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http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=1816
Op-Ed: Where in the World is the PowerBook-17?
By Remy Davison, Insanely Great Mac
March 13th 2003
Bad for Switchers. Bad for Apple.
Over at PowerBook Cental, you could knit a flag out of the tales of unrequited
PowerBook orders. Consider this plaintive missive:
"It seems as if the Apple retailers have no idea exactly when they will be getting the
17" PowerBook in. I'm a Linux user and I wanted to switch to OS X but as time goes on
I'm considering buying an Intel box and putting Linux on it instead. A week or two
slip is tolerable but a month or more is not!"
Couldn't agree more. Why promise product that isn't going to show up, even though the
appearance money's already been paid?
Unfortunately, this isn't the first time. Consider some of the other 'laggards':
- Original iBook (1999)
- PowerBook G3 (1999)
- Airport cards (1999-2000)
- LCD iMac (2002)
- Power Mac G4/400 PCI (1999) [350MHz model substituted, effectively a G4 CPU in a G3]
- Power Mac G4s (1999) generally. Couldn't fulfil the orders. Not enough chips.
We agree with the poster quoted above. It's reasonable if you're told 6 weeks in
advance that your order will ship in late February/early March. To be told on the day
your order's due to ship that it's been put back another four days or so is verging on
the unacceptable.
We also think that Apple's common practice of 'announce-promise-delay' is backfiring.
Every time there is a major delay with a killer new product, people get cold feet and
cancel that credit card transaction. It doesn't seem to bother Apple. This attitude
reeks of National Semiconductor in the old days; namely, "F- you. We'll get another
customer."
In the over-promise, under-deliver stakes, Apple's got form. A criminal record as long
as your arm. Cupertino's a recidivist, a reprobate. Three strikes and they should be
out.
Other companies may well be similar. But at least Dell know that if you think their
service stinks, that you might just buy a (S)ThinkPad. Or an Armada (more fool you).
That, at least, helps put their A into G. Or so you would think.
But not Apple. Would they really prefer you bought the now-plentiful but much cheaper
PowerBook-12? Or maybe you'll settle for one of those inventorized Titanium 15.2"
PowerBooks we're freselling because it's effectively EOL? That's good, 'cause then we
can offload these things we've already written off on tax and introduce the new Alum
15.
Which we promise to deliver to you in May. Or June. Or whenever we feel like it. Just
consider yourself lucky we make them for you at all.
Punk.
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