Like others have warned (prudently) in this forum: THIS IS NOT A TROLL.

But I have a bone to pick with Apple.

Why is the company so @%$&#@ up-tight about PR? Apple refuses to telegraph when it’s about to update a product line just so that it can squeeze a few final bucks out of a few customers. Those poor sucker who buys at the end of a product cycle (I have been that guy more than once) is left with the bill for an expensive piece of hardware that is suddenly at least a generation old.

It’s fundamentally rude to do that to ones customers, dang it! Thoughts?

My comment would be that Apple still has to sell those old computers somehow, otherwise they are wasted money.  I feel bad for anyone who buys a computer that is about to become obsolete, but if they make a more informed decision by researching a little first, they probably wouldn’t make a mistake.

Apple’s computers are tightly integrated, and you can’t really dismantle old ones for parts when they go out of style.  If apple released info that new computers were entering the channel to the general public, they would make no money at all for an entire month.

Plus, in essence anyone who buys a computer today is still getting a very good computer, more than adequate for their needs.  My G4/450 that i bought a year and a half ago is still completely fast enough for anything that I want to do.

On 2001-06-21 14:32, Retro wrote:
Plus, in essence anyone who buys a computer today is still getting a very good computer, more than adequate for their needs.  My G4/450 that i bought a year and a half ago is still completely fast enough for anything that I want to do.

I feel the pain of anyone who buys a computer only to have it become the old model in a week or two, but on the other hand, my Lime iMac DV was introduced how long ago? A year and a half?  It’s still as fast as the slowest new iMac plus it has DVD which isn’t even available on iMacs now. What do you have to gain on one revision?  50 or 66 MHz?  It would be great to always get the latest when it is first introduced but unfortunately it just can’t work that way.

Have you noticed that Apple usually drops prices on equipment that is just weeks from being End-of-lifed? That should be ample compensation for purchasing “old” equipment. That, at least, helps the VERY last buyers and can make for some great bargains.
-D

So, PhotoDan—I think there’s gonna be a revision to the tibook in September. What kind of price break do you envision there? I just think it’s September because of the expiration of the free CDRW drive offer.

There’s another angle on this topic, as well. I bought my Wallstreet PowerBook AFTER the Lombard announcement. Hey, it was my first laptop, and I didn’t want to pay full price.

So, I assume that there are people out there like that.

BUT, I won’t do that any more. If I buy, I will buy latest and greatest from now on…

Rodney you must have changed your mind since I talked to you one day at CompUSA,   I told you how if I bought a laptop I was going to wait for the G4, but you poopooed that (back then at least).

I am a strong believer in waiting until a new rev of hardware comes out and buy buy buy.  You get more bang for your buck - a machine that will be up to date and compatible with software for a longer time.  I bought my G4/450 the day the G4 was introduced, in Sept of 99.  Who wouldn’t want a G4/450 today?  Its almost two years later, and my machine is _still_ one of the fastest ones out there.  I couldn’t have been happier.

Rodney, why do you need to buy the latest and greatest, especially the interim models that usually sport nominal speed and drive size bumps? It seems to me that you get more bang if you buy just after the new model announcements.

It’s different, of course, if we are talking about a completely redesigned lineup. The difference between the old PB and the new TiBooks are enoough to make anyone want to buy Titanium. Same holds true for the iBook, the why bother spending full price when you can get great deals on last year’s model?

Ha! I can so understand the frustration that people express about shelling out gobs of cash and then finding a better system out there in a short time for equal or less money.

I bought a PB 1400 in late August 1997 for C$5000. Only a short time afterwards in November Apple introduced the PB G3, and then a month after that the price of computer components tanked. In the end I figure I could have got a top of the line PB for less than I paid for my bottom of the line PB if I had waited six months. Boy did I feel screwed.

That being said, my bottom of the line PB has served me well through an entire bachelors degree, and only now am I in the market for a new Mac (to serve me well through the next bachelors degree). So maybe buying the last revision isn’t so bad, especially if you save some money in the process.

I for one am lookig forward to MWNY, at which time Steve will do me one of two favors. He will either give me a new system to buy at a reasonable price, or he will give me an ‘old’ system at clearout price. Either is good enough for me.