🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1486@hao.UUCP> ward@hao.UUCP (Mike Ward) writes:
>> The ROM's, I believe, are soldered in place
>
>You believe wrong.  The ROMs are in sockets, and can be easily
>replaced.

Mea Culpa. So much for checking my facts before I blather. sigh.

>> What this means, of course, is that if you do things to your machine that
>> you were told not to, like hack the hardware, you are on your own.
>
>This is the real issue, isn't: we weren't doing what we were
>told to do.  Well, you've been a good boy, so you get to be the
>ball monitor.  

This is an insulting comment. Do YOU want to try to build a decent hardware
support organization for ~250,000 machines that have hardware hacks of
varying degrees of sophistication and varying degrees of success with no
schematics? When you are talking about something that size, there simply
aren't enough dollars to hire EE's to hand hold all of the people that
want to save $XXX by doing something they aren't qualified for and the
EXPECT someone else to bail them out, free. To do this the prices for
things would have to go up, hurting all of the people who DO play is
straight with higher prices off the top, perhaps making a successful
product a failure because of pricing?

>I stopped letting my mommy and daddy tell me what
>to do a long time ago, and don't intend to let a greedy corporation
>take their place.
>
>Sooner or later there will be a computer company that cares about
>the people that buy its products.  At that time Apple will just
>dry up and blow away like the rotten fruit it is.

Every time I've talked to Apple about the Mac, and about my dear departed
II+ they have bent over backwards to get answers. Having worked with a
number of computer manufacturers over the years (insert your favorite
manufacturer here) I am consistently impressed with Apple and their
support. You have to remember two things: Apple is only familiar with Apple
products, and you have to go through channels. If Apple asks you to handle
something through your dealer, then go through your dealer.

Look. You may not like what Apple is doing. Fine. I'd like to point out
that their service arrangements don't really differ from the rest of the
industry. I suggest you buy an IBM PC, pull the motherboard, cut three
traces, add two wires and 5 chips of unknown quality and ask IBM to fix it.
you can do the same with Tandy (remember when breaking the seals of a TRS80
meant they wouldn't admit to its existence?), or Data General, or Dec, or
just about anyone. They won't do anything different that Apple is doing. 

If you don't like Apple's policies, don't buy Apples. When you realize that
Apple needs to handle 250,000 (and growing) machines in the field the
reasons for some of these policies become evident. The way things are is
the best way things can be for a group of machines that size at the most
reasonable cost and service turnaround. It serves the needs (and well) of
the vast majority of the users -- the ones that DO pay attention to what
Apple says, rather than trying to do what they want and force the world to
follow them... 

chuq
-- 
:From the closet of anxieties of:                 Chuq Von Rospach
{cbosgd,fortune,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo}!nsc!chuqui   nsc!chuqui@decwrl.ARPA

Remember me, for that which I must do shall ring out upon the heavens and
my name shall be renounced by the tongues of all mankind! - J. Iscariot