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Apple Reverses G4 downgrade
puck13 writes "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. People who ordered the G4/500 model that cannot be produced due to Motorola's production issues, will be offered a choice of the original G4/450 configuration at the original price or a discount on their G4/500 configuration, as if it had been ordered custom-built with a 450-MHz processor selected. " Check out yesterday's story for more information.
I developed SERIOUS wrist strain with the old ADB mice that came with older Macs, which were of the "traditional" type. I was taking a class using Hyperstudio and it was really taking a toll on me.
I lost most use of my right hand, but then I bought an iMac, with the "evil" mouse and the probelms went away in two to three days.
Apple's reversal only applies to folks who have already placed orders. (And I suspect that their lawyers may have had more to do with it than the public outcry.)
If you decide that you want a G4 today, you'll still be getting 50 MHz less than you would have gotten yesterday for the same price.
Maybe this was Apple's plan... They raise prices and try to screw their customers, then they announce that they're not to screw their customers after all, and everyone on Slashdot ignores the ridiculous price hikes and praises them for "doing the Right Thing."
MSK
I head people say this "we've got to push Apple, force them back into cloning" and I think to myself. What are they smoking? What are you pushing Apple with? Your decision not to buy any more of their computers? Well, if enough people did this it would put them out of busniness. But so would allowing other companies to skim the cream of their hardware business while Apple pays for all the R&D. What's that you say? Forget about hardware and just do what it does well, the MacOS? Sorry to bring reality into this discussion but the MacOS doesn't have enough marketshare to enable Apple to survive on software alone. To win in the OS only business you've got to have a monopoly or be free. Apple needs its hardware as much as its software. That's a part of its success, its an integrated package, that is why it does what it does very well. cheers, Matthew Reilly
Apple really could/should slap that ATI bitch around some...
Well, I was about to take what you were saying seriously but then you come out with this teenage loser comment. Apologies to all the teens out there to aren't losers.
>>Warning: Heavy Sarcasm
Gee, I dunno, you could, I suppose, call them or something...
sure. Give it a shot. 800-795-100
Doh! (Jim Rome =+5)I hate to break it to you, but *CHOKE*. They don't have the pieholes to take the call on my rig. You're OUT.(/Jim Rome)
___
"I know kung-fu."
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
I was in the exact same position as you up until about a half hour ago. I ordered a 400 last night as soon as I heard my original was cancelled, just so I could have a place in the new line.
Well, the guy I talked to this morning at Apple (after waiting over an hour) told me I wasn't going to get a 450 at the original price, so just stick with the 400.
Then I see this rumor flying around all day. So I try maybe 35 times to get through to the Apple Store, and FINALLY I make it to HOLD! That took an hour and a half to get through, and finally when I did, this is what happened:
We cancelled my new order of the 400. The guy added a new 450 system and new monitor to the _original_ order, so I'm hoping I still have my original place in line. All at the original price, thank goodness.
They _might_ automatically fix your order, but I wouldn't count on it. Go to the Apple Store web page, and check out your order history (you'll need your Apple ID and password). Look at your original order. Is there a new system, and a total price that matches the original? If so you're probably in luck.
You'll still need to cancel the 400, though. Man, what a mess.
-Nick
Besides the fact that i cant run Netscape and Codewarrior at the same time on my G3, i love it! Only w/ a MAC can you have a nice pretty case AND a mouse with only one button!
Apple sent me the cancellation email yesterday, and I wasn't very upset at all. I had the sense that rising RAM prices and the earthquake in Taiwan would make my purchase of the G4/450 a steal for me, and a loss for Apple. So I didn't feel bad, just figured I could re-order as soon as the original configuration returns. Which it will soon!
............ 065-1744 450MHz G4 w/1MB L2 cache ............... 065-1608 256MB SDRAM/1 DIMM ........... 065-1956 20GB Ultra ATA drive ........... 065-1902 DVD ROM drive w/DVD Video .... 065-1911 Zip drive ..... 065-1821 56K internal modem w/FAXstf ...... 065-1820 RAGE 128 GL card/16MB SDRAM ......... 065-1696 Ultra SCSI PCI card w/adapter ............. 065-1995 USB Keyboard ........ 065-1732 ACCESSORY KIT .......... 065-1984 MAC OS ... 065-1899 No AirPort Card
HOWEVER: Today I received the following email...
Dear Apple Customer,
The following products have been shipped and are expected to be delivered on 10/16/1999.
_________________________
Z01B POWERMAC G4 1 2,848.00
With the following configuration:
PROCESSOR
MEMORY
HARD DRIVE
CD/DVD ROM
REMOVABLE STORAGE
HIGH SPEED MODEM
GRAPHIC SUPPORT
HIGH SPEED NETWORKING: 065-1623 10/100 BASE T Ethernet
SCSI SUPPORT
KEYBOARD
ACCESSORY KIT
OS LANGUAGE
COMMUNICATION CARD
_________________________
Looks as if Apple is doing the right thing, at least for those of us who ordered the G4 on the day it was announced! As for all the whiners out there, isn't screaming about it just the "adult" version of bawling yer poor little eyes out?
Yeah, I'm a Mac programmer. You got a problem with that?
-- thinkyhead software and media
Why not wait for IBM's new ATX motherboard that accepts a Gx proccessor? This will alow people to get the best of both the pc and the mac worlds.
Let's see, it doesn't run any Mac apps?
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Their next move will probably be to overclock 450MHZ chips to 500MHZ.
:) It's only overclocking if the user selects the speed higher than recommened.
That's not really overclocking. That's just "clocking."
The chips do, in fact run at 500mhz, but not without a bug that Motorola recently discovered that only occurs at that speed.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
If any business let something go like this I'm sure they would see a lot of law suites for false advertising. You just can't treat customers like that or you're going to get burned.
Apple is not the first company in the world to ever offer preorders on a product, then not have its suppliers able to fill demand. False advertising involves claiming something that you cannot or have no intention of delivering. Apple wants to ship these things just as much as customers want them.
The main problem is that Motorola isn't that great at fabricating chips. Motorola said they'd ship something, but they couldn't and apparently not without an "errata." That's why Apple asked IBM to step in.
They were completely within their legal rights to cancel the orders, but there was more backlash then they expected.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Java is getting somewhat better and it is easier to get jobs doing Java. But, NEVER forget that Sun intentionally made certain fundemental design decisions to help them sell big expensive hardware at the expense of Java as a language. Compared to Objctive-C Java limits a programmers productivity and handicaps you in your design flexability.
Seriously, how many of you have read Design Patterns by Gemma et. al. and Patter Hatching by Vlissides? Those are required reading (yea yea yea, never mind the fact that the examples are in C++ - bleh!). Those books were all based on work by the NeXT people. Those patterens were derived from the work that NeXT poured into its core libraries in Objective-C. You can easily use the full range of design patterns in Objective-C (in fact most are pre-built already in one of their libraries "Foundation," if I'm not mistaken). A simple problem in Java is object message forwarding. Easy and build into Objecive-C. Very powerful and lets you do more with less code. A great tool for improving abstraction and encapsulation.
There has to be a 10,000:1 ratio of Java programmers to Objective-C programmers.
So fscking what. There has got to be a 10,000:1 ratio of lawers to brain surgeons. You want to hire a lawyer to do your brain surgery. I go with the HR drone to colleges to techincally screen applicants. And I have got to tell you that so many of today's college undergrads expect you to kow-tow to them just because they've read Java's AWT API and made their pc dual boot Linux & NT.
Well boo hoo, show me that you have a clue and a brain, then I'll hire you. You can learn what you need. I don't care if you don't know Java/Obj-C/Python, etc .... just please have a brain. Just because Java is a "trendy / hot" language right now, doesn't mean that its good to use or that those people learning it have any idea how to program.
The Apple technote is here. The condensed version: at the price of breaking a few pieces of software that relied on an undocumented API call, the open file limit went from 348 to 8169.
"But what was the last revolutionary software product to come out first on the Mac platform? Sure, the hardware is much improved cost and feature-wise, but why bother with such poor software selection?"
BBEdit
Bryce
Poser
Final Cut
AppleScript
Mac OS
Oh wait, you asked about things coming out first, and I went and made a list of Mac-only things. Sure, there are 50,000 or so programs for Windows and only 10,000 or so for Macs, but if BBEdit is not one of the 50,000 for Windows, then I don't give a crap about the rest!
"...why bother with such poor software selection?"
Poor software selection is better than a selection of poor software.
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
It's always been my observation that apple isn't percieved as a "benevolent underdog" based upon any of their OWN actions, but rather on people's inherent dislike for the Big Company. I mainly base this on apple's higher prices and unwillingness to allow clones[read - "competition"].
It's funny how much crap everybody here gives Microsoft and how everyone loves Apple no matter how stupid they get. I love their ad with the tanks in it saying that Pentiums aren't a threat. At least they work at rated speed. If any company other than Apple decided to do this they would be crucified by everyone. Long live Linux on multi processor PC'S!!! Apple's OS is just as closed as Microsoft's. I like the choice of Linux/___BSD with a multitude of desktop choices. Otherwise I'll just run Be.
GodBrain http://www.godbrain.net http://www.alienfaktor.com http://www.tril0byte.com
You are wrong. Very wrong. Go read the spec benchmark. Under a small subset of hand tuned applications, Apples are faster. Same goes for P3's, and Athlons are quite a bit faster than both. Apple gets a higher price point because their users don't expect enough, and don't seem to be smart enough to read through the hype. you really need to do better than quoting a press release. As for "no one dares discredit" read up a bit, and you will find that just about no one believed those benchmark, except hopless, religious apple-heads.
Oh, and if you like to read and quote press releases, go find Microsoft's "About Linux" release, and remember that they are always right too.
Ok, once apple gets all its customer base back they do this and that stupid upgrade thing and there back to where they are. They really need to learn to treat customers better. I mean come on, everyone knows people would want to upgrade from G3 to G4 so apple screwed it and made them buy a new box. Its a pain.
because he directly intervened and ordered that things should be set right.
I love Hotline (1.2.3 not that 1.5-1.7.2 crap, Roks you suck!) but calling users an underground community of active traders? LOL! Face it; it's war3z and pr0n p1mpz... be proud!
--
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
>But what was the last revolutionary software product to come out first on the Mac platform? Here's a few more Mac First/Mac onlys:
Puffin Design Commotion
Adobe GoLive
Terran Media Cleaner
Graphic Converter (shareware, but it reades and writes dozens of graphics file formats)
All excellent programs, all Mac first
2) ATI is OK. I agree that the drivers are the real problem.
3) Logitech mouse $30
4) LOL: "this is in support of broad market acceptance, not penis length comparisons with celery. "
5)Don't use ATM. QT is ok.
- the original AC
If I'm going to have to pay Adobe several hundred to upgrade my ancient copy of ATM Deluxe which works FINE on 8.6
Well, look how long it took for Adobe to come out with a 8.6 compatible version of ATM 4.5!
Adobe is one of the worst companies for keeping up with Apple these days, now that they make a lot of money on the Windez market.
Acrobat 3.0 shipped with numerous features Windez-only, as did 4.0.
Buncha mooks, you ask me.
The ATM/OS 9 conflict involves OS 9's ability to have more open files, which is a Good ThingTM for sure.
Why does Adobe drag their feet on this shit when they are one of the top Mac developers?
PPoE
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I've always maintained that the Stock Market has little if any relation to what happens in Real Life.
:P
ie. company fires a lot of people to save money, but the stock goes up because the company is now profitable on the books
Apple has been profitable,Macs are selling well (so well, in fact, that Apple can't meet demand, as usual!) they look like they will still be profitable next quarter/next year, so they're a good investment, regardless of how you FEEL about the company.
The thing that pisses me off the most about the computer media is that they still think that Windez is the only possible market, and that Apple is going to go away RealSoonNow. How can you say that about a company whose products are back-ordered to kingdom come because of outrageuous demand?
Thank goodness I was waiting 'til February to buy a G4. By that time, they might actually have some in stock!
PPoE
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/A ppleStore?family=G4
Nothing on Buy.html, Cause there was nothing there to start with.
is sort of like a little kid. Their hearts are in the right place most of the time, but every once in a while, they do something stupid. If the customers just sit back and let it happen they'll do it more.
If they complain mildly, Apple will issue a press release and let their decision stand.
To get the kid to shape up, you gotta give him a nice smack on the head. Same with Apple. A bunch of people who were ordering G4s were talking about a boycott or about buying Althons, and they were totally swamping any Apple e-mail address or phone number they could find.
Well Apple took the hint.
I don't think there have been any paradigm-busters like PageMaker was on the Mac platform (one I sadly left out) lately, but I guess what worries me about the Mac is that so little new development is happening at all. Without anything like 'killer apps' to differentiate the Mac from Windows, there's fewer and fewer reasons to stick with it.
Oh, but what's with the weird examples? I don't know what Premiere is, but I don't see how Photoshop or Excel could be viewed as innovative. (?) They had reputations as pretty good products, but was either of them something new?
Premiere - important video editing software.
Photoshop - THE original killer app for the Mac. There's a reason why Photoshop benchmarks are what they use primarily to compare the PowerPPC and Pentium chips...
Excel - Before Excel came around, everyone used something called Lotus 123. How many alternative spreadsheets have you seen lately?
BTW, I'm skeptical that this seguey into the topic of Mac desirability actually has anything to do with the recent price scandal... but I guess everyone (even Mac users) have to let off a little AppleSteam now and then. That company sure makes a lot of ... interesting ... decisions.
I guess for me, at least, it's relevant because folks are so willing to cheer or jeer Apple without considering the reasons why the Mac succeeded in the first place, and why it's still headed downhill. Whether it's Windows, Mac, Linux, or BE, a platform succeeds or fails ultimately because of the software you can run on it. Anyhow, it's not a jihad...it's a tool. Use whatever gets the job done (which is why I have boxes running NT, 98, Linux, *and* the Mac OS).
Are there actually any powerful OpenGL cards in consumer space that isn't targetted for games? Because those would be the ones that should be 'ported' to the Mac, right?
I guess Permedia?
Gamers are a different issue altogether, and my feeling on that is that the gamer niche is small enough that going with ATI is actually not a bad call. By going with ATI's Rage Fury chipset Apple get's a DVD ready solution with excellent video quality and decent TNT level OpenGL performance. This, I believe, is more than enough for 90% of users out there, and the other 10% would buy V3 boards or something.
How about the iBook vs any WinTel notebook? I think Apple has the price/performance curve beat right there. Comparing an iMac C2 with a PC requires a system with DVD, Firewire, and movie editing software, which will add an additional $300 to the price outright. I don't see that there is a disadvantage in buying Mac, as far as price performance goes. Considering the following:
ATI Rage Fury = $60
64MB Ram = $180
17" monitor = $350
10GB HD = $120
Speakers + Sound Card = $120
FireWire card = $200
Ethernet = $35
Modem = $75
Win9x = $60
Movie Software = $140
price = $1340
Price drops if you go for a lower quality monitor, smaller 15" monitor, of course, but the Apple iMac C2 is still pretty competative; nothing compared to a scratch built bargain basement, but many don't have the skills or resources to build one of those!
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
How about:
4. Reach performance/price parity with Intel AND AMD
Due to the increase of file handles in OS 9, you can have 4 times as many fonts in your Fonts folder...
if (nt == unstable) { switchTo.linux() }
RateVegas.com - Vegas Reviews
Hotline is a poop poor example. Lets talk Media 100 or Painter or InDesign. Sure lots of apps are cross platform published but these are made on macs and then poorly ported to PC. And as we all know about ports of these types never work as well on the non-native systems!
The mother board for the $1699 is the YIKES variation without AGP and a slower bus. The $2500 system is the SAWTOOTH UMA board. Lets look at facts before we shoot our mouths off :)
I can't believe how many people are willing to fly off the handle without understanding what they're talking about.
Major points:
When the G4 first came out, the 400mhz version was the only one available. But it was not much more than a G3 in G4's clothing. This "low-end" G4 had a G4 CPU, and a G4 casing, but the motherboard was basically a G3. This motherboad is codenamed "Yikes." The "real" G4s use a motherboard called "Sawtooth." With this motherboard, you get:
The old G4/400 has none of this. So although the G4/400 started out life as a Yikes based machine (a revamped G3), Apple just graduated it to a Sawtooth machine overnight, with significant enhancements. As such, the price increase is actually justified, particuarly when taking into account the RAM issue.
So whoever preorded a G4/400 prior to all this is probably going to get much more than they originally bargained for -- at no additional cost.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
They're already at price/performance parity, more or less. The G4 is roughly triple the speed of a P3, and this is using Intel's own benchmarks, mind you. We're not talking Bytemarks here, boys and girls, we're talking benchmarks no one dares discredit.
Oh lord. Another one falls for the Apple FUD.
No, we're not talking Bytemarks here; this one, if you can believe it, is even worse. You see, at least Bytemarks is a benchmark. It's about 10 years old and has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the performance of a modern CPU, but at least when they came up with it, someone was trying to get an idea of how fast a chip would run.
These 6 tests are not benchmarks, in any normal sense of the word. Benchmarks measure how long it takes for a computer to perform a real-world task. These tests (Apple's got 'em posted here; scroll to the bottom) measure the speed of individual ops.
That's right: the G4 performs 6 specific operations an average of 3 times faster than a P3. We're talking things with names like "1024 dim. DotProd" and "256 Pt. Complex FFT". The G4 can take a dot product 3.68 times faster than a P3. Oh wait--not even that; a dot product in a specific dimension. Whoopdee. A 128-bit unit can do operations on very large numbers faster than a 32-bit one. Wow. This is like posting the fact that a 64-bit CPU can add two 64-bit numbers faster than a 32-bit one. Who would have thought.
And yes, these benchmarks were "published on Intel's own website." Of course they were. In the technical specs on the SSE core. Deep in the technical specs on the SSE core. Where information that is completely useless to anyone not planning on optimizing a compiler belongs.
Essentially, this benchmark is as misleading as quoting MFLOPS (oh yeah: Apple stooped to that one too...). Except that usually when you quote MFLOPS you at least generally need to average over the entire set of floating point ops. Not here folks. They picked out their favorite 6.
Oh wait--here's another difference: when you quote MFLOPS, you actually need to, uh, benchmark the thing. These numbers are all theoretical--just compare the number of clock cycles it takes to do an operation, and multiply by MHz. Now, it turns out they'd probably be even more in the G4's favor in practice--if I remember correctly, the AltiVec unit has a much better designed pipeline than the P3's SSE unit. But still, these numbers are absolutely, completely, worthless.
I don't have the URL offhand, but I've seen the Intel page they copied these tests from, and there were literally hundreds for them to choose from.
The point is, you can always find an operation that is carried out in less clock cycles on one particular archicture as compared to another. Always. Now it turns out that, in this case, the AltiVec apparently really is vastly superior for the sorts of things it does when compared to Intel's SSE or AMD's 3DNow. (Of course, it also takes up half the chip. Any guesses as to why they can't fab any 500's??)
However, the fact is that except for very specific applications (SETI@home in particular, and some signal processing stuff, IIRC), it doesn't make all too much of a difference. A 700 MHz Athlon will smoke a G4 450 or 500 or whatever on your basic integer stuff, and a 600 MHz P3'll be right up there with it. For the stuff that can be done with AltiVec, the G4'll certainly come out ahead, but for general floating point work, again, they're about equal. It goes without saying that, at this point, nothing crunches graphics like a year-old PC with an NVIDIA GeForce in it (except maybe something from sgi)--which, of course, is about the only thing the average user needs good float performance for anyways.
In the end, the G4 is just a decent chip with a neat vector processor that's proving hard to fab. Is it damn fast? Yes. Is your new G4 450 going to touch the Coppermine P3 733 that's shipping by the time yours actually ships? Nope. Is it "two or three years ahead of its time" like Stevie says? No way.
-Dave
P.S. And yes, you can sell them to China as well. As much as I want to like Apple these days (a simplified vertically integrated product line is a very good idea in many cases; OS X just might be incredible; and geez--did you check out the new iMac subwoofer??), the fact that every single word out of their marketing department/CEO's lips is a baldfaced lie...gives me pause.
Why not wait for IBM's new ATX motherboard that accepts a Gx proccessor? This will alow people to get the best of both the pc and the mac worlds.
No chips is no prob. However, LOWERING specs that were advertised is a problem. If they lower prices, or offered to let people wait for what they ordered; then that would be another thing altogether. But they changed specs that were widely advertised. That's bad.
Another beef: how healthy is it to presell so many systems? Intel delays chips all the time, but they seldom promise them to vendors who then sell systems based on them before all the components are avalible. That's idiotic, and Apple should've known response would be enormous. (the first Mac I would've considered buying, even at their inflated prices) Logically, a wait of a few months would not matter much in a sales sense; but would allow for inventories to fill up a little more. The fact that the 500Mhz G4's apparently have trouble working at all (but were presold anyways) seems to say Apple jumped too soon.
What would've been bad about waiting till the X-mas rush to release the G4s in quantities/quality?
Apple has gotten into quite a mess this time. Their next move will probably be to overclock 450MHZ chips to 500MHZ. The effect of this would be sad, because the Mac empire is bad enough off already. Poor Steve...
PLEASE VISIT http://www.ndnet.org/!
Studio Vision Pro, still not available on Windows. Maybe not the "last" product, but certainly a major reason that more pro audio facilities have Macs and not PCs in the booth.
The rep apologized for all the problems and my order is once again active. I am getting the same system I had ordered, for the original price.
I'm glad that they are honoring the orders they had already acepted. Unfortunately the people placing new orders will have to pay the new higher price.
13% is pretty poor. If they get 13% new Apple customers every time they introduce a new model line, they will still see their overall market share stay the same or shrink.
Look at some of the AMD Athlon/K7 systems at www.cybmax.com (I know about 6 people who have their machines and they are good quality). That's just one of many reputable direct market PC vendors who have much better performance/price than Apple. I can't speak about laptops though. I'm not familiar enough with the market.
The only thing you won't find bundled with PCs is Firewire. The reason? Apple indecision over licensing terms and their high fees. Right now it is a non issue since there are damn few products on the market using. I wouldn't be surprised if Firewire becomes a dead technology because of Apple's licensing and marketing of it.
It looks like one of the moderators is a blind Apple worshipper. You'll run out of moderation points real fast in this article.
I am going to make an AI, and it will be made on the macintosh.
$var = <STDIN>
$var =~ s/\\$//;
this is slashchomp
If any business let something go like this I'm sure they would see a lot of law suites for false advertising. You just can't treat customers like that or you're going to get burned.
---
"Everybody knows the moon's made of cheese," Wallace.
(besides FIRST POST! that is :) )
Honestly, I'm glad to see Apple listening to its customers. I doubted they could really be stupid enough to pull a stunt like that, and I'm pleased to see I was right.
Let's just hope they keep this idea of listening to the customer going in the future.
If this is true then their might be hope yet..
Sounds like a good call by Apple managment, and another true sign of how this company changed from the bonehead Scully-Spindler-Amilleo days of old.
Making fast smart decisions is what revived apple, glad to see that they realise and rectify the mistakes they make fast too.
--------------------------------
Try checking out Macintouch, they need 24 to 48 hours to finalize everything, you'll get an email. Ric Ford verified it with Apple, it is happening.
The phone peon probably hasn't even heard of the reversal yet, Steve Job's may have a Reality Distortion Field but he's never been known to have telepathy. Communication takes time.
Apple actually did the Right Thing for once - be still my beating heart!
For all their neat hardware and unique software and "cool" consumer appeal, Apple has a long and distinguished history of doing things that really piss off customers (the 1988 price hike, the cancellation of Performa free tech support, the PowerPC upgrade fiascos, etc.) yet they miraculously retain goodwill despite that. It's fine if Apple wants to change the base configs in order to ship product (they actually added RAM to a couple of them in this action), but cancelling existing orders was pure foolishness. It's good they saw the error of their ways. Were I Jobs, I'd have changed the speeds on the base models, filled all the existing orders except the G4-500's, and then asked the customers for those if they wanted to wait or if they wanted a 450 with more RAM instead. That's the only fair thing to do. I'm glad Apple finally seems to have gotten it for once.
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
After I read the Macintouch article I called Apple to see if they were really going to uncancel my order (placed early last month.) They weren't sure, but said I might be one of the "lucky ones" whose orders had already been sent into production.
Doesn't sound like much of a reversal to me, if everybody who ordered after mid-September is still sh!t out of luck.
It's hard to cheer when a company basically tries to pull a fast one and reverses itself only when it gets called on it.
Anyhow, am I the only one that doesn't understand why folks are so bully on Apple these days? I used to be a Machead myself years ago, when it was a platform of innovation (with stuff like Photoshop, Premiere, Excel, etc. being born and raised on it). But what was the last revolutionary software product to come out first on the Mac platform? Sure, the hardware is much improved cost and feature-wise, but why bother with such poor software selection?
if slashdot is read by people at apple...
.apple.com?
rob: You have access to the web logs... so.... how many hits from
:-)
--
Time is on my side
There's nothing like massive consumer & media backlash to make someone change their mind, huh?
But the fact that they seriously thought that they could get away with it really bothered me. "Oh hey, we're Apple so you know that G4 400 that we said was going to cost you $1600? Well now that's gonna be a 350. But you can still get the 400 for $2,500 if you want." Total insanity. At least they got wise. I guess they banked on the fact that the Macintosh faithful are probably some of the most loyal consumers out there and thought that they could ream them just a little bit more.
I can't believe I'm saying this but - Way to go angry Mac users!
Pete
Pete
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
I'm glad Apple did this, I want a G4 running MacOS X alongside my PIII 450 runing Linux. Once MacOS X rolls out I'll buy a midrange G4 nicely equipped, whatever midrange means at the time.
I'm very suprised at Apple's actions today. Most people whould be able to tell you (meaning a corporation) that raising prices while lowering quality would piss a customer base off. I know that according to economics, raising price can raise profits even though it lowers the number of customers you have. However, in the PC market, the number of customers also affects the quality of the product (by enticing companies to write progams for it.) It also affects the customer satisfaction, which is incredibly important these days. Overall, pissing off so many people at once is a really bad idea.
I am impressed that Apple has reversed their decision, but Apple is beginning to act more and more like a mindless, heedless corporation than the benevolent underdog of a company Apple used to be.
-B
This is the proper way to do business.
- 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?"
until:
1. Ship Mac OS X already!
2. Unbundle ATI video
3. Ship Pro models with Pro keyboard and Pro mouse instead of crappy iMac kbd&mouse.
4. Reach MHz/price-parity with Intel.
5. Fix QT 4.0 and Sherlock UI.
"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.
Looks like this is legit. Apparently S. Jobs' email has been flooded with hate mail (heh), and he has been replying to customers saying that it will be 'set right' tomorrow.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
- Jeff
Steve has a unique management style, and although some dislike him personally, it is obviously effective. Check out the two year stock chart
In other news: IBM is now also making G4 chips (*with* AltiVec) which should help to get the G4s out the door faster. If I was a gambling man (i.e. if I had any money) I would be putting all I could into AAPL. If the current backlog of orders is any indication, the next quarter could be the most profitable yet... and investors will reap the rewards. (Along with the Mac faithful who are rewarded with that Good Feeling(TM) ;-)
Great work Steve... just dont let it go to your head.
Reality has a liberal bias
ok.. so apple makes a kind of bad decision that annoys some of its customers. by 24 hours later, it has realized its mistake, listented to its customers, and done something rather nice to everyone who had ordered a 450 model. (in the process giving up quite a bit of money..)
/. posting about some mistake apple made, and then suddenly they're experts..
after apple makes the mistake, slashdot is flooded with people flaming apple. Apple is arrogant, apple is screwing its customers, apple is nonresponsive, apple is self-destructive and stupid. Almost none of these people posting were affected in any way by the order cancellations. The people posting who _were_ affected were just kind of calmly shrugged it off.
so now that apple has actually _listened to its customers_.. what happens? do the slashdot posters come back and appologize for being too hasty to flame? well, no. instead what we get is.. more apple bashing. people say "well it's a good thing apple is doing this", and then immediately go right on with the flaming. Mostly saying the exact same thing they were after yesterday's article. What is this? How many other companies would _do_ this? If compaq cancelled a bunch of orders and said "i'm sorry, we can't fufill these, you'll have to reorder".. would _they_ have listened to any customer complaints? (Compaq being a hypothetical example.. i've never dealt with them)
Oh, and btw i think i can say with almost absoloute certainty that apple did _not_ make the decision to give discounts to the people who had originally ordered 500s based on anything related in any way to slashdot. And the downgrade wasn't covered by any other "media" sources except macintouch/macnn. Apple based what they did on customer feedback..
meanwhile, other people in the current thread are complaining that apple effectively raised the prices for people who are going to buy new G4s after that. um, so? are you going to be buying a G4? if not why are you complaining? shouldn't apple have the right to charge what they like, especially if (because of rising DRAM prices) it is costing them more to make the product then it was awhile back? it's amazing the people who don't care about or pay attention to apple _at all_.. except when there's a
there are times when slashdot is full of interesting people with great technical knowledge and a willingness to share it, and informed insights on the thing being spoken on. These times almost never occur if apple's involved in some way. oh well. i'm done ranting now.
-mcc-baka
(this message sent from LinuxPPC r5)
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I do not like the actions apple has taken but it is really the fault of MOT because they were given plenty of time to get everything right and they failed at apple's expense. This goes back to the fact that Jobs has to make up for the loss of sales. I am upset with MOT, but now that IBM is back I am sure they camn fab the chips better because they have a generally better facility and are not shifting around with restructureing
It seems a company can only remain young and vital so long as they are also small and the underdog. As soon as a company starts to get big they just loose that spark that made them special. Good example: 3dfx. They rocked the world with Voodoo technology and then upped the ante with Voodoo2. What have they done since then? Well, not much really. I mean the Voodoo3 is cool and all (I own one) but it's just not the groundbreaking technology the Voodoo was. Or actually, mroe appropriately it IS the same technology as the Voodoo. 3dfx hasn't really changed techonology since they first invented it (yes the orignal Voodoo1 could do multi-texturing, Quantum3d made a multi texture version). They've just made it faster and smaller. That's well and good, but in that time other companies have surpassed them. Now I think they are mostly rolling on name alone. Same thing with Apple, they revolutionized computer interfaces by bringing the GUI to the mass market but they really haven't DONE anything since then. Coloured cases, ya well, big deal. Their OS? It suffers from 3dfx syndrome (using old technology) which they plan to fix with OSX, but still. When you're little you have to fight in the only way you can and that is to be better than everyone else. The only thing that matters is succeeding through excellence. Once you get big, all that matters is what your stock does, and many companies, including Apple it seems, wiill do whatever it takes to make that stock go up.
Yes, I was in the exact same position as you are. Call them up. They will reactivate your old order and cancel the new one you placed on Wednesday. You will keep your original place in line. Or at least that is what I was told by two different reps I had a chance to talk to.
Where have you been hiding these?
I know that IBM released some specs for a PowerPC chip. Did this spec include the G4?
I have an bunch of old parts sitting around a P133 that would be happier stuck on one of these boards but I'll wait to see some products before I start looking for my screwdriver....
I haven't read through the whole discussion here, so please excuse me if this is has already been said. I just feel the point needs to be made!
When Apple decided to charge the 500MHz price for the 450MHz system, they also threw in 128MB of RAM--for free--to compensate. At current prices, that just about makes up the original cost difference between the 500MHz and 450MHz model.
From MacNN:
Let me say that I'm not condoning Apple's handling of this matter. They should have contacted the affected customers via, first, email, and then if no response within 48 hours, telephone, asking them if they wanted to "trade" 50MHz for 128MB of RAM added to their system. As it is now, Apple can't deliver the 500MHz chips; if they'd asked their customers if they would be willing to trade MHz for MB, I'm positive that the reaction on Slashdot would have been damned near positive!
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
I don't think the mouse is that bad... once you have a realization and find that it works better as a fingertip-only mouse, rather than full-palm, it becomes a joy to use!
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
>like they did to Power Computing, Newton Inc., Claris (oops, it's starting to sound like Microsoft's lineup of acquisitions, isn't it?).
Um, just thought I'd mention, Newton Inc and Claris were both Apple spin-offs. Every Newton I've ever seen has had an Apple logo on it, and Claris? Well, it was originally a combination of the MacDraw, MacWrite, and othe Mac* programs. I don't think this even comes close to Microsoft's lineup of acquisitions.
If this news story shows one thing, it's that Apple changes its mind whenever it pleases. It changed its mind when clones started leeching sales, it changed its mind about spinning out the Newton (to kill it, basically), it changed its mind about Claris (because it was offering the same software functionality and ease to Windows, AFAIK), it changed its mind about 33.6 modems in iMacs, it changed its mind about charging for AppleShare IP upgrades...when you think about it, Apple changes its mind A LOT. It responds to the market. People don't like something and make motions about it (the iMac modems, AppleShare IP, etc.) it changes.
This fiasco is only partially Apple's fault.
The real problem lies with Motorola. As far back as I remember, Motorola has never delivered a CPU on-time and in quantity.
The only reason this is Apple's fault is because they should know better than to trust Motorola. The 68020 was amazingly late. The 68060 was so late that Apple abandoned the chip family. Their biggest mistake was not going with Intel when they had the chance.
Don't get me wrong -- I much prefer the 68K architecture to anything Intel ever created. Especially the nice, clean instruction set. But Intel has consistently outperformed Motorola in getting chips out the door, at the fastest possible speed, and in quantity.
Reguardless of whether or not X, netscape or AccelX crash... they should not, in ANY WAY take down the whole machine... this is a flaw in the OS itself, NOT the application.
:)
I've never seen X take down a solaris box, but I assume its happened, I have seen it take down a linux box, and its done it more then once on my FBSD boxes... however... The entire point of having kernel land and userland is so that if something in userland breaks... that part breaks... and its stops there...
X taking down the OS is no different then windows gpf's in kernel32.dll... both are results of bad code... (Not that I could do any better, I'd rather play with kernel drivers then the X source tree
http://www.schizo.com/
The neat thing about pc's is that many many people make them, so you don't have to wait for them.
If you'd kind notice that the G4 shortage is a Motorola problem. It can't make enough chips to fill demand.
If Intel delayed a chip, no amount of Compaqs and Dells would make it ship faster. What might happen is AMD would step in and take up the slack, which is exactly what IBM is doing for Apple.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
I'm also glad to see Apple listened, but as to your comment "I doubted they could really be stupid enough to pull a stunt like that..." Some of us have been here before.
:-). But I'm sensing a trend here of testing customers and pulling back only if it looks like the water's too cold.
Around April of this year (I think? Maybe earlier...) Apple issued a bug fix/maintenance release of their AppleShareIP small office file/web/mail/print server suite (version 6.2). These maintenance releases had always been free, until this one which they wanted $499 for.
Needless to say, a lot of us Apple admins bitched very loudly. Within a week, they had done a similar reversal and the update became free for all of us that had 6.0 or 6.1. A much more equitable solution.
I'm glad Apple did the right thing with the G4 processor squeeze and I remain that most rare of slashdotters, a relatively content Apple user
-A.
What did the walrus say to the penguin? "No soap, radio."
Even though Apple changed their mind, they cannot get a way with the fact that they tried to deceive loyal customers. That is VERY VERY WRONG. People here in slashdot is very generous. I decided not to purchase iMacDV and I won't purchase Apple for sometime.
If angry Mac user can do this, why not we can get togather and push Apple to open up clone and MacOS ROM license?
This is SINGLE MOST important thing for Apple consumers.
'Cause what apple pulled was so blatantly obnoxious and insulting that they never ever should have done it in the first place. Then they reversed the descision and began running their business with at least a hint of ethics...that is what we EXPECT. Should we say "Sorry Steve Jobs for calling you nasty names for pulling a crass and high-handed move"? I don't think so...
Blar.
My own experience in dealing with store.apple.com a few months back is that the salesdroid was willing to bend over backwards to please me only until the moment my credit card was charged. While writing up my order she claimed her computer "wasn't letting her" put in the price she'd quoted me a day earlier, but my credit card would be refunded the difference.
Well, the computer arrived and of course my card was charged the higher price, sans refund. I called the salesperson, who was apparently overcome with amnesia, claiming that the price in the computer was the final selling price and that I'd have to provide written documentation of any promised refund. Hello? Written documentation? They didn't even send me a written receipt until two months later!
Anyway, I'm still an Apple fan but would think twice before ordering from store.apple.com again. Congrats to those who were un-screwed in the latest fiasco.
Maybe the fact that they're annoying to use encourages one to use it less and hence experience less RSI. :-)
But seriously, I like my iCatch.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
All they're doing is trying to please the most pissed off consumer (folks who had them on pre-order weeks ago) right now while still screwing over people who thought about buying a G4. This reversal changes nothing as consumers will still have to pay higher prices for slower machines. This amounts to bait-and-switch, something no consumer is ever gonna fall for, Apple is gonna have a tough time trying to sell these configs. Its very possible that they're wont a be Xmas in Jobsland. There were plenty of ways Apple could have avoided this PR nightmare, but no they waited until they announced their quarterly earnings (which beat expectations) to announce the "Re-configurations" Look at the stock right now, its going up! Wall Street wont pay any attention to this because what matters is the quarterly earnings. The next quarter will be a different matter because im still see'ing pissed of Mac users on various forums.
nothing there as of 1:47 pacific western time
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this is slashchomp
4:01PM 73 3/16 +9 5/32 +14.30%
in addition to this news also reports of shortages?!? WTF?
Pork is not a verb