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Apple Businesses

Apple Makes G4s Slower 179

Posted by Hemos from the bone-headed-manuvers dept.
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. "
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Apple Makes G4s Slower More

Apple Makes G4s Slower

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  • I'd suggest waiting - I have a feeling the blame should go to Motorola in this case. They've brought in IBM to fill the gaps so hopefully things will be back to normal soon (ie. before the end of the year, or early after).

    This does suck, though. :|

    - Darchmare
    - Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
  • 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.
  • I think this story is slipping under the radar of the NYT, Reuters, AP, etc., b/c they don't really understand what it means -- esp. what it means to Apple loyalists.

    Let's say Microsoft announced Windows 2000, and Windows 2000 Special Edition, and the SE version was $100 more, but 50% faster. They have a big event saying, "We've broken new ground with the speed and features of Windows 2000 SE". They accept thousands of orders for it, and then, a month later, say "Sorry, but to all of you people who ordered Windows 2000 SE, we're actually going to send you regular old Windows, 50% slower, but we're still going to charge you the same price."

    The differences b/t that and what Apple just did are negligible.
  • 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."
  • Perhaps it may just be that I have to go to an Economics class soon, but it seems to me this is just plain economics. I still don't agree that they should have canceled the orders for the non-500Mhz machines, but raising the prices does make sense economically.

    First, the 500Mhz machine will not be available as soon as was previously thought. Those orders I could see the reason for canceling. This will likely make those who wanted the 500Mhz to get the 450Mhz. The demand for the other machines goes up, and the supply stays the same. In a market economy, that means that in order to avoid a shortage and satisfy the consumer and supplier, the equilibrium price must go up.

    The reason why prices typically go down in the computer industry is simple also. A faster machine is introduced, which will reduce the demand for the slower ones. That would then decrease the equilibrium price of the slower machines.

    Is there anything in this post which does not make sense?
  • >Every one seems to love the idea that Apple dropped the ball with this new chip but hey, where is Intel's new chip? Delayed again.


    Who cares about crApple OR Intel, when there's
    an 800 MHZ ATHLON to be had ! (or built actually)

    http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/99q3/990826/inde x.html

    :-)
  • . . . and at that time, what would the BULK of PPC buyers have run as an OS on those kick-ass Moto G3 boxes? Certainly not Mac OS, because Moto would have driven their asses out of business.

    yes, it's obvious to anyone watching Apple during the (wistful sigh) "cloning era", that Apple was totally incapable of keeping up, performance-wise with the cloners. As it is obvious today that Apple can't keep up with the accelerator vendors.

    But LinuxPPC/MkLinux didn't really exist then, and NT PPC was obviously dead. It would definately have been the end of the PPC platform, period, if Apple had gone out of business. I don't think Apple is quite irrelevant yet, as far as the future of the PPC goes, but maybe in a year or two. . .
    Face it, Moto needs Apple for the PPC more than Apple needs Moto. I wish Moto could have done something to help Apple keep up - but maybe Apple pissed off Moto by going to that 3rd-party PPC manufacturer that had that 700MHz demo (two years ago!), I forgot their name.

    Others suggested that Apple simply unload the hardware side of the business, and focus only on software. Well, with the state Mac OS was in at that time, that would also have probably been suicide. Because Apple hardware was still largely driving demand for clones, and if Apple had pulled out, I think we'd have seen further marketshare decline, and a lot of the cloners would probably have died, and Moto might have decided that 5000 chips per year wasn't enough reason to keep PPC development going.

    What happened was ugly - but I think it was the only survival path Apple could have taken. But now both companies are acting like spoiled children, and I'm contemplating buying a Celeron-based PC now. (until my prozac kicks in, that is)

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
  • You are a multi-billion dollar corporation.

    You DO NOT accept confirmed orders, then in the
    blink of an eye and without notice, cancel
    all the orders because you decided it would be
    in your own personal best interest to raise
    the price, change the configurations, and pretend
    the problem will go away.

    It is insulting. It gives a clear message to Mac
    users out there. And that is:

    "We don't care about you. We want to lure you in
    and screw you for all that you have. Then we
    want you to come back for re-fills.

    Have a nice day."

    Pick any VAR out there and let them even hint at
    trying to pull the same stunt. Watch the lawsuits
    fly.

    Some people have complained that Intel is no
    better. But while they may price the chips high,
    they aren't taking orders, then cancelling them
    when things aren't going as well as they had
    hoped.

    Most companies call a mistake in planning like
    this a loss. Apple should learn to play by the
    rules.

    But obviously, how the customer feels isn't as
    important as how their pockets feel.

    As for them reversing the action and calling
    people back, nice touch. But what about the people
    who got shoved to the bottom of the waiting list?
    What about people who have lost time and money?
    What about people who had contracts as a var to
    fulfill? Those were confirmed orders for goodness
    sakes! What if it had been medication or supplies
    for a war stricken nation? Who's ever heard of
    cancelling orders arbitrarily after they have been
    placed and confirmed??

    Steve REALLY IS thinking differently. But it is
    really not clear whether he is thinking with his
    head and his heart in the right place.
    - Wing
    - Reap the fires of the soul.
    - Harvest the passion of life.
  • anyone know if the various mac resellers are going to change their prices to match?
  • Actually, I believe they already have. I haven't been following it much though.

    - Darchmare
    - Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
  • Price hikes aren't all that great either, though. Sure, their expenses were rising because of the huge jump in memory prices, but it really makes them look bad, and computer companies have a good history of not raising prices. I think Apple can afford to take a smaller profit on some machines in exchange for not pissing off large numbers of their customers, but apparently they disagree.

    As far as the jumpers go, one must remember that the G3 machines were really the first Apple machines with jumpers on them. All the previous ones were pretty much fixed frequency. I know on my PowerCenter Pro machine, it has "jumpers", but PowerComputing kindly took it upon themselves to solder them on nice and tight. Yet I can still buy upgrades and run them without much trouble. Given Motorola's problem with higher-speed G4s, overclocking the thing probably isn't the greatest of ideas in any case. Just buy a new processor from one of the many upgrade makers and be happy.

    I must say that the iBook is looking better and better by the day. Now if only I could get a decent amount of memory for it without selling off some vital organs, or my soul.
  • Look at Apple's online store [apple.com]. The prices are the same and the clock rates are lowered.

    Shenanigans! I call shenanigans on Apple!
  • I wonder how long it'll take for motorola to take ot the bugs in g4, and how that will affect apple stock
  • Thats the reason that The CFO of apple gave for keeping the price the same.

    Although with Apples fat margins you would think they would just bite the bullet on this one to make people happy. I can understand canceling the 500 though if you can't ship.

    Motorolla is really bitting the big one on this..

    On the plus side IBM said it will begin making G4s with altivec in the first half of 2000. I think the new Nintendo will use them. SOI/copper should help the clock speed of the G4and IBM has good new fabs.
  • as far as i can tell, it's not a bug. what happened is motorola over estimated their yields for 500mhz chips (ie, they're very low). i believe they're moving to a smaller process to fix the problem; from a .15 micron process to .13.
  • Thats the reason that The CFO of apple gave for keeping the price the same.



    Although with Apples fat margins you would think they would just bite the bullet on this one to make people happy. I can understand canceling the 500 though if you can't ship.



    Motorolla is really bitting the big one on this..



    On the plus side IBM said it will begin making G4s with altivec in the first half of 2000. I think the new Nintendo will use them. SOI/copper should help the clock speed of the G4and IBM has good new fabs.

  • Hmm, what's with this MacOS 9 stuff I'm reading about? Granted, I'm not at all a Mac follower, but with that incredibly sweet cinema display I've seen, I was thinking about picking one of those G4s up once MacOS X client was available for it. I didn't even know there was going to be a MacOS 9.

    Anyone know if 9 is closer to 8 or is closer to X?
  • 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.
  • Even Intel isn't usually so sell slower chips at the same price as faster ones (although they've never actually taken faster ones off the market).

    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 :)

  • I dunno, but I haven't seen anything that says the bug occurs at exactly 500MHz. Just because the 450's run fine and the 500's don't doesn't mean you can run it at 499.5 and expect it to work, it's not logical.

    cheers,

    Matthew Reilly

  • Re:This is bad news (Score:3)

    by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Thursday October 14, 1999 @03:05AM (#1615213)
    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 G4 chip shortage isn't Apple's fault, its Motorolas. Apple made a bad decision on canceling the orders, and have since rectifed it. Put down the bat and leave that poor dead horse alone.

  • SDRAM prices to blaim (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Reading the article, it looks like the reason for the change was the increased DRAM prices lately.

    Face it, when the chips have trippled in cost in the last month or so, that really cuts into Apple's profits on the machines, so something has to go.

  • here's a good macworld opinion article [zdnet.com], that sums up what most people probably think about this 50mhz reduction thing; they should have delayed the 500mhz models and left everything else the same. apple should have absorbed the lower yields/price increases, instead of passing their problem with moto unto the consumers.
  • No, the iBook has been shipping for some time, but only in blue. The yellow parts were delayed by the Taiwan quake.
  • Does anyone here really know whether the problem they're reacting to is with the chip or the motherboard? I can't see how problems with the 500 mhz chips would naturally lead to dropping the speed of the 400 mhz chips to 350... and the Sawtooth motherboards were already delayed compared to the "Yikes!" ones.
  • With 500 Mhz G4s no where in sight, and as they said, SDRAM prices shooting up, that's really all they could do. If the current trend continued, by the time they had 500 Mhz G4s, they might be taking a loss on the machines.

    I'm quite upset that my 500 Mhz order has not only been canceled, but is now completely unavailable, but I'm not going to cry havoc at Apple for it. They're in a bind right now, and I don't think they'd make such a customer-angering move without having thought it out first. (On the other hand, they did design that awful QT 4.0 interface...)
  • 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.
  • Apple wouldn't be able to get away with this if we still had the mac clones.
  • True enough. I'm still wondering what they were doing there. Apple isn't broke any more, they should have just eaten the loss (next quarter is expected to be a good one, they could afford it).

    I have a feeling there's something else here at play.

    - Darchmare
    - Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net

  • 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.

    Well, I can tell you how I plan to deal with it. I'm an Apple supporter of many years who recently (about 1.5-2 yrs ago) started dabbling with Linux, first with MkLinux on my PowerMac clone, then with a dedicated Intel/Linux box from VA Research (now VA Linux Systems.) It was a bit of a rocky start, but the more I use it, the more I like it and the less tolerant I am of crashes when I use my Mac. It looks like I got in at about the right time, too, just when Linux was really starting to take off.

    Anyway, after I bought my blue & white G3/300 a while ago, I was so impressed with the design of the case that I decided that I'd make my next Linux box a PowerMac/LinuxPPC box. Recently, I've started taking a look at putting together a 500 MHz Athlon box instead. This decision by Apple, which apparently has been reversed, convinces me I probably should go with the Athlon box. I'm still going to take a wait-and-see attitude with Mac OS X client, but if they mess that one up, I'm gone, probably for good.

  • I am used to a company dangling a carrot in front of me and then snatching it away, but this shit was rediculous. I ordered the G4 because I thought I would be able to have a top of the line graphics station because some people in the world use computers to make money. Instead they drop my order and tell me to buy something less for the same money? Well Apple, go fuck yourself. I took on work expecting to receive a G4, and now I have to play catch up. Fuck Apple - I am sticking to PC's.
  • and at that time, what would the BULK of PPC buyers have run as an OS on those kick-ass Moto G3 boxes? Certainly not Mac OS, because Moto would have driven their asses out of business.

    Why can't Apple just raise the liscencing costs on the new machines to cover some of the losses in their own product line? In the long run, the Mac OS *is* Apple's most valuable asset. Even with the pathetic state System 7 was in, they still had a loyal customer base that was attached more than anything else to Apple's OS. That means that anything Apple could do to grow the platform would have benefitted them in the long run.

    Not only that, but giving Moto a stake in the platform would have given them much more incentive to make better PPC chips. And it would benefit Apple by allowing them to share some of the R & D costs. Particularly with the open hardware standards of CHRP, Apple could easily require some kind of technology-sharing arrangement whereby Apple gets to liscence any advances by cloners for cheap.

    So I think clone-killing was dumb. The success of the clones was simply proof that Apple's hardware was falling behind the cutting edge. Better to get that lesson from someone who's dependent on you, than to wait for people to start defecting to Wintel, and likely never come back. The clones gave Apple both an alternative revenue stream and a less damaging feedback mechanism and technology source. A flourishing PPC clone market combined with LinuxPPC & Mac OS X would have been very sweet. As it is, the PPC platform can't keep up with the sheer competitiveness of the Wintel world.
  • This coming from an Anonymous Coward? Nice move buddy.
  • 'U' should be more careful with your assumptions. I haven't bought a Mac in years - my current main platform is a Mac clone (Power Computer PTP225). My work machine is an Apple, but I didn't pay for it so my 'A#$' is thus-far unreamed.

    BTW: Did you come up with 'crApple' yourself? That's really, really quite clever and original.


    - Darchmare
    - Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
  • The company I work for had an outstanding order for 25 450mhz machines. These we have been told will ship in a week or so, and the price will remain the same. As far as I can tell outstanding orders (maybe older than a day?) seem to be honored at the original price.

    How many people really have all the facts here. All I hear is a bunch of me too, panic stricken people that bears an aweful resemblance to a lynch mob.
  • I have a co-worker that ordered a G3 the day before the G4s where released. He called the people that he ordered his machine from the next day and told him that his order was automatically upgraded to a G4.

    It arrived about 2 weeks ago. Works fine and he got a 450 G4 for the price of now 400 G4.

    Some people just get far too lucky.
  • The G4's don't overclock well. Overclock a G3. By the way, in a side by side comparison my 400 mghz G4 is significantly faster than a 400 mghz Pentium II. Disk IO on the PC, though, blows the doors off the Apple. Just wanted to set the record straight.
  • And they'll keep beating they're estimates until they have no more ARM shares to sell.
  • Actually it's possible to order the 400Mhz G4 from Apple store with a 450Mhz G4 chip by custom building your G4 spec. It's an additional $350 but still alot less than the $3500 price tage Apple now charges.
  • On another board someone who preordered over a month ago had their order cancelled. I'd love to know how Apple is prioritizing these.

  • Re:Huh? (Score:1)

    by jtn ( 6204 )
    Now there is a well-seasoned and logical argument. Pull your head out of your ass. Apple really didn't have much choice in this; most likely this course was the lesser of two evils. Are some people so pathetic and wrapped up in Apple-loathing that they use any excuse to bash?
  • "Why can't Apple just raise the liscencing costs. . ."
    Well, at the time of the clone-killing, that was the story, that Apple was raising it's licensing fees for OS 8, because their previous contract only applied to OS 7.x, and this OS was originally going to be 7.7, IIRC, but Apple changed it to 8, thus loopholing the OS out of the old, less lucrative contract. The cloners rebelled (according to the public story), and pulled out of the cloning business to spite Apple, except for Power Computing, who were going on with shipping new machines with the old OS, building Wintel clones too, and so Apple just bought them to put them out of their misery. That put a big damper on any remaining cloning activity.
    Does it make a difference whether the cloners were eating Apples high-end hardware lunch? It shouldn't have if the cloners had accepted the new terms - which makes me believe that that's not what happened, because by all accounts, Apple wasn't asking for much more, Power Computing was rolling in cash, so they couldn't have been afraid to shave off a few more margin points to Apple, it could only have helped them, because it would have discouraged the small competitors.

    Now, behind the scenes, the story may have been different, but Apple's story is, they played hardball with licensing fees, and the cloners chickened out.

    ". . . but giving Moto a stake in the platform would have given them much more incentive
    to make better PPC chips. . ."

    WTF is their incentive supposed to be? Selling more PPC chips! Make better chips, more people buy Apple machines - that's simple. What more stake should they need?
    Nowadays, tho, the story is different. There IS LinuxPPC, even tho Be and NT are totally out of the game, Moto could stand to win BIG with LinuxPPC, and only IBM apparently has the vision to pursue that. Now I can understand why Moto doesn't want to get burned again (but how could they? who's going to burn them, Linus?) - but what I can't understand is why the hell IBM doesn't just STOP making anything supporting Intel chips, including software, and start making kick ass PPC - Linux boxes, and release all of it's software for Linux, or even AIX -PPC, or even, why the hell won't they finish OS/2 PPC?

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
  • Alas, another Apple victim is brought to the light, through the window(s).....
  • This is true, but no one is claiming that the Mac OS is as stable as UNIX. All I said was that 8.6, and presumably 9.0, will be so much more stable than what we used to have that it begins to approach the kind of stability that UNIX users are so proud of, and what we poor slobs so envy. :-) (Note: sarcasm delivered with affection) But then, my guess is that power and reliability in the consumer -- not the server -- market is what Apple's going for with OSX. If they're able to craft a GUI and user experience that is as elegant and transparent as with the old OS, the consumer market is going to explode for them. Especially if they get Sun to port Star Office Suite over for them. I know for a fact three major offices near me that would convert to Mac in a heartbeat, if they had the Office aps. That may not be important to everyone, but it is their motivation. Or a major one, anyway. After they saw that big bright light at the end of the tunnel a couple of years ago, and heard Aunt Tillie calling, Apple may be excused for going for the homerun. With OSX, they just might have it. We'll see.
  • only problem is that they are still on the NSA's list for non-exporting. What qualified them was their 1billion floading point (gigaflop). No computer by intel or anyone else has caught up to that. So, they are still dangerous :)
  • Okay, so Apple has reversed their decision. That's good--but it comes a bit late. Apple should have made that decision in the first place. Simply more management insanity, followed by panic when Apple discovers that, hey, people actually _do_ know what's best for themselves, rather than Apple telling them what is! Hmm! Maybe Apple's actually learning a thing or two.

    But yes, as you recommend, I will put the bat down now...

  • Re:Huh? (Score:1)

    by jtn ( 6204 )
    Now there is a well-seasoned and logical argument. Pull your head out of your ass. Apple really didn't have much choice in this; most likely this course was the lesser of two evils. Are some people so pathetic and wrapped up in Apple-loathing that they use any excuse to bash?
  • Wow, Mr. 'crApple' strikes again. I must say, that's very very original. You must do standup comedy.

    Apple doesn't have a monopoly on the OS side, they provide both the hardware and software. Basically, they provide a single product which is comprised of both hardware and software. In theory, Microsoft is in competition on an open platform which is out of their control, but uses anti-competitive practices to force those other OSes off of that platform. In contrast, Apple sells the hardware and software as a package - they're not pressuring hardware makers with strong-arming tactics, they ARE the hardware makers. Nobody is forcing you to buy a Mac, you have hundreds faceless clone shops willing to slap together a cheap PC and sell it to you for less.

    Apple controls the majority of the Mac market using legal techniques - approximately 10% of the desktop computer market. Microsoft controls pretty much the rest using illegal techniques. I believe you need to learn a bit about anti-trust law.

    BTW: And no, Apple didn't collect money. They cancelled the orders. It'd suck to be one of those who ordered a G4, but they're not any poorer. But don't think Apple is going to come out rich from this either. Most likely, they're going to lose a substantial amount of cash.

    In contrast, Microsoft (assuming they sold complete systems) would have just shipped buggy processors and tried to patch their way out of it over the next year or so - most likely via a $99 upgrade.


    - Darchmare
    - Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
  • ...and Sherlock 2, and Final Cut.

    Oy, someone in Cupertino needs to be slapped. I have a feeling it's a certain Mr. Jobs. :>

    - Darchmare
    - Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
  • "Still three models of G4"?

    The previous G4/500 was announced but availability was at a later date. Then Mot announced the G4/500 bug which even threw even this later date into question. IMHO this means there was only two G4 models going into this latest setback.

    Is this is another examples of Macophiles being so desperate to hold onto the dream that they even consider vapourware real? Maybe it caused by the same underlying inferiority complex that leads them to argue in defence of the BYTEmark suite despite its badly flawed underlying methodology :)

  • I kind of doubt it. At worst, PowerPC supplies would have been more constrained.

    At best, you might be right - there would have been a steadier supply. I don't think it'd a matter of getting away with it, though - Apple won't be making much profit from this move.

    - Darchmare
    - Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
  • Next, they'll start asking their loyal customers to bend over and "take one for the team" again; it seems to be the only way they know how to do business -- abuse their customers.

    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

  • think differant? (Score:3)

    by eshefer ( 12336 ) on Thursday October 14, 1999 @04:38AM (#1615267) Homepage Journal
    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.
    --------------------------------
  • They come out with these horrible, misleading advertisements, and now they can't produce the product? Not only that, but they charge the same price for a less powerful machine? Some have placed that blame on the cost of DRAM, but hey if I ordered a Gateway computer for X dollars, and DRAM suddenly tripled in price, you know damn well I'd be getting the machine at the negotiated price.

    1) Not my problem. You're a big boy (company) live up to your contracts. And ESPECIALLY don't make me wait even LONGER for a LESS POWERFUL product. And the whole "at least you'll get SOMETHING" line is just too pathetic to comment on

    2) See last line of previous point

    3) More excuses. I wouldn't be suprised if the next batch of Apple adds have a line saying "It's Motorola's Fault!"

    Sorry, no "crApple" comments for you to insult me with. Bah...that's bad Latin anyway.

    And to think I was considering buying one of these things...

  • This was a business decision, and a tough one at that. You don't have the supply to meet the demand, not because of your own problems, but because of your supplier's (Motorola, Taiwan, etc.) problems. WHAT DO YOU DO?

    Either you say "whoops, we messed up, let's try again", or you lie and say "no problems, we'll just be a little late". Apple chose the first option.

    Am I happy about the situation? No. I don't think Apple is either. I don't like the price swap either, but how do you re-structure a product line such that it doesn't compete with the iMacs? A 350 MHZ G4 == $1599. A 350 MhZ G3 iMac == $999. Price the G4 any lower and they cut into iMac sales.

    Decisions like these are rarely cut & dry....
  • I recently bought a G4-400 w/ MacOS 8.6 for my wife. It is hardly stable. We find it locks up or the pointer freezes or acts erratic at a rate of almost once per hour.
    1. Trouble-shoot dOOd!!! The OS is fine....you have a conflict somewhere! Do I really need to elaborate?!
  • If this is the same thing I read about, the person had changed the video card option on their order yesterday. If Apple is using order date to cancel, this would probably result in any previous order being kicked...

    Just a thought.

  • Huh?

    The speed of Pentium processors is determined after they are manufactured. If they pass the 500 mhz "quality assurance" test then they are sold as 500 mhz processors. If they fail at that speed they are tested at a lower speed. This process continues until a stable speed is found. If the processor is not stable at any speed it is scraped. That is why you can "overclock" Pentium processors so easily, you are not exceeding its design specs, just using it at a higher speed then Intel thinks is safe for THAT processor.
  • I think Wallstreet love Apple because they eraned 40% more tils quarter than they predicted.
    And..
    Since the G4's aren't shipping too well yet.. the iBook isn't shipping at all (with 300.000 in back order) yet, and the new iMac have recieved 250.000 orders in the first week and is just starting to ship the _next_ quarter is probably going to be the most profitable in many, many years.. So.. BUY while the stock is cheap!

    - Henrik
  • I recently bought a G4-400 w/ MacOS 8.6 for my wife. It is hardly stable. We find it locks up or the pointer freezes or acts erratic at a rate of almost once per hour.

    Have you tried trouble-shooting?! The OS is fine....you have a conflict somewhere. Do I really need to elaborate? [macfixit.com]

  • Differant? Ecnolaged? Croud? Homie, where, oh where, is your dictionary???
  • 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.

  • Don't be silly. Do you have idea how many computers fit on that export restriction list?

    When I order a laptop, I routinely get asked whether I plan to export it. Athlon chips also fall under the restriction, since its performance is up to 2.4Gflops. Dual processor computers are also on that list, since it's the total computational speed that counts.
  • I don't think Apple is quite irrelevant yet, as far as the future of the PPC goes, but maybe in a year or two. . . Face it, Moto needs Apple for the PPC more than Apple needs Moto.

    This could not be less true. Motorola sells the vast majority of its PPCs for embedded processor systems. That's also where IBM sells most of their PPC technology. To say that Motorola needs Apple is like saying Microsoft needs Apple to help sell Office.

    Both Motorola and Microsoft would like to keep Apple around as a customer, but if Apple folded up today, they'd shrug and go on with their lives.

    If Motorola decided to shut down its G4 assembly line today - where would Apple be?

  • G4 chips are buggy - won't run at 500 (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The Register has the details [theregister.co.uk].

    Basically the problem is that Motorola is shipping a buggy product. This is very similar to problems we see all the time in software (business pressure to release something before it's really ready). Chips are never perfect when they're first fabricated. They always go through several rounds of: 1) fabricate, 2) find and fix bugs in the parts.

    Of course, it's not clear exactly who screwed up here. It could be that Apple announced the G4 machines before Motorola was ready. Or maybe Motorola management decided to declare the G4 ready before the hardware engineers were ready to sign off on it. Or maybe this is just a bug they didn't find until they were already shipping parts to Apple.

    Kenneth C. Schalk (kenneth.schalk@compaq.com [mailto])
    Alpha Development Group
    Compaq [compaq.com]
  • Reading the article, it looks like the reason for the change was the increased DRAM prices lately.

    Face it, when the chips have tripled in cost in the last month or so, that really cuts into Apple's profits on the machines, so something has to go.

    What you say is true, but raising the price on an existing computer line basically breaks the first law of selling computers: You can never raise the price of an existing computer system and expect to retain market share.

    Once upon a time, actually about 10 years ago, I believe, Apple Computer pulled what was essentially the same stunt: raising prices on the current models because of a DRAM crisis in order to protect their gross margins. What ended up happening was the beginning of the long, painful slide in market share that nearly killed the company.

    In this case, the price rise is much smaller, and confined (for now) to a single model line, so I don't forecast the death of the firm. But Apple's recent turn around has had much more to do with getting stunningly good press and providing products that people were happy to buy, because they did not think they were being screwed. Stuff like this does not help.

    King Babar

  • Holy shit you'd think the end of the world was about to come.

    If you want a 500mhz G4 wait for one. If you want a Coppermine or Athalon chip buy one. It's only a computer.

    I get the impression everyone on Slashdot will run Linux on their hardware anyway, so who cares what label is on the box.

    Now personally I think the PPC architecture kicks that of the x86, but it's America guys, everyone has a choice and a chance.

  • What about when Intel had the bug in the original Pentium chip and they would only ship new processors to people who could demonstrate "need?" That was a public relations nightmare, as I recall.
  • 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.

    I recently bought a G4-400 w/ MacOS 8.6 for my wife. It is hardly stable. We find it locks up or the pointer freezes or acts erratic at a rate of almost once per hour.

    As far as your claim that MacOS approaches Unix stability because your macs stay up for ``days or weeks'', I think you are implicitly denegrating Unix (although, I assume unintentionally). For Unix, anything less than an infinite uptime is considered a failure (ignoring down time due to things like new kernels or hardware installs). For the most part (for most of the stable kernels) and barring hardware problems, this has been true of for our Linux boxen.

    I hope that one day MacOS does obtain this level of stability as it is a really cute platform to work on.

    -Brett.

  • Well, even without the one-time profits, they still beat estimates. So it's not /all/ smoke and mirrors.

  • Not in the United Kingdom.

    There was a recent case where the Argos online shop mistakenly offered colour televisions for £3 each. A lot of people seemed intent on making them honour their deal. Their defense that it was clearly an error and they didn't confirm any orders would not apply in Apple's case.

    See: Telegraph article [telegraph.co.uk]
  • I live in a land without dictionaries. A far away place, a fairy tail land. Also devoid of pedants.. :-)
    --------------------------------
  • Version 8.6 is very stable, by Mac standards, and approaches that of the Unix world.

    Are other people seeing this? I used to have uptimes in months with 8.5 on a 7200/75. I got a new B&W 350 and got frequent crashes on 8.5. I upgraded to 8.6 (Hey, it's primarily a stability upgrade, right?) and things are even worse. I rebooted twice yesterday, including once from a new bug where the mouse button stops working. It's like I'm back in 7.5.

  • 16mb or 32mb? I think you've been listening to too much of Apple's propaganda. Unless you're talking about those super-cheap computers they give away if you buy 3-year AOL or something. But they're not in the iMac's price range anyway.
  • 12:22PM 71 1/8 Change +7 3/32 (+11.08%)

    quote.yahoo.com [slashdot.org] symbol aapl

  • What makes you think they CAN make them? Doesn't it make more sense that they had to cancel the orders because of stability problems and made a engineering/marketing decision to bite the bullet now?
  • According to Macintouch (it's up right now), Apple has reversed its decision and is calling up customers to explain. From the article: "People who ordered the G4/500 model that cannot be produced due to Motorola's production issues, will be offered a choice of the previous G4/450 configuration or a discount on the G4/500 configuration with the slower processor (as if it were custom-built and a 450-MHz processor were selected originally). The Apple Store will honor existing orders for the previous configurations at the previous prices. Once Motorola production has ramped up to the level that Apple expected - which may take another three months or so - processor speeds should again rise 50 MHz. to the level initially announced. (Answering another question among readers, IBM will be manufacturing the same G4 currently produced by Motorola, AltiVec functions included.)

  • The cancellation has been reversed.
    Read it at MacInTouch [macintouch.com].
  • Macintouch [macintouch.com] reports: "Apple has reversed the cancellation of existing Power Mac G4 orders, according to impeccable sources, and is calling back customers to explain."

  • If all they needed to do was avoid a 500MHz clock on the top end configuration, they could simply have tweaked the bus speed and clock multiplier on that machine. They could have offered the top configuration with a 99MHz bus and a 5x multiplier, or a 110MHz bus and 4.5x multiplier, which would have resulted a 495MHz machine in either case. A 111MHz bus and 4.5x multiplier would give a 499.5MHz machine. The faster bus clocks could even have been a supprise marketing coup. The extra time needed for engineering and testing could easily have been excused by reference to the Motorola screw-up. (besides, the 500MHz models weren't scheduled to ship for a while yet)

    I'm normally an Apple booster, but it really looks like some folks out in Cupertino panicked this week, and I'd be suprised if they didn't lose some customers over this gaff. It makes me very sad.

    - Jeff Dutky
  • Some companies, like Intel and Microsoft would just try to string people out forever with vaporware like Merced and Win 2K

    Merced and Win2K vaporware? I don't see any evidence to support that claim. Merced (now known by the ridiculous marketing name of "Itanium") is slated for production in mid-2000. Intel customers already have engineering samples of the chip so they can start designing products around it. The product clearly exists, even though mass production won't be until the middle of next year. And Intel has been up-front about the Merced schedule. Win2K doesn't really qualify for the vaporware title either; release candidates are in the hands of testers and it should ship before the year 2000 (MS clearly gave themselves some breathing room by naming the OS as 2000 rather 99 or some such thing).

    You are right though about the Apple thing, it was a little out of their control. If Motorola can't fab the chips at 500 MHz due to a bug [theregister.co.uk] in the silicon, there's not much Apple can do about that. Though, if Apple knew about the Motorola bug and still took orders for 500MHz machines (I'm not saying they did know, but if they did) then people would have good reason to complain.
  • Mac OS 9 is much closer to 8. Mac OS X is whole new ballgame.
  • that's not why they did it. they're just using that as an excuse to make customers think they're still getting as good a deal.
  • Mac OS 9 is closer to Mac OS X client than either OS 8.5 or OS 8.6. OS 8.0 wasn't close to anything. Mac OS X client should appear to the consumer to be about the same as OS 9, it's the back-end stuff that will be the big change.

  • Ugh (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Of all the ways to cope with the lack of G4's and the rising cost of memory, this solution is possibly the most offensive to consumers. Why don't they just cancel or postpone the 500MHz model? Why don't they cook up a top of the line, suped-up 450MHz model? My real problem is that now, if I want to get 50 more MHz, I have to cough up like $800. I'd rather they just raised the cost of the 400MHz model by $100 or shipped it with less RAM - then I could upgrade the RAM sometime down the line for much less than the cost of a new chip. I wonder, does the custom configuration at the apple store let you strip down the 400MHz model until it's affordable? I just get so tired of Apple telling the consumer "WE know what's best for you, and it involves us making a big margin." Ugh.
  • Well, let's hope that Intel doesn't get any ideas here. I can see the announcements now: You misunderstood, the "64" in IA-64 was for MEGAHERTZ, not 64 bit addressing lines!!!

    This could explain all the secrecy and non-disclosures that surround all people that are working on the IA-64 platform...

    Nah! That would be a conspiracy...!
    --
  • After all, those things were declared weapons, right?

    :P
    -
    "In the flesh, on the phone and in your account.... You shouldn't have called you know."
  • OS 9 will be in stores on the 23rd of October (in the US at least), X Client should have been out in the first Quarter of '00, but I read over at Macosrumors that there is some delays going on, so there could be a public preview and that it should ship in the 2nd Quarter of '00. Personally I';d bet it comes out at the WWDC in May of next year.

    I have been running OS 9 on an older Mac (75MHz 6200) and the TCP/IP and File Sharing seem to have really gotten alot snappier.
  • 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!
  • My understanding of the mot 7400 errata (based only on what other people have reported on the net, so far from authoritative) is that it prevents the G4 from reaching 500 MHz until it is resolved. Given that they are already producing these machines, and that the price levels are the same across the G4 product line, and that base features seem to be the same (old 400=current 350, etc.) it is very possible that Apple just changed the clock speeds of the current G4s.

    I remember when the "Sawtooth" (new motherboard) machines first shipped, Macintouch reported that the new machines' clock speed could no longer be controlled by jumpers. So, until someone comes up with an overclocking method ...

  • 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.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Re:chip or motherboards? (Score:3)

    by substrate ( 2628 ) on Thursday October 14, 1999 @03:25AM (#1615333)
    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?

  • Re:MacOS 9 (Score:3)

    by Harv ( 102357 ) on Thursday October 14, 1999 @03:34AM (#1615341)
    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

  • Mr. Galvin's voice mail. . . (Score:3)

    by jafac ( 1449 ) on Thursday October 14, 1999 @07:52AM (#1615349) Homepage
    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."

  • This is strange. (Score:5)

    by Millennium ( 2451 ) on Thursday October 14, 1999 @03:44AM (#1615358)
    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.

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