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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. "
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.
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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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.
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.
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.