hardware to support. They have limited hardware that they successfully support in their software. Successful is the keyword that Microsoft still can't seem to replicate even when they have the same advantages on different platforms. While I don't own one, I'm sure the WindowsXP Media PC platform also crashes...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
'Running like a dream' and 'sure its a little slow' are completely contradictory statements on the planet which I dwell opon. ...but it's 266 frickin' megahertz, what do they expect?
I remember ads. They had turtles with Pentiums on their backs. Other ads had words like 'Supercomputer' and 'Megaflop' in them. I thought slow, way behind the times PPC chips were many times faster than their x86 cousins? Now is that not true?
I dont get it? Which is it?
So, what if I want to buy a Mac because of its nice hardware but don't want the proprietary OS that comes with it. Can I get Apple to rebate the price?
I've seen basically two kinds of posts in resoponse the the article. There's been Mac zealots who are lauding Apple for "taking responsibility," and there have been people slamming them for false advertising. There have also been several "OMG APPLE IS TEH SUX" trolls and jokes of various degrees of wittiness, but that's to be expected.
First things first. Apple is not "taking responsibility" for all those users out there with poor OS X support. They are refunding them, and doing so to settle a lawsuit. Taking responsibility would be adding full support to OS X. Their settlement sounds pretty fair as far as class action suits go, but it's not done out of benevolence. As has been pointed out before, Apple is a company, and its motivation is primarily money.
Second, Apple's advertising in this matter was not exceptionally shady. They said they'd support G3s, and it turns out that they do not fully support all of them. The OS runs on these G3s (which are below the recommended minimum specs), but poorly, and doesn't fully support their hardware.
Fine. All companies advertise in language like this. Plenty of laptops are in various Linux distros' supported lists, but don't have power management support. If you think promising to support something and then doing a half-assed job is bad, look at advertisers that get away with what would be called a lie anywhere outside a court.
This case is neither a big win nor a big loss for Apple. It does not show that their character is particularly good or evil. Give it a rest.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.