Re: [WinMac] Re: Film Bureau and Platforms

Welch, John C.(jwelch[at]aer.com)
Thu, 23 Sep 1999 10:53:00 -0400

inline as usual
> WHY I NO LONGER LIKE APPLE - THE CORPORATION AND PRODUCTS:
>
> My reputation suffered immensely 3 years ago. I recommended Power
> Computing and UMax clones to my customers because they delivered a nice
> "bang for the buck." Unfortunately, we all know what happened to the
> clones. But what about driving Power Computing and APS into bankruptcy? And
> what about the 400 employees in Austin who got axed at Motorola, along with
> a $95 million corporate writeoff?

Dan, you made a judgment and got hosed on it. That is not apple's fault,
that is yours, for *assuming* that the MacOS licensing program had
*anything* to do with PC clones. (Read my article on MacKiDo about this).
Secondly, Power Computing was going bankrupt for months before the Licensing
program was killed. They had no operational controls, their quality was way
iffy, and they were making a lot of noise, but not delivering as much
product. The only reason Power was able to hide this for so long was that
they were a private company, and not required to reveal these little
details. Great people working for them, idiots running things. APS *had* a
thriving accessory business. If they chose to plunder that in the name of
selling computers, oh well. What about all the DEC people who got the
knife?

> And what about the declining quality of the MacOS itself, becoming ever
> more unstable with each successive release? MacOS 8.6 on the G4 is an
> unmitigated disaster - I have to drive 50 miles to that customer to try to
> stabilize their 6 day old machine... And this is AFTER I stripped out a lot
> of extensions not needed for DTP, such as Internet access, QD3D, QuickTime,
> yada yada yada... And this is a day wasted because I can't bill for it.

Oh 8.6 is not and unmitigated disaster, don't be silly. For every horror
story you come up with, I can match it with a happy camper. BTW, removing
QuickTime is bad, bad, bad. There are a lot of fairly necessary components
in QuickTime that a LOT of apps need, including the OS. Same for QD3D,
(although to a far lesser extent), and internet access. The old 'remove all
extensions' school of thought needs to get the punt.

> Ziff-Davis Editor Jesse Berst summed it up succinctly when he said Tuesday
> <http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_3882.html> "Jesse's take:
> 'It's par for the course with Apple. Make a huge deal over an upcoming
> product and work out production kinks as an afterthought.'" And, this goes
> back to before Jobs: Can you say "PowerBook 5300?"

Berst is overlooking, conveniently all the really good things Apple has done
lately...like the Lombards, the B&W G3's, etc. The windows view of, 'we can
be writing code for the 286, and by god it better run' doesn't play in the
Mac world. You write code that breaks the rules, it's gonna break. And a PC
writer calling Apple to task, considering Intel announcing chips that no one
will have for almost a year is too ridiculous. "Hello pot, this is the
kettle, you're black." It's even funnier with the batch of 5 Dell Optiplex's
we bought, of which only ONE has not required a tech to visit with a new
hard drive, RAM, motherboards, BIOS updates etc. Contrast that with the last
10 Macs we have bought, laptops, iMacs, and B&W models, that have had *zero*
problems. 30+ machines upgraded to 8.6, *zero* problems. 18 machines
upgraded to 98 & NT, only 2 went smoothly.

Apple still has better quality than anyone outside of IBM.

>
> ------
>
> And if you think my wrath is limited to Apple (or Ford!) you are wrong:
> Just a few weeks ago, Compaq pulled an Apple by killing off Win2k on
> Alpha... And you should see the wrath of fellow IT professionals all the
> way from European universities to the IT directors at Fortune 500 companies
> at Compaq... In some cases jeopardizing sales, service & support contracts
> in the tens of millions of dollars for *everything* Compaq - And that
> includes OpenVMS & Tru64 Unix clusters, and Tandem mini's.
>

Compaq is well on the way to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The
Win2k and VMS issues are, point-blank, the *stupidest* things I've ever
seen.

> Just my 2 cents this morning...
>
> At 01:48 AM 9/23/99 -0700, you wrote:
>> Dan,
>>
>> I'll reply "inline" in honor of my skates.
>>
>>
>>> And it has to ride on cheesey hardware. Have fun unpacking your brand new
>>> G4 if you forget to lift it out of the box by the handles.
>> <http://www.macintouch.com>
>>
>> It's amazing to me that after all the feedback you've had the opportunity to
>> receive from this list you still don't realize that you do a great
> disservice to
>> yourself and all the useful information that you have to offer by regularly
>> including references such as the one above. Throwing in what most likely
> is a
>> single anecdotal case of damage during shipment in a discussion about server
>> comparisons is a prime example of what has been exhibited by you to be an
>> unusual and vitriolic bitterness toward all things Apple. Have they done
>> everything right in the past? Heavens no. But I'll tell you what - take
> a deep
>> breath and let it go. You'll feel better. Really. Maybe visit a park
>> periodically.
>>
>> Cheers!
>> Brian Watkins
>>
>>
>> * Windows-MacOS Cooperation List *
>>
>>
>
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>

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