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Showing messages 1 through 6 of 6.

• Unclear on the concept
  2004-01-29 06:13:15  rev_matt [Reply | View]
  
  
  I'm not sure how changing your software frees you from hardware lock-in?

• Apple Launches Repair Program for Some iBooks
  2004-01-28 18:34:34  gbshuler [Reply | View]
  
  
  Apple Computer Inc. said on Wednesday that it launched a three-year, worldwide repair program for certain of its iBook notebook computers that can have problems with their internal or external display monitors.
  
  "We have determined that a small number of iBooks introduced in 2002 have a display problem caused by a component failure on the logic board," said Phil Schiller, head of worldwide product marketing for Apple in a statement emailed to Reuters.
  
  The program began on Wednesday and applies to iBooks with serial numbers in a range of UV220XXXXXX to UV318XXXXXX and that were manufactured between May 2002 and April 2003.
  
  iBook Logic Board Repair Extension Program:
  http://www.apple.com/support/ibook/faq/
  
  Redundant Yahoo Story:
  http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=581&e=3&u=/nm/20040129/tc_nm/tech_apple_repair_dc

• This is off the subject but....
  2004-01-28 14:23:21  r_miller [Reply | View]
  
  
  According to the numbers Macintouch reported, Apple's PC world share is down to 1.8%. If this is to be believed, maybe a little of this has to do with the product they have been putting out in the last 3-4 years. Look at the AirPort problem <http://www.basestationrepair.com>. Also, laptops and desktop failures. It is enough to make people turn to another OS. Besides the quality issues, is Apple going to be making computers in 7, 8, 10 years from now? With a market share of 1.8% down from 3%, I don't know. Apple had around 9% PC market share ten years ago and with them virtually locked out of K-12 and the corporate world things don't look to improve. Certainly you hear about Maine buying ibooks and a few other States, but that was commonplace 15 years ago and there is not enough of it going on now. The only way Apple gets back in the game with upward moving stats is to change their game plan. Quality needs to be No.1. If you are the underdog it does not help you to have an inferior product sometimes. For example, my dad uses PCs and sucks at it. I have been trying to convince him unsuccessfully for years to try a Mac. if he did and the logic board broke he would never buy another one. And I fear that is happening more and more these days. I am a diehard Mac user and will always be as long as they offer a computer or OS, but tech Mac guys like me are in the minority (not around this website, but you get the point). I don't think twice about partitioning a hard drive. However, most people buy a Mac, so they don't have to worry about that. Now, with Unix things are a little different some of the true geeks are turned on to OS X. That helps, but those numbers are too small to matter. Just my rant on the subject.

• Noses and faces
  2004-01-28 11:52:53  jimothy [Reply | View]
  
  
  I don't blame you for being upset; putting up with six logic board replacements would require much more patience than even this long-time Mac user has.
  
  But still, it almost sounds like you're cutting off your nose to spite your face. You're obviously reluctant to give up Mac OS X, and I don't blame you. All in some sort of "Fight the Power!" protest. I mean, calling the vendors "tyrannical" is a bit melodramatic, and the whole "vendor lock-in" paranoia is way overblown.
  
  Then again, had I had faced the same problems you have, I'd likewise be upset. But if you enjoy Mac OS X, I'd encourage you to give them one more try.

• Ooops !
  2004-01-28 11:43:45  FJ de Kermadec | [Reply | View]
  
  
  I am sorry to hear that you have been experiencing issues...
  
  I own an iBook, know many people who do and have set iBooks up in many places and never experienced an issue with them...
  
  I really wish that you could give Apple and its products another try !
  
  F.J.

• Freedom and Knowledge
  2004-01-28 08:34:58  mcharpentier [Reply | View]
  
  
  Some years ago, I bought my second Linux (SCSI) machine - from SuSE.
  The graphics card did not run under X11 - calling SuSE was of no use: no, no, we have checked everything, everything's ok, etc
  
  After much scrutiny and quite a bit of luck - I am no hardware freak - we discovered that we had to set some jumpers on the card.
  
  A year or so later, the logic board crashed. At the local repair shop, I naïvely asked if they could upgrade my machine to a bi-processor system.
  Well, um, yes, but, Sir, we are no Linux-specialists.
  A fortnight later, I got back my machine. It has never worked again. Sychronization (PIC) problems of the processors?
  I could not complain as I was warned: they were no Linux-shop. And it was not cheap.
  
  Summer 2002: I needed a new machine. No vendor-lockin: a great idea. I went to another computer shop: we build the computer YOU want.
  Yes, I wanted a bi-processor machine with 1 G of memory.
  Hard disk: unimportant. Graphics card: high quality in two dimensions. Well, ok, but we strongly discourage the use of a bi-processor system - we are no Linux shop, etc
  I needed a new machine: OK then, no bi-processor.
  They built the machine, I paid - the first time I tried to boot the system I was welcomed by the BIOS. Fascinating.
  The local Linux/hardware guru saved me (a week later): he had to change some wiring on the logic board (RAID related) a fact which took him some time to discover.
  Six months later, the 21 inch Iiyama monitor (3 years old) gave a sigh and stopped working.
  
  Countless hours of fiddling and headscratching.
  Thumbing through hardware guides about possible error sources.
  
  Time lost - for nothing.
  (And I am not telling you the stories about software problems like file system navigators which suddnly stopped working under a new SuSE release - of course, they knew about the problem and were working on it - as the automatic answer tried to convince me)
  I'm using now an Apple bi-processor system, a UNIX system which let's me concentrate on my work - using all the free software I need day in day out: TeX, Metapost, Python, etc.
  
  Yes, it's about freedom - not from hardware vendor lockin, but from trouble, random, peripheral problems.
  
  Yes, it's about freedom - the freedom to be able to work on the problems which interest me and not being forced to lose my time on things which do not interest me.
  
  Conclusion?
  One needs a lot of knowledge, one must be ready to invest a big amount of time to achieve hardware indepence.
  And that's for some of us another form of slavery.
  
  Let us hope that the hardware gets more reliable and the vendors better behaved.