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Apple Makes G4s Slower
Aigeanta writes "According to MacInTouch, Apple just reduced the processing speed of G4s by 50Mhz, without a price reduction or change in configuration, and cancelled all outstanding orders. If you still want one, you have to reorder with a slower processor. "
While I'm quick to respond when people here make clueless statements about Apple -- which doesn't happen nearly so much as it used to -- Cupertino has really screwed up on this one. It may not be their fault that Moto can't deliver G4s fast enough, or that RAM prices have gone up dramatically, but there are much better ways to do it than take it out of the hide of the customer.
The minimal thing to do would have been to offer the 500Mhz customers the opportunity to buy either a 450Mhz config or their original config with a 450 at a reduced price. If a price increase was absolutely necessary they should have grandfathered existing orders.
The sad thing is, they could have built up a lot of consumer goodwill by "doing the right thing" -- with the iBook and the new iMac they are going to have an extremely good Christmas season anyway. They could have coped with making a little less money and reinforcing their customer loyalty. Unfortunately, this seems to happen less and less with publicly traded companies.
It may also indicate that Apple is having problems with their new G4 motherboard. they are now only offering 350 and 400 MHz G4 systems these are probably the old G3 motherboard.
Isn't speculation without bothering to do any research or consideration of what an article says wonderful?
The fact is that nothing has changed except the speed reduction of 50 MHz. There are still three models in the G4 product line, not two 350 (old motherboard) and 400, 450 (new motherboard).
Apple has not changed anything else in the G4 product family.
www.macnn.com just reported that Apple has REVERSED the cancellation policy. So if you had an order that was cancelled, don't give up hope!
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
My theory about companies is that they all screw up occasionally. THe question is what do they do when their customers point out the screwup. In this case Apple has retreated from the screwup and is honoring previous orders. To me that is good enough.
So how can they get away with this? My guess is that it's becuase there is no competition. Maybe AMD needs to start making POwerPC clones :)
Werd.
The bug will apparently delay 500 MHz G4's until early 2000.
It is hard to say what the effect on Apple stock was because Apple had a big series of announcements along with the quarterly earnings yesterday, of which the G4 spped reduction was only one small item. Overall the picture was quite good - big order backlogs, higher than expected profits, so on. Also an agreement for IBM to manufacture G4s was announced. This in itself is probably far more important long term than a 50 MHz speed reduction right now.
The only real problem Apple has right now is they can't ship enough hardware. Unsatisfied demand for the G4's, new iMacs and iBooks is something like 500,000 boxes.
Aoole stock went up several points after the announcements yesterday because of the overall positive picture.
has such hubris that they (have) raise(d) prices in an industry where prices fall.
They should have shipped a 350MHz or 400MHz processor with that 500MHz machine that was promised, given a coupon for a 500MHz CPU upgrade and some other bonus (discount coupons or UltraSCSI card or printer, etc) for waiting so long. That way the customer would get a working machine and preserve their goodwill towards Apple and the bottom line.
How do you "Apple fanatic" people put up with this shit? Intel hardware is pretty disgusting, but at least you don't have to deal with this kind of bait-and-switch crap.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
the obvious joke would be that Apple is really thinking differant - contradicting Moore's law..
Steve can actually pull this off.. "are you sick of the technology rat race as we are? our chips are slower then the previous generation!". I can see the buzz on all the mac rumor sites about the next 68000 based iMac.. "hello again!"- for real!
oh well..
Apple has decided to rely on Mot for manufactioring these chips - big mistake - and yesturday Apple has basicly ecnolaged that and they are taking steps to rectify this situation - IBM will fab G4 chips as well starting to apear on Apple systems next year. hopefully that will stop that kind of stuff from happening in future.
Not that this matters much to us techies - we follow the news and know that motorola has had a erreta in the 500Mhz chips, and financial types understand that Apple has to do this to keep the gross margines intact. It's really sad, however, that apple rushed the introduction of these systems - without proper testing - which caused this issue in the first place. Hopfully they will learn that leson as well. Allmost all of apple's latest product introductions suffered from suply problems- the G3 thin laptop, the iBook and the G4's. This should be a strong wake up call for steve.
knowing the mac croud, this will not really affect apple. these guys will buy those G4 anyway. but that's fine.
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Nonsense. There were three models announced at different price points. Apple found that they had jumped the gun on G4 availability at the speeds they announced their products at, and were sitting on 90,000 orders that they could not deliver. In order to clear this problem they had to cancel the orders they couldn't deliver, and come up with new offerings that they could deliver. These offerings are the same except with a 50 MHz speed reduction - one with the old motherboard design, two with the new design. There is no sign as several correspondants here suggested that this is due to motherboard problems and that Apple was only going to be shipping 350 MHz and 400 MHz old motherboard designs.
I really don't see where Apple had a lot of choice in this matter given where they were at the time.
I know it pissed off a lot of people. I would certainly have been annoyed myself if I had an order in - but I would also become rather annoyed when my order arrived months late. Better to know the real story now than later. Some companies, like Intel and Microsoft would just try to string people out forever with vaporware like Merced and Win 2K.
Macintouch reports: "Apple has reversed the cancellation of existing Power Mac G4 orders, according to impeccable sources, and is calling back customers to explain."
Mac OS 9 is much closer to 8. Mac OS X is whole new ballgame.
As a former Apple employee, I can say - what a blunder. Holy momma. I understand removing the 500 MHz version from your web site if you cannot produce enough chips, but don't cancel peoples orders. Work as hard as you can, even at a loss, and fulfill those orders (though the 500 MHz machines were what? $3,500 minimum... gotta be some profit in that number) and accept no more. But to bump your lowest machine from 400 to 350 MHz sure looks like you are moving backwards. Hmm, that's funny, it's becuase you are moving backwards!
www.jackasscritics.com
Intel hardware is pretty disgusting, but at least you don't have to deal with this kind of bait-and-switch crap.
I guess you never bought anything from Midwest Micro, National Electronic Warehouse of NJ, CompUSA or anyplace that has a NYC address. It seems like half the clone vendors out there, at least, are playing shell games with factory rebates, internet bundles, refurbed hardware sold as new, and any other sharp practice they can find to push junk on the consumer at deceptive prices.
By comparison Apple is the virgin mother.
According to MacInTouch,
Apple has reversed the cancellation of existing Power Mac G4 orders, according to impeccable sources, and is calling back customers to explain. The Apple Store will honor existing orders for the previous configurations at the previous prices.
The rest of it's at www.macintouch.com
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It doesn't naturally lead to it. My feeling is that they wanted to keep up with their three tier G4 scheme of good, better and best. The 500 MHz part won't be available for some time so rather than temporarily discontinuing the 500 MHz PowerMac G4 they made the 450 MHz G4 best, the 400 MHz G4 better and neutered the low end model (which used an older motherboard) to 350 MHz.
Very dumb.
To make things worse they cancelled all orders for the 400 MHz and 450 MHz G4 along with the 500 MHz G4 meaning that customers who were in the pipe so to speak either can't get their original configuration (in the case of the 400 MHz Yikes or 500 MHz Yosemite models) and have to pay more for that honour.
Incredibly stupid.
Once the 500 MHz parts start to fill up the supply train they'll probably drop the 350 MHz model and add on the 500 MHz model. (The low end model was always a stop-gap so that some G4's were immediately available) The 400 MHz G4 will then go up in price (it'll be with the new motherboard, not the old motherboard, the parts on it or more expensive such as RAM etc.) the 450 MHz model will drop in price and the 500 MHz model will take the 450 MHz models price point.
I just gave my old 9500/150 to my sister leaving me with only a Pentium III box running Linux to use. Once MacOS X came out I was going to purchase a mid ranged G4 for my day to day use. I'm not so sure anymore though, this has annoyed me more than any of the other alleged slings and arrows out of 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino CA.
If they want me back on board they'll at least have to uncancel the 400 MHz and 450 MHz orders or offer them a rebate to match the old price points. The speed reduction of the Yikes configuration was just marketing stupidity which I can deal with.
We are so used to reading stories about PC manufacturers cutting prices and/or introducing faster models that this is kind of a man bites dog story.
It may also indicate that Apple is having problems with their new G4 motherboard. IIRC, the original G4/400 used the older G3 system motherboard while the G4/450 and future G4/500 were to use a new motherboard designed to exploit exploited the wider buses and other features of the G4. If they are now only offering 350 and 400 MHz G4 systems these are probably the old G3 motherboard. It might also indicate that Motorola is getting worst than expected yields in their higher speed bins for the G4. The good news for Apple is that IBM will second source the G4; the bad news is they won't be able to ramp up until next year.
Meanwhile, the prices in the x86 world will fall further as Coppermine arrives in a few weeks and AMD introduces a 750 MHz K7. Isn't competition great?
Here goes.... Mac OS 9 is the latest in the traditional Mac OS line, following version 8.6. Apple has made tremendous improvements since version 8.1 to stripping out legacy APIS, moving to full TCP/IP networking, and fixing bugs, especially since Jobs came back and Apple bought NeXT. Version 8.6 is very stable, by Mac standards, and approaches that of the Unix world. I do tech support for an office of 30, and have iMacs, G3s and even older models, like the 4400s and 6500's that go days or weeks without crashes or involuntary restarts. OSX is a result of the NeXT deal, and is descended from BSD and NeXT, which I understand from others (I'm no authority on UNIX) means that it's not, strictly speaking, a true version of UNIX. I am using an OSX server, which is my first foray into the UNIX-ish world, and it's been great. Very stable, very slick, very powerful. OSX client, which is due out late this year or early next year, is a workstation/consumer version of OSX with a Mac-like interface, rather than the NeXT GUI that OSX server has. Put together, the OSX family will allow netbooting of all clients (even though you can do that now for Mac OS clients, if you've got the bandwidth) Apache web serving, and UNIX file services, QuickTime streaming, and WebObjects. All in all, it seems like they've got a plan, for a change. A good one. Hope this helps.
Before the flame-Apple-fests begin, keep a couple things in mind:
1. Inventory has been VERY constrained, and they were having a great deal of trouble getting enough PowerPCs. This allows them to ship sometime before the next millenium (literally).
2. This sucks, but don't be too hard on Apple. They're not making any friends, but at least they're getting people G4s this way.
3. On the plus side, they've managed to get IBM to enter back into the fray and take some of the load off of Motorola.
The modern Apple has a tendency to underpromise and overdeliver (sure enough, their recent quarteryly profit beat expectations), so my guess is that this will be 'fixed' soon enough.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
- Jeff
beep! - ."
."
"Yeah, Chris, it's me again, Steve Jobs. I've calmed down a bit now. I've had my people call in a contractor to fix the wall, and the window, and they're bringing my chair back up from the parking-lot - they'll have to vacuum the broken glass off of it first, but it seems to have survived the fall. Anyway. I was thinking about this 7400 problem. . . excuse me. .
sounds of deep, slow, tantric breathing excercises. . .
"okay-close one. I'm feeling better now. Now you're engineers said you'd have this fixed, obviously it's not. We've had to make some changes to the lineup to compensate. Our customers won't be too happy, it'll likely impact sales, which means less 750's AND 7400's out the door, probably for a while to come. Well, I think I've come up with a plan. I'm gonna COME DOWN TO YOUR OFFICE AND @#*@^&$*)))!**$&#^(%&^@#$@# @$#&&%!$$#*@#!!! $^&@ ! YOUR @#@$#^@*&! PIECE OF @#$@#)*!! HEAD OFF, AND RAM IT UP YOUR @#$*(*@^&(*&#@^! AND &*@#$^&* IT WITH YOUR !@#*&^@^ AND BEAT THE @(*#$&( OUT OF YOUR )@#&^$%@*& CARCASS WITH MY @(*$&@#&*@#&&!"
(exited, worried voices in the background, sound of breaking glass, loud thuds, fabric tearing, "NO! NO! STEVE! DON-!! more glass breaking)
-click
on Glenn Gienko's voice mail; 5 minutes later. . .
"Glen? Steve Jobs. .
(female voice in background - "you're bleeding, can I -" unintelligible - Steve whispering, "no, no, just leave")
". . . yeah, Steve here, could you do me a favor and FIRE Chris Galvin for me!! Hell, just f^@$*ing fire EVERYONE dammit, fire them all and transfer them to Hell!"
-click
"The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I almost wonder if this isn't a hoax. I have a lot of trouble believing that anyone, even Apple, would be this stupid, particularly coming off of something like the G4 ROM block. These machines were actually priced quite well in terms of price/performance before; I'd hate to see Apple lose that.
I'm not even sure it's entirely legal; I think Apple is at least contractually obligated to ship out the orders it's processed. That's another reason I tend to believe this can't really be happenning; class-action lawsuits are the last thing Apple wants right now (and if this is real and I'd bought a G4, I would have joined the lawsuit).
It does, at least, make me glad I didn't get a G4 (or, conversely, that I'd gotten one a lot earlier). When the time comes, I think I'll use that trade-in program and get a 450 for a thousand bucks; that'd be sweet.
If you read my message history you'll see that I'm a pretty staunch Mac defender. But twice in as many months, now, I've seen Apple do something that even I can't defend them for. Then again, I never said I liked Apple, just the machines they make.