Re: "Dear Apple" article linked form [H]

just for those of you who want to know...setting a link to the online Apple store won't work for squat due to web objects (I think) and says your session has timed out and log back into the store...just an FYI
 
$1300 and up is pretty damn obnoxious for a single 1.25GHz PPC 7455 with a 9000PRO, an 80GB HDD and a paltry 256MB of PC2700.

But we all knew that already.

I keep wishing Apple would sell less expensive barebones kits (mobo, chip & case) for those of us who aren't thinking "so differently" that we can't use a screwdriver, but that isn't going to happen :(
 
and no OEM that I know of does that either leukotriene...that would be like Dell or Gateway selling just the mobo or case to a cust but not the computer...I wouldn't hold my breath on a SSF case and no display but it would be nice and I really would like to see a mid range system and who knows..maybe the new iMac will have a lot of these features...if you go back to one of my earlier comments I said there is a consumer and pro level of product...and in most cases this fits the needs of the customer...we here at [H] are going to be different than the regular consumer because in most cases we are tech heads and like to build our own crap but you don't know how often I get people on the phone that couldn't care less on how it works, they just want it to work

edit: something else to compare it to is if you buy a car are they selling you the parts or a turn key item? and would you expect somebody that builds cars for a living and wants to build it on a Ford F150 chassi but they just want the shell, the frame and interior but want to put in all the other items them selfs....how long do you think it would take the dealer to quit laughing?
 
leukotriene said:
$1300 and up is pretty damn obnoxious for a single 1.25GHz PPC 7455 with a 9000PRO, an 80GB HDD and a paltry 256MB of PC2700.
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:eek:
I've seen new 1.6GHz G5s go for that! (Plus tax, but still...)
 
gigglebyte said:
if you go back to one of my earlier comments I said there is a consumer and pro level of product...and in most cases this fits the needs of the customer...we here at [H] are going to be different than the regular consumer because in most cases we are tech heads and like to build our own crap but you don't know how often I get people on the phone that couldn't care less on how it works, they just want it to work
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It's very exciting and all that Apple thinks they have it figured out, but I don't give a damn what Apple wants to sell me, I just know what I want to buy.

But Apple doesn't want to sell me what I want to buy.
They'd rather sling shockingly overpriced vowelMacs with last generation processors and too little RAM by half at people who don't know any better, and who don't care because they don't actually need anything better than a three year old 750MHz+ PIII/G3/4 with 512MB RAM and a current 7200rpm hard drive.

Comparing Apple to Dell or Gateway is nonsensical.
Neither make an operating system or use a processor ISA that is entirely unsupported by any other consumer OS besides linux, and neither can lock you into their hardware and software as a consequence. Since Apple does both those things they could easily attempt to accomodate technically savvy individuals by selling barebones combinations and banning the resale of new assembled systems. Such a strategy could expand their marketshare and more importantly, expand their mindshare among the technically savvy folks who make computer recommendations.

But they'd rather force anyone who wants to use their products at all to bend over, grease up and take it, right in the pocketbook. In so doing they shoot themselves in the foot.

BlackMorty said:
I've seen new 1.6GHz G5s go for that! (Plus tax, but still...)
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But it wouldn't run everyones favorite OS 9, now would it? ;)
That's just about as low as I've ever seen any G5 at.
 
Very good points :)
Didn't they use to sell Mac kits back in the day (I'm think OS 8 era)?
 
There was a time (about 95-98 PowerPC era) when Apple "opened up" to allow competition to license their software and BootROMs, hoping it would increase their marketshare (and I believe it did), but they were so poorly managed at the time that they almost went bankrupt because they could not keep their costs down sufficiently.
One of the prospective makers of clones was actually Motorola. :eek: Not sure how many kits were around at the time, but there were unauthorized kits made long before that by stealing the BootROMs from broken Macs.

Instead of increasing licensing fees for the ROMs and the OS, they (foolishly IMO) stopped allowing third parties to make compatible systems. The result was high ASPs but a shrinking marketshare. With a greater marketshare there would have been more pressure (and incentive) on Motorola to ramp the G3 and G4 to higher clocks more quickly; CPU competition from IBM could have given PowerPC a chance to flourish in a competitive atmosphere, rather than a restricted single-licensee atmosphere.. This could have helped avoid the infamous stagnation of G4 clockspeeds that left Apple quite far behind until the intro of the G5.

There was a cartridge macintosh emulator (Spectre 128) for the Atari ST back in the late-1980's. It was basically a cartridge with Mac BootROMs in it that plugged into the side of the computer. Since the ST used the same processor, but running at a ~0.2MHz faster clockspeed, and was a color computer with a minimum of 512KB RAM, this was actually a very good solution for it's day, and much cheaper than a comparable Macintosh. Atari of course was even more poorly managed than Apple ;)
 
broekage said:
How do you do that? Do you mean if you buy it together with the iBook?
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You have to be eligible for the student discount via the student page on apples site. Buy the ibook or powerbook w/ the an ipod... download the rebate form.. fill it out.. voila.
 
yeah there was a time when there were Mac Clones and they were a disaster...I know you won't like this analogy but imagine if Dell or Gateway let somebody else build their comp and call it a Dell or Gateway clone...just thinking of it from the support side gives me a headache because who knows what parts are going in there and if it is going to work w/the OS or not...is this periferal going to work w/the system or not...and the list is endless...then you run into the question of who does support it? the original mfg or the one who made the actual machine? I am trying to pull this one out of some OLD gray cells here but if I remember right when Cyrix was a major player in the CPU market there were some game that just didn't run right on them because of how the CPU was made...it was supposed to be IBM PC Compatable but it wasn't totaly there and there were problems..these are the same kind of problems you would have with any clone machine...as for not selling to the market that YOU are in leukotriene...again I would love to see something in that range but I doubt it will happen because the number of people who would really want that are so slim (refer back to car analogy)
 
Well Shuttle sells barebone systems AND configured ones much like Dell and Gateway so it would seem like Shuttle is now an OEM. :p
It would be nice if Apple could do the same but..... :rolleyes:
 
Or they could just build a new Cube! :D


But seriously, I'd love it if Apple let me configure the computer more to my liking... But it could make things more complicated, and Apple needs the "it just works" factor.
 
leukotriene said:
...expand their mindshare among the technically savvy folks who make computer recommendations....
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This is exactly what I was thinking of posting. The problem with Apple is that those technically savvy people have no reason to like their products, and those are the people that advise all of their newbie-friends on what to buy. I think we've seen a similar situation to this in the video card market- nVidia gained a lot of market share in ALL areas when they started producing top notch gaming cards. The same goes for ATI- marketshare dropped until the release of the Radeon 9700.
 
Appealing to tech-savy people is, essentially, a free adverting campaign that people actually pay attention to. All my not-so-computer educated friends, except one, ask me about advice about computers (the one who didn't bought a rather worthless Dell)... "We" have quite a lot of influence in the kind of computers people will buy, and Apple should realize that.
 
That's what I'm sayin! ;)
If Apple can appeal to our crowd enough, they can make disproportionately large gains due to our far-reaching influence in telling everyone we know what they should buy with their X dollars/dinars/rupees/euros.
Apple isn't going to be able to do that with their current <$1500 lineup.
I see a G4 1.25 for $1300 without monitor and I feel vaguely insulted.
 
I would love if they brought back the cube! Put a heatpipe cooled G5 in there with an AGP and two PCI slots and and that would be great as long as they didn't screw up with the price like last time.
 
I think a G5 cube would be a bit tough to do until low voltage (notebook) G5's hit the market. Otherwise you'd probably need a compact power supply inside the case rather than an external power brick like in the original... and definitely a fan.

An SFF G5 that didn't have an integrated monitor would be great, especially if it had a single large, dynamically adjustable fan or no fan at all. I guess since I'm wishing, I'd wish Apple would put integrated SCSI on it too :D
 
I think it would help apple to pump a little money into the PPC linux market. Help bridge the market to a huge group of power-users, many with huge influence in purchasing, and definately wouldn't hurt the software development sphere.
 
As someone who built a new desktop a month or two before buying a 15" powerbook and now rarely uses the desktop(athlon 64 3200+) even though the laptop is slightly slower. I have to say that OS X is the best operating system I've ever used and I would LOVE to have a mac desktop w/ the power of my athlon 3200+. If I could get one for even close to what I paid for my desktop I would sell off everything to get one. OS X is amazing and an average joe g5 single cpu would be a sure buy for me.
 
jeffbax said:
No dude, it doesn't.

Otherwise I'd own one right now.
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Have you ever actually tried it? I've played UT2k4 on a 12" PB, and it worked flawlessly once you ran at 800x600 with no trillinear filtering. You don't have to play at the highest settings, you know... :p
 
jeffbax said:
No dude, it doesn't.

Otherwise I'd own one right now.
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It seems to play quite all right on my bro's (as in best friend's) laptop, 12" PB with 384Mb of RAM.
 
Black Morty Rackham said:
Have you ever actually tried it? I've played UT2k4 on a 12" PB, and it worked flawlessly once you ran at 800x600 with no trillinear filtering. You don't have to play at the highest settings, you know... :p
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Running at non-native res isn't too good, it distorts the fonts.

Plus what you think is "flawless" may be "flawed" for me. All the benchmarks I have seen show a framerate of about 15-20 which just isn't enough. I don't play at the highest settings on my desktop (Athlon XP 1800, 1 Gig ram, GF3 ti 200) but I play at settings that get me framerates as close to 60 as I can get.

I also hear that PB's can't handle modes like Assault and Onslaught... and I am not able to see it for myself (other than the demo which has a sound bug that hurts the FPS) so I cannot judge what is "flawless" on the retail version.

Same goes for World of Warcraft. It plays about 20-40 FPS on my desktop, but I hear that the PB struggles.... I can't take that risk for 1.5 grand yet, so I am stuck waiting for hopefully a stronger 12" PB with a better CPU and Video card.
 
You know, I'd buy a G5 iMac.

I like the integrated LCD idea. Especially now, since I dropped my 24" sony down the stairs when I moved, and i'm working on a 15" gateway monitor at home :(
 
KaosDG said:
You know, I'd buy a G5 iMac.

I like the integrated LCD idea. Especially now, since I dropped my 24" sony down the stairs when I moved, and i'm working on a 15" gateway monitor at home :(
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So what would happen if you dropped your whole computer down the stairs? Then you would really be SOL.
 
KaosDG said:
You know, I'd buy a G5 iMac.

I like the integrated LCD idea. Especially now, since I dropped my 24" sony down the stairs when I moved, and i'm working on a 15" gateway monitor at home :(
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ouch on both counts :( though I have never dropped a monitor I have spun a HD across the kitchen when the electric screwdriver caught on the cage...the drive never did work after that :eek:
 
jeffbax said:
Running at non-native res isn't too good, it distorts the fonts.

Plus what you think is "flawless" may be "flawed" for me. All the benchmarks I have seen show a framerate of about 15-20 which just isn't enough. I don't play at the highest settings on my desktop (Athlon XP 1800, 1 Gig ram, GF3 ti 200) but I play at settings that get me framerates as close to 60 as I can get.

I also hear that PB's can't handle modes like Assault and Onslaught... and I am not able to see it for myself (other than the demo which has a sound bug that hurts the FPS) so I cannot judge what is "flawless" on the retail version.

Same goes for World of Warcraft. It plays about 20-40 FPS on my desktop, but I hear that the PB struggles.... I can't take that risk for 1.5 grand yet, so I am stuck waiting for hopefully a stronger 12" PB with a better CPU and Video card.
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Well we are happy that you 'hear' things. We are happy you base your decisions on rummers and such. Until you get a machine and use it I don't think your comments will hold up against the people here that have 'done' things and can comment first person as a user.
 
CentronMe said:
Well we are happy that you 'hear' things. We are happy you base your decisions on rummers and such. Until you get a machine and use it I don't think your comments will hold up against the people here that have 'done' things and can comment first person as a user.
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Huh?

I've asked many 12" PB owners, and played the Demo on my friends 15"

How am I to know who is right? If someone can show me benchmarks of UT2004 on a 12" PB in all diff modes ( DM, Assault, Onslaught, CTF, Bombing Run, etc) and that they are good enough frames then I will shut up, but I've yet to see that anywhere.
 
jeffbax said:
Huh?

I've asked many 12" PB owners, and played the Demo on my friends 15"

How am I to know who is right? If someone can show me benchmarks of UT2004 on a 12" PB in all diff modes ( DM, Assault, Onslaught, CTF, Bombing Run, etc) and that they are good enough frames then I will shut up, but I've yet to see that anywhere.
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I only have the demo but if you wanna tell me what exactly you want and how to showfps or whatnot(not a ut player) then I'll get you benchmarks for the latest 15" powerbook.
 
-Sn1PeR- said:
I only have the demo but if you wanna tell me what exactly you want and how to showfps or whatnot(not a ut player) then I'll get you benchmarks for the latest 15" powerbook.
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http://www.santaduck.com/ut2k4/Santaduck_Toolpak_pub.sit - this has a benchmarker in it says the site

http://www.santaduck.com/downloads.html

Also apple script version.

http://www.hardmac.com/niouzcontenu.php?date=2004-02-14#1579

And make sure you change the openAL that it uses

http://www.macaddict.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=55716

But I want the 12" PB anyway :-/

Proof of poor frames:
http://www.barefeats.com/ut2004.html
http://www.barefeats.com/pb11.html

I want a 12" PB so bad but it just can't perform yet in the few games I need.... so I am building a new PC first, and maybe a PB in the future.... pissed about it though :(
 
The Mac is forced to run in OpenGL with UT2004, which is actually much less of an issue than the BareFeats reviewers seem to wish it was. In OpenGL mode, UT2004 runs well on Radeon9500's and up, and probably better on comparable nvidia hardware.

If they were truly concerned about comparing such things they could and should benchmark native OpenGL games like NeverWinter Nights. Quake3a doesnt freaking cut it anymore as a benchmark.

I suspect the G4 bus, as well as the RAM and hard drive may be an issue here given how much of a bandwidth, RAM & HDD hog UT2004 is. Unfortunately BareFeats could make it a lot easier to find the component loadout.

I applaud their having the gall to actually compare Mac to PC on cross-platform applications, but they could do a lot more of it and be a lot more transparent about which parts are involved.
 
What puzzles me is how UT2003 can apparently get pretty decent framerates but 2004 can't?
 
i love apple but i gotta admit there products are way to expensive i just spent like $700 cdn for an iPod and about 2 years bought a brand new iBook for like 2k man that was a waste it dosent even run anything well not even divx videos! i love their products but way to expensive for a decent mac.
 
jeffbax said:
What puzzles me is how UT2003 can apparently get pretty decent framerates but 2004 can't?
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The higher scores with 2003 are probably because 2/3 of the tests were "flyby" tests.
The actual botmatch has much lower scores. Apparently they are not doing flyby benchmarks with 2004.

It's amazing to me that they could get ahold of so many different Macs and then put them up against basically a single consumer PC and compare to the antiquated Athlon MP (on the ancient 760MP/X chipset, of course) and some 2.4Ghz Xeons with some chipset or another I don't see listed.
They don't tell us the loadout, or they don't know how to figure it out.

Being excited about UT2003 G5 results when you decline to compare it to the pre-eminent PC gaming platform (Athlon 64, which coincidentally does very, very well in UT even in it's single channel incarnation) seems almost stupidly lacking IMO. Probably they just couldn't get ahold of an A64 system and were so completely out of touch with the PC world that they thought duallie AMP's on the 760 chipset were going to be better than the 333/400 MHz FSB AXP parts (as single CPUs) in a modern high performance chipset.

Of course, anyone who knew precisely what they were doing and wnated to properly compare would have run everything in OpenGL mode, but I don't suppose these people know how to change the rendermode in UT....

How about using consumer computers huh? The Xeon and MP are made in large part for small servers for crying out loud. I really wish someone who knew what they were doing (and cared to actually tell you) would try this, but I'm sure no one is willing to send me a dual G5 :D
 
I know non-native resolution distorts the font, but in a game, who the hell cares? I never noticed much distortion in actual game-play. Barefeats test the demo, which has been proven slower. They don't say how much RAM they have (the PBook I played UT2k4 had 712 megs)... Now, I don't know what you people consider "acceptable" frame rates, but I think only dropping below 20 when you respawn, and then only for half a second, is definitely acceptable. It ran good, plain and simple. Now, of course you can hear things elsewhere, but I'd say I'm more reliable than some obscure rumour.
 
Black Morty Rackham said:
I know non-native resolution distorts the font, but in a game, who the hell cares? I never noticed much distortion in actual game-play. Barefeats test the demo, which has been proven slower. They don't say how much RAM they have (the PBook I played UT2k4 had 712 megs)... Now, I don't know what you people consider "acceptable" frame rates, but I think only dropping below 20 when you respawn, and then only for half a second, is definitely acceptable. It ran good, plain and simple. Now, of course you can hear things elsewhere, but I'd say I'm more reliable than some obscure rumour.
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Dropping below 20 ever is unacceptible. I don't need disorientation when I am respawning :(
 
I disagree. But then again, I've played enough on old computers to not get disoriented from a single frame skip... But if that's unacceptable, get a 15" PB?
 
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