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Apple Acknowledges 15" PowerBook Spots
zachlipton writes "Computerworld is running an interesting interview with Dave Russell, director of product marketing for portables and wireless at Apple. Russell comments on the white spot issues that have plagued the new 15" PowerBooks (Apple has been very responsive about fixing mine at least) and he has this to say about a G5 PowerBook: 'We certainly want to do that, but it's going to be a while.' Russell also comments on a lot of other ideas related to the PowerBook and iBook lines."
It seems I read about this problem a month ago on macnn.com. It seems the 15 inchers are the only ones effected.
I fear nothing but my government. Vote Libertarian.
I have these spots on my powerbook's display. Started out as three small points and are now rather large spots. They are only extremely noticable when displaying white backgrounds and such, but are there always.
:)
Thankfully, I also have extended apple care. I am gonna wait until I hear that they are 100% fixed before I send it in. I don't want to be waiting 2-3 weeks for a replacement, etc. That would be a real big problem. Hopefully they will get the delays down and the success ratio up, and then I can get a new screen that is pristine.
> the company is aware of the white blemishes on some new 15-in. screens, but hasn't yet "captured" enough of the computers to figure out why the spots are appearing.
Funny choice of words. I can't help but picture a herd of beautiful wild PowerBooks, running free across the plain.
(it's a Daria reference.)
At least he didn't say the new powerbook had the lovely dalmatian finish of the early iMac.
And, don't expect anyone to say the G5 powerbook is coming soon. Nobody would buy the current models if that was remotely the case.
- Close/hide all open windows.
- Control-click (or right click) on the desktop and select Change Desktop Background.
- Change desktop to "Solid White" in the Solid Colors collection. It's the nearly invisible one to the far right.
- Minimize System Preferences window and look for spots. Mine are along the vertical and horizontal centerlines of the screen.
And yes, my screen will be swapped out shortly under warranty... its spooge from looking at this site while pounding it with your fist.
C'mon, you know all you people using Apple systems are into this.
I'll be waiting to see if they get bigger, as I have a screen with no dead/stuck pixels and I don't want to tempt fate and/or be without my powerbook for some unknown amount of time.
Not after the last fiasco. I can't understand Apple's warranty department. They're virtually no help
I have a G4 powermac, a 1.42GHz machine which worked well and for the most part kept me occupied and did the tasks I needed doing. The noise however, was something that's been driving me, my wife and my pets crazy. The dog wouldn't come in the same room as she's scared of the thing. She also attacks the hairdryer in the bathroom, and I think that's a subtle hint that the thing was too loud and what it sounded like.
Looking deeper into the machine I found a couple of fans that when running at a certain speed reached a phenomenal noise level. With the computer in its cabinet they were bad enough but I felt like I was near a jet taking off if I had the Mac up on my desk. I pulled those fans out and they looked like they could be replaced by standard, quieter fans. I took one from the last PC I'd built (yes I'm multiplatform) and it fit well, so a quick trip into town I bought a pair and installed those.
The G4 was fantastic! The reduction in noise was something I could immediately appreciate, but my happiness didn't last too long. Within half an hour the machine was locking up and crashing. I opened it once more to see I hadn't been a moron and done anything stupid, when I noticed the apple supplied heatsink was BURNING hot. I mean really hot, I couldn't bear to touch it more than momentarily. I never trusted that heatsink, the sheer bulk of it looked like it was made to be produced easily and not cool properly. I ditched that heatsink (after letting the machine cool down for an hour!) and replaced it with a Zalman flower. I'd never seen cooling like it could do, so it was the logical choice. The heatsink for the G4 attached differently, but it was easy enough to adapt the zalman with insulated wire tied underneath the CPU board.
This worked a little better and the powermac booted, and stayed working far longer. For about three days, and from then on it wouldn't boot. No chime, just fans spinning and no video. Even the hard drive barely ticked a couple of times. By now I was furious, my previous macs had given me little trouble but this one was a pain. I phoned the apple center nearest me, and as it was only a few months old I was assured everything should be covered by warranty. It turns out because I had MODIFIED the computer that my warranty was void. wtf? I added a superior cooling system to the machine, quietened it, IMPROVED it in every way, and they deny my claim? I was livid at the store manager, but couldn't get past his denseness. Know what else? Apple keep on record what you've done. I replaced the original loud fan, the original heatsink and tried once more, and again my claim was refused on the basis I'd done the damage myself.
I'm still a Mac user, but a very annoyed one still waiting on repairs to my G4 that I have to pay for myself, and that I consider are Apple's warranty responsibility that they've gotten out of having to pay for by some stupid clause. Read the fine print guys.
Two independent lines of logic strongly suggest that the G5 PowerBook ain't coming any time soon:
- Apple just updated the PowerBooks. History says that they are very unlikely to update 'em again quick. (See MacRumor.com's Buyer's Guide page for dates of past revisions.)
- There is no G5 Xserve yet. If Apple can't get a G5 working within the Xserve's size/power/noise limits (with sales doubtless in the pits as folks wait for G5), then they're likely a *long* way from doing G5 within the PowerBook's (far tighter) limits.
It's easy to make up & spread cool- and credible-sounding stuff. Finding & checking hard facts is hard work.
I was looking at Steve Jobs' blog and he notes it too here.
I just bought a new 15" Alum PowerBook, this is my second day with it.
I hadn't heard about these spots.
When do the start showing up?
If I don't have the 3 year AppleCare, am I just screwed if/when I get spots on mine?
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
It's a new class of problem, it's the hardware virus. Well, more of a rash probably contracted during iTunes Music Store negotiations. Same thing happened to Michael Jackson...
didn't IBM announce something about cooler 970s here recently? The fact that Apple is saying the G5 powerbook is a long way off actually makes me think they should be out kinda soon. They rarely say anything about anything before it's released.
That's all...nothing else...
I thought it was just white out!
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Perhaps Apple is changing the production line to correct this problem, which would explain why the BTO 15" PB that I ordered on October 23 had its ship date change from Nov 4 to Nov 28 yesterday.
The Xserve doesn't have noise limits, trust me.
Man and Goat
I have recently upgraded from a Mac 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM to a new 15" Powerbook to help me at my freelance gig where I copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. I have counted 25 spots on the screen of this supposed "new" mac. What a load of shit this thing is! I spent about 20 minutes trying to install Adobe Arcobat 6. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, my iPod and iTunes will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Safari is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Macs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Mac that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Macs' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8MB of ram running MS Windows for Workgroups 3.11 is faster than this machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Macintosh is a superior machine.
Mac addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
I'm tired of this...
My iBook screen has no white, red or blue spots and the battery lasts for 4.5 hours... My external FW800 drive on my G4 didn't get corrupted when I updated to Panther... The ethernet port in my G4 holds a connection... My G4 doesn't shutdown when I use my cellphone... None of my OS X apps mysteriously quit and I don't have any issues with deep sleep. My iPod battery lasts for days on end and all of the music I purchased from ITMS is still in my iTunes library...
When am I going to be like everyone else and have an issue with an Apple product?
It's just not right, I tell you.
FYI, there are a couple of well documented fixes for being afflicted with an Apple notebook. And your wallet will thank you:
:)
One
Two
Get well soon..
If the noise is not the problem, then what's keeping the G5-Xserve?
Yes, I am interested in buying an Xserve cluster. Do you have any experince with them? Where does one get the Cluster Management Software? Thanks!
Maybe it just the geek mentality, but, hell, yeah, I'm taking a 12" Powerbook over a 14" iBook anyday of the week...for me, it's worth the 100 bucks to get the 512MB RAM, DVI, form factor, and nifty aluminum case with attached keyboard.
Of course, on the other hand, I'm baffled by the inconviently portable portable.
And what is up with Apple addressing white spots in 15" Powerbooks but not addressing screen imperfections from keyboard imprint in iBooks? Shouldn't bad design be considered equally?
subject sez it all, brain dead moment...
...to Panther. Jaguars have spots.
I'll be amazed if the next Xserve isn't a G5 and if there aren't already G5 Xserve prototypes. It's just a matter of time waiting for the product cycle to roll around. Early 2003 is beginning to look likely.
I sincerely doubt the non-presence of a G5 Xserve is due to engineering issues. 1U machines aren't exactly rocket science and if Dell can make them with hotter running P4s, 15k RPM drives and dual PSUs I fail to see any reason why Apple couldn't.
the phone number you put up read as 800-SOL-APPL
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Apple could sell a *lot* of G5 Xserves, and (looking at G4 Xserve prices) any undercutting of G5 PowerMac sales would only *increase* Apple's profits. A recent "Page 2" rumor on MacRumors.com put the G5 Xserve 4 to 5 months out - suggesting that 970's built on the new 90nm process are required.
Why aren't they shipping already? A few ideas:
- Legal constraint from IBM? Seems unlikely - IBM's bottom line is supposedly hurting for lack of business to keep their pricy new 970 fab busy. Frustrated wanna-be G5 Xserver customers are unlikely to buy all-IBM stuff instead - racks powered by Intel (IBM's arch-enemy) are probably more likely.
- Too damn hot? Current G5's are much hotter then Xserve's current G4's. Having taken a financial bath on their noisy G4 PowerMac, Apple may have concluded that "1U size", "current G5 chips", and "noise level acceptable to customers" is an impossible combo. If Steve vetoed a >1U size, they'd just have to wait for cooler-running G5's from IBM. But Dell is busy selling dual 3.2GHz Xeon 1U servers, and Xeons supposedly run much hotter than G5's. Is Apple's hot-air-blowing technology actually too sucky to keep up with Dell?
- R&D brain bottleneck? Apple's hard-core chipset/motherboard design gurus may be stretched thin by too many current projects. Pointy-Haired Bonehead decisions may have set them way back. Intel may have lured key brains away. Quality "the hard parts" engineers aren't a "find, hire, & get productive overnight" item that Apple could fix the problem quickly - *especially* if Steve PHB'ed things to begin with.
Short of a Darwin-class bonehead decision or two, i don't buy "product cycle" reasons. They've refreshed the Xserve about this fast in the past, and every day of delay is costing $$$ in lost profits.
It's easy to make up & spread cool- and credible-sounding stuff. Finding & checking hard facts is hard work.
My screen randomly pops open about 20% of the time when I leave the powerbook on my desk. I end up putting a stapler or notebook on top of it to keep it closed. Anyone else have that problem?
sulli
RTFJ.
Also the fact that Apple has come right out and said don't expect a G5 Powerbook for about a year.
WARNING: If accidentally read, induce vomiting.
Want it?
Early 2003 is beginning to look likely.
So I should be able to order one several months ago? I'm assuming you mean Q1.04, in which case I'm simply being an ass.
www.PowerBookRecall.com
Sorry to hear about the probs with Apple Care people have been experiencing. I called last Friday (10/31) to complain about the spots. Tuesay (11/4) at noon I had the shipping box AppleCare sent to ship the PowerBook. By Thursday at noon (48 hours later) I had the laptop back. Spots are gone! Everything seems to be in order. I was shocked at the turn around time considering I was quoted 5-7 days when I originally spoke with AppleCare on Halloween.
Apple laptops are effectively unusable for unix users.
I am a long-time Unix user. That means I need to have the Ctrl key to the left of the A key. This is a genuine need, not merely a want; it is based upon ergonomics. The Ctrl key is heavily used in unix, and it must be easily accessable. It cannot be off in the lower left corner of the keyboard where it is difficult to get at, and where it distorts the position of your left hand such that you can't easily type other keys while holding the Ctrl key down.
Apple desktop keyboards are now all USB. They are all OK. The CapsLock key can be re-mapped into a Ctrl key.
Unfortunately, even in this modern age, all Apple laptops have built-in ADB keyboards. The ADB keyboard is broken-by-design. It is, in general, not possible to remap the CapsLock key into a Ctrl key.
There are some exceptions, but they are horrible kludges. They are horrible kludges because the original design of the ADB keyboard was a horrible kludge. The correct solution would be for Apple to re-design their laptop motherboards to use built-in USB keyboards. This hasn't happened yet. If you run Linux, use Debian's solution. For Mac OS X users, uControl works. There are no solutions (that I know of) for either NetBSD or OpenBSD. Please note once again that the "solutions" above are in fact kludges, because of the original bad design of the ADB keyboard.
Apple provides a technical note on how to remap the keyboard, but provides no solution to the hardware problems caused by the design of the ADB keyboard. This tech note helps foreign language users, but does nothing for the CapsLock/Ctrl problem.
Apple is (currently) ignoring Unix users! This is not merely speculation on my part. In an on-going email exchange I am having with an Apple employee (whom I won't name) in their marketing department, the Apple marketing person directly stated to me that Apple was catering to their historic Mac customers, and is purposely ignoring the Unix market. He also claimed that Apple would soon start paying more attention to the Unix market. I won't hold my breath. Apple has been ignoring Unix users for more than 13 years. I expect that trend to continue. (Also note that my Apple contact indicated that Macs would never ship with a 3-button mouse, even though Apple intended to port almost all X-window software and deliver it either on a CD/DVD or installed directly on each Mac's hard drive. How Unix friendly is a 1-button mouse with X programs that often require 3 buttons?)
Apple has now lost two opportunities to sell me hardware. I really wanted an Apple laptop for their superior battery life, and for the PowerPC with Altivec CPU. (The Altivec is vastly superior to the x86 line for DSP.) Because I can't live with the broken-by-design built-in ADB keyboard in all Apple laptops, Sony and IBM sold me laptops instead. If Apple fixes this problem, they will sell me a PowerBook next year; if they don't, I'll still be running OpenBSD on x86 hardware, and wishing I could use a Mac.
well, it's pretty standard that most companies void the warranty if you make any changes, and i'm sure that's stated in apple's warranty policy..