Macbook!!!

[Bill Moore]

Originally Posted by KenWittlief

I dont think you fully understand. I cannot purchase a new motherboard for the flaming G4 FROM APPLE!

you can only exchange the failed one for a new one (for $350 - just for the board, no processors, no memory!). If you dont have a failed motherboard then APPLE will not sell you a new one

because they know people could buy just the mother board and then get everything else (processors, memory, HD, CD drive, case, power supply...) from somewhere else and make your own Mac much cheaper

If Microsoft didn't publish an open hardware standard for the Microsoft OS, there wouldn't be an argument here. You are angry with Apple's marketing choice. Folks have been railing against Apple's closed marketing method ever since they released the Mac in 1984, it didn't start with the G4.

If the most common OS on the market today (Microsoft) chose to engineer both the hardware and software, there wouldn't be anything to compare. That is not how their business started; they began by writing software for other peoples hardware. Apple developed their business doing both.

In an interestng twist, Microsoft has more recently taken the closed approach to marketing and engineered the whole package with the X-box gaming system. And, just like Apple, people are ticked that the system is closed. Hackers have been cracking the system to fit Linux or Mac OS systems onto the box, much like hackers have been cracking Apple's control over the systems they sell for years.

Originally Posted by dlavery

Then how come when I walked down the hall earlier this evening and checked our parts bin, there were 6 brand new G5 motherboards sitting right there, still in their boxes? It sure looked like they were sitting in stock as spares, in case we ever needed them. And since they had Apple logos on the boxes, I am pretty sure where they came from.

-dave

Dave, I suspect someone on your IT Staff is an Apple Certified Technician, because this is not typical of Apple's method of operation. I provided 9 years of support for a local school, and though we could get the repair software discs, we couldn't get any hardware, because we didn't have someone trained. (Small school, 70 computers mostly donated from businesses, voluntary technical support.)