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Purveyors of Fine CPU Upgrades for Mac - since 1997 - to the four corners of the World :)

Stevie in Vaporland
or
How to Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

by Bob Moriarty
October 14th 1999

Two weeks ago, Barbara and I had a wonderful four-day weekend visiting a valued friend and customer in North Carolina. We arrived shortly after 11 at night, Ted was there at the airport to pick us up. We went straight to his home where he surprised us by immediately going to bed. Seems he had to get up at 3:00 AM because he wanted to be first in line to order three of Apple's 500MHz powerhouse machines complete with 23 inch mega-buck displays and fully-loaded with a gig of memory. The total order probably set him back a cool $24 grand. He already has 43 Macs. Apple sent out emails yesterday canceling all the G4 backorders. Tough luck, Ted.

On August 31st, Apple planned to announce their new Weapon-Grade processor, the G4, at Seybold. Delivery of the first units, according to their website, would take place in late September, early October. Steve Jobs made the announcement with one slight change to the script. He proclaimed immediate delivery. If Apple wants to advertise the G4 as a weapon, his actions may have placed the G4 in the bomb category. We have contacts at Motorola, IBM and naturally all the upgrade manufacturers. Each of them said the G4 would be in short supply with 30-60 day delivery for any chips. The Ultimate CPU, the 500MHz in the Sawtooth motherboard, looked like late December-early January, if you were lucky. Like everyone else in the industry, we were totally gobsmacked by Steve's claim of immediate shipping. Apple's own website said 30 days for the 400MHz. But what a great price, who cares if the machine would be a little late? Apple's new machine brought to the forefront another disturbing issue; the time-bomb delivered to B&W owners through a supposed ROM upgrade. The time-bomb wouldn't go off until the unsuspecting owner attempted to install a third-party G4 upgrade. At that point the B&W would chime three times and refuse to boot.

We thought the time-bomb was a pretty silly and very petty move on Apple's part. It served no business purpose and after Steve's announcement of the G4, Apple continued to swim in manure while holding their nose, saying, "What smell, we don't smell anything." Apple's response varied from calling the time-bomb a mere rumor to planting stories about how the CIA made them sign an agreement that the G4 would not be exported. But if it squishes like manure and smells like manure and makes roses bloom, it probably is manure. So on August 31st, Steve Jobs puts on a Smoke & Mirrors show for the faithful at Seybold and everyone bites into the story. His proclamation of immediate delivery caused terrible chaos at both Apple and Motorola. Actually Motorola did an incredible job of delivering G4 chips ahead of schedule. But on September 20th, Apple had to bite the bullet and admit they were losing sales due to a shortage of chips. Which they had known about all along. But instead of admitting error, Jobs and crew tried blaming Motorola. After Motorola bailed Apple out of a very deep hole by delivering the G4 chips earlier than scheduled. Apple's stock promptly dived 25 percent from about $80 a share, costing shareholders a couple of billion dollars. I hate vaporware. I cannot fathom why any manufacturer would conceive of deliberately announcing a product they cannot deliver. Back orders are overhead, shipments are profit. I've gone round and round with manufacturers to the point they eventually get tired of listening to me. Vaporware creates nothing but headaches and aggravation. Not least of all, when you deliberately announce a product that you can't ship, all sorts of nasty things can happen between the order and the delivery. Like earthquakes in Taiwan which cause the price of memory to rocket.

Apple took 86,000 orders for G4 machines they could not deliver because they weren't scheduled to get the chips yet from Motorola. Memory goes up by a bunch and Apple gets creamed. So Apple cancels all the orders due to a "chip shortage" and announces you can buy the speed you want, but now it's gonna cost you almost $1000 more. The 400MHz you ordered a month ago can't be delivered because of a "chip shortage." However, they can deliver a 400MHz at $900 more. Go figure. Is there a chip shortage or not? If a $1599 400MHz can't be delivered, how come a $2499 400MHz is available? One way of eliminating the chip-shortage problem, is to piss off so many customers that they just go away. Ever since Steve Jobs took over at Apple as "Temporary" (Whatever the heck that means) CEO, Macintosh POWER users have been treated like red-headed step-children. About two years ago when Apple announced the Mach 5 9600 machines, I called them an "overpriced and underpowered piece of crap" publicly. To anyone who took offense at my statement, I want to apologize. Sure, at $5499 the 350MHz was a crazy price when you could buy a far faster G3 upgrade for $1299. But with 6 PCI slots and 12 memory slots, the 9600 was a piece of crap only when compared with what came after. Everything after the 9600 has gone from bad to worse. Apple replaced the 9600 with the G3 machines in November of 1997. With three PCI slots and three memory slots. Wow, there's a hell of a leap forward for power users. Whatever I thought of the 9600, when Jobs announced the beige G3, I wanted to cry. That was until they released the B&W, with no floppy or SCSI in the low end machines. Great move, now all customers have to do is chuck all their SCSI peripherals and serial devices. And the B&W carried a grand total of 4 memory slots. Which Apple touted as an advantage over the G3. Which I suppose it was. Meanwhile, Apple slips in a mickey with the ROM upgrade version 1.1 and disables the ability of a B&W owner to upgrade to a G4 which is still six months from even being announced. As bad as the B&W was, it was better without the ROM "fix."

Then Jobs announces the G4 "Yikes" machines. Same exact machine as the B&W except you can't upgrade the B&W without fixing Apple's "fix." And it comes in a different color and you can't use ADB devices, which power users have in spades. And all the time Apple is talking about what great machines they are delivering. Am I missing something? The 9600 Mach 5 machines weren't as good as machines shown by Motorola and PowerComputing four months before the release of the Mach 5. And they were far more expensive now that Apple had no competition. But the 9600 was a whole lot better than the G3 and the G3 was a whole lot better than the B&W. Now Apple pulls yet another fast one on their most loyal users. The B&W is far better than the G4. Consider this. For 95 percent of users, a 400MHz B&W is faster and cheaper than a 350MHz G4. A 450MHz B&W is as fast or faster for 95 percent of users than a $2499 400MHz G4. And the B&W can use a dongle. Which the G4 can't. Yeah, the G4 is a weapon. It's a bomb in the hands of Steve Jobs. I read the letter Apple sent on October 13th to 86,000 customers. It says "Screw you" in polite terms. But before you run out and hire some redhot class action lawyer to sue hell out of Apple Computer consider the alternatives. You made a contract with Apple computer to buy a computer at a price, at a time. They were nice enough to take your credit card and authorize the charge. (Talk to PowerComputing about how good Apple is at honoring contracts). You don't need some redhot class action lawyer to get Apple to do what they contracted to do. Actually you could find any reprobate off the street, whose only knowledge of the bar is sidling up to order a Night Train Express on the rocks, to win a judgement on these facts. Steve Jobs knew full well what Motorola planned for deliveries of the G4 chips. And Apple took a heap of orders for vaporware they couldn't fill. He just got carried away and said they were shipping immediately. Which they weren't and couldn't. And now memory prices have gone up. So they're up sh*t creek, and you're the paddle.

Too bad, Apple. Apple made a deal and Apple should honor it. You can be as arrogant as you wish but you will get your head handed to you on a plate in any court of law. If anyone comes across a real sharp class action lawyer who needs some spare cash, maybe he could do a three for one deal. The owners of B&W machines have a cause of action. Once you sell someone a car, you aren't supposed to let the air out of the tires just because you want to sell more tires. And anyone who bought Apple stock between August 31st and September 20th could sue the pants off Apple and collect a bundle. Steve Jobs knew all about the chip shortage on August 31st. He just forgot mention it. Now for the good news: I have been in a real quandary about the 350MHz G4 since I first heard of it six weeks ago as a possible upgrade chip. When asked my opinion, as an upgrade vendor, I suggested that it didn't sound like a very good idea. The G4 350 is neither fish nor fowl, it's a "feel-good" G4. If you are a power user, save your nickels until you can afford a real CPU. If you are not a power user, buy a better-priced B&W and you will run faster at a lower cost. Or better yet, get a Beige G3 and drop in an upgrade. Or even better yet, get a 9600 for some real expansion. When the G4 matures in about a year it will be a hell of a CPU. Until then, the G3 remains a better and more cost-effective solution for most of us. When Steve Jobs matures, he will be a hell of a CEO. He has performed miracles at Apple and dragged them out of the grave. But he needs to lose the arrogance, the constant blaming of others and the Smoke & Mirrors act. We would all respect him more. Bob Moriarty October 14th 1999 Apple Press release 10/13/99 .Home............[top]

ATTENTION :) MacInTouch reported at noon Eastern that "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. Once Motorola production has ramped up to the level that Apple expected - anticipated to take an extra three months or so - processor speeds should again rise to the level initially announced. (Answering another question among readers, IBM will be manufacturing the same G4 currently produced by Motorola, with AltiVec functions included.)"

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