bc@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (bill coderre) (10/11/87)
DISCLAIM: This is my opinion, not one of Apple or MIT. Some common monitor ailments explained: If your monitor "pops" (sharp click, "blooming" of picture), then that is a high-voltage problem. If it's in warranty, dealer will replace. If not, either a TV shop can fix, or just live with it. What happens is that the Hi-V is arcing to ground. Could be fixed by cleaning the insides, dust has been known to do this. DANGER: YOU WILL DIE if you zap yourself with high-voltage. Be careful. Turn off the set. Let it cool off. Follow the anode discharge procedure notated in many service manuals. Let everything dry thoroughly before powering up. If your monitor streaks, chances are it's a bad cable. Try another. If that doesn't work, there is a component defect near the input stages of the monitor, probably a broken capacitor. If your monitor has rotten contrast, it could be the B+ voltage, or a component failure. If your monitor is defocused in some area, then it is probably a simple yoke adjustment needing to be done. Same for rotation, and lateral shift. It only takes a few minutes to fix. (Note: color monitors have a fairly complex alignment procedure, involving two dozen or so adjustments. I don't advise you align your own monitor without a manual.) All of the above can be easily fixed by your dealer or a TV shop. If you've never fixed a TV, I don't advise you go out and try it yourself. You can be KILLED. No foolin'. AS FOR THIS BUSINESS OF APPLE "HATING" PEOPLE: I honestly can't believe people who think that Apple would "unload" inferior monitors on anybody. Seriously, why would Apple bother to ship inferior product if they knew that it would reduce its company image and also cost money since people will send broken stuff back? Apple doesn't screen monitors into "crummy" and "good" piles. They buy them all built and in the box from Sony (and other places) and ship them to you. I have seen, personally, several dozen Apple BW monitors. All of them were damn close to perfect. One or two broke, and we sent 'em back, no prob. Several needed adjustments, but that's hardly surprising for a delicate tube that's been shipped on a truck. I have also seen two prototype and one "real" color monitors. The finished product is without doubt the sharpest, has the purest colors, and the nicest overall picture of any "consumer" product I've seen. I can easily compare it to a TV studio monitor which costs $3k (and has many other features). The reason for the delay is that Apple asked Sony for better overall quality than Sony had ever delivered before, and that took extra time. I honestly believe that anyone who A/B tests Apple versus anything else will instantly prefer the Apple monitor. I wish I could get one for my home TV set. Apple honestly believes that you will be buying more computers later, and therefore wants you to be happy with your computer. If you are one of the few that had a couple of bad monitors in a row, then you are unlucky. A vast majority of people have no problems at all. I'm sure if you explain your problems to the dealer or a TV jock, they can make you happy in a few minutes. Good luck, eh?..........................bc
mentat@auscso.UUCP (Robert Dorsett) (10/12/87)
In article <1629@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> bc@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (bill coderre) writes: >DISCLAIM: This is my opinion, not one of Apple or MIT. > >AS FOR THIS BUSINESS OF APPLE "HATING" PEOPLE: > >I honestly can't believe people who think that Apple would "unload" >inferior monitors on anybody. Seriously, why would Apple bother to >ship inferior product if they knew that it would reduce its company >image and also cost money since people will send broken stuff back? >Apple doesn't screen monitors into "crummy" and "good" piles. They buy >them all built and in the box from Sony (and other places) and ship >them to you. When the Macintosh was first released, Apple was really proud of its auto- mated factory. In one of the articles on it (I think in the short-lived "Softalk" spinoff, "St Mac"), Apple was ECSTATIC over the fact that it was able to produce its monitors for $10-$15--the cheapest anyone had ever heard of. I cannot see them spending a great deal of time (i.e, money) on quality control of the buggers, since it'd cheaper to just replace the odd defective item. So, while I doubt that Apple "hates" people, it's willing to play the odds. I've never had a serious system problem in over seven years of using three types of Apple equipment. However, I know two people who had freaky PAL's in the back of their machine, two people with bad power supplies, and several with bad monitors. That excludes the people who post to the net. I'm in no special position to know more Mac owners than the average, and find the frequency of faults in a product that, after all, has no moving parts, somewhat alarming. It's certainly better than the IBM track record, but can't approach the Apple II record... People can pull out the records and point to complexity/reliability factors all they want. What the problem seems to be is that a computer "for the rest of us" should be more reliable than all that. A hardware problem is probably the most traumatic thing a novice user can go through. Especially if it's one day after the end of the ridiculously short 90-day warranty. And speak- ing of 90-day warranties, how's THAT for manufacturer confidence in its products? "Apple Computer: we have the same warranties for our products as the most minor Taiwanese junk electronics manufacturer." :-) -- Robert Dorsett {allegra,seismo}!sally!ut-ngp!walt!mentat University of Texas at Austin {allegra, seismo}!sally!ut-ngp!auscso!mentat
earleh@dartvax.UUCP (Earle R. Horton) (10/13/87)
In article <1629@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>, bc@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (bill coderre) writes: > DISCLAIM: This is my opinion, not one of Apple or MIT. > > AS FOR THIS BUSINESS OF APPLE "HATING" PEOPLE: > > I honestly can't believe people who think that Apple would "unload" > inferior monitors on anybody. Seriously, why would Apple bother to > ship inferior product if they knew that it would reduce its company > image and also cost money since people will send broken stuff back? I don't know about this, but Apple has been known to: Ship a new model computer (Mac Plus) before the System and Finder files (remember System 3.0) were by any stretch of the imagination finished. Ship an entire series of keyboard (Mac Plus keyboard) which had an obvious and well-known defect. There is no distinction between a shift/cursor key combination and certain numeric keypad keys when using this keyboard. They did not explain why they did this at any time, although several plausible theories exist. Ship two models (SE and Mac II) which required rather a large volume of patches to the ROM in order to operate properly. Promise things which they do not deliver. (Mac Basic, MultiFinder, A/UX.) (Or deliver late.) ^ | (Where is it?) Ship a version of the System file which broke their own terminal program, before they had the upgrade to said terminal program ready. I wouldn't say that Apple "hates" anybody, but isn't there the slightest chance that there are people in their organization who think Apple will look good for coming out with a large number of new products at a fast rate, whether such products are ready for sale or not? Hmm? -- ********************************************************************* *Earle R. Horton, H.B. 8000, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755 * *********************************************************************
steele@unc.cs.unc.edu (Oliver Steele) (10/15/87)
earleh@dartvax.UUCP (Earle R. Horton) writes: >In article <1629@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>, bc@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU > (bill coderre) writes: >> DISCLAIM: This is my opinion, not one of Apple or MIT. >> >> AS FOR THIS BUSINESS OF APPLE "HATING" PEOPLE: >> >> I honestly can't believe people who think that Apple would "unload" >> inferior monitors on anybody. Seriously, why would Apple bother to >> ship inferior product if they knew that it would reduce its company >> image and also cost money since people will send broken stuff back? > >I don't know about this, but Apple has been known to: [Mr. Horton then gives examples where Apple shipped (1) unfinished software, or (2) hardware that wasn't designed as well as it could have been.] There's a difference among shipping people unfinished versions of a piece of software, with a promise that they'll get a finished version later; shipping people hardware that wasn't perfectly designed; and shipping people bad instantiations of well designed hardware. In the first two cases, Apple couldn't really do anything else -- nothing else *existed* (keyboards with working shift-cursor keys, or System 3.1). In the last, if Apple did ship people bad monitors, it wasn't because good monitors didn't exist. Therefore, any accusation that Apple has been unloading monitors like this can't rest on their past practices, which may have been poor engineering (although I don't think they were), but were not poor quality control or deliberate shoddyness. >Ship two models (SE and Mac II) which required rather a large volume of >patches to the ROM in order to operate properly. I used the II with System 3.1 (*no* ROM patches) for quite a while, and didn't run into any problems, so it isn't stuff that will *always* show up. The PTCH code is pretty large, though; do you know what it fixes? >I wouldn't say that Apple "hates" anybody, but isn't there the slightest >chance that there are people in their organization who think Apple will >look good for coming out with a large number of new products at a fast >rate, whether such products are ready for sale or not? I agree with your implicit point here, but as far as the straight question: obviously, the people who make the decisions think Apple looks better coming out with a large number of almost-working products at a fast rate than coming out with completely done ones at a slower rate. And for what it's worth, their released software tends to be pretty polished except when it's pushed up to meet a hardware deadline. Take a look at the Presentation Manager and everything begins to fall into perspective. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Oliver Steele ...!{decvax,ihnp4}!mcnc!unc!steele steele%unc@mcnc.org "'As it were' means 'I think that I sound very erudite.' 'Per se' is Latin for 'as it were.' As it were."
STORKEL@RICE.BITNET (Scott Storkel) (10/16/87)
Muh. I'd have to agress with Bill on this one. Apple doesn't hate you, and
isn't intentionally shipping bad products. I'll bet the following story is
etched into the brain of every top Apple executive:
Once upon a time in the days BM (before Mac) the was a fantastically popular
computer called the Apple II+. Most people were pleased with the II, but some
users wanted more memory, hard disks, higher performance, etc. So Apple set out
to develop a new Apple called, lo and behold, the Apple III. Unfortunately they
rushed the III into production and quality control wasn't what it should have
been. People brought their brand new Apple III's home and they wouldn't work AT
ALL. Turns out the chips were popping out of their sockets on the motherboard.
As I recall Apple had to halt production to fix this problem. Meanwhile Apple's
good rep and high stock prices went down, down, down...
Luckily the people at Apple learned from this mistake, and haven't repeated the
III fiasco again. But you'll still find very few people who have actually owned
or used a III.
Disclaimer: I am happy with my Mac, and my II. The views expressed here are my
own and do not reflect any opinions of my employer, Rice U.
mentat@auscso.UUCP (Robert Dorsett) (10/21/87)
In article <141STORKEL@RICE> STORKEL@RICE.BITNET (Scott Storkel) writes: >Muh. I'd have to agress with Bill on this one. Apple doesn't hate you, and >isn't intentionally shipping bad products. I'll bet the following story is >etched into the brain of every top Apple executive: > >Once upon a time in the days BM (before Mac) the was a fantastically popular >computer called the Apple II+. Most people were pleased with the II, but some >users wanted more memory, hard disks, higher performance, etc. So Apple set out >to develop a new Apple called, lo and behold, the Apple III. Unfortunately they >rushed the III into production and quality control wasn't what it should have >been. People brought their brand new Apple III's home and they wouldn't work AT >ALL. Turns out the chips were popping out of their sockets on the motherboard. >As I recall Apple had to halt production to fix this problem. Meanwhile Apple's >good rep and high stock prices went down, down, down... > >Luckily the people at Apple learned from this mistake, and haven't repeated the >III fiasco again. Two or three months later, Apple fixed the problem with a very generous upgrade policy (which, I believe, included a free clock). Time went by, how- ever, and people STILL weren't buying the ///, because the IBM had made fan- tastic inroads in the meantime. As a last-ditch effort, Apple both cut the prices of the /// (thus risking manufacturing computers that COMPETE with one another, a long-standing worry) and produced a somewhat souped up version, called the /// Plus. Less than a summer later, Apple axed the /// altogether! You'll find far fewer people who had even HEARD of the /// Plus than those who owned the ///...:-) Around that time, Apple ALSO started producing the Lisa 2. Which was much, much cheaper than the original Lisa. It slowly built up momentum, and was, too, axed as well, just as sales were FINALLY starting to pick up (an event shrouded in mystery, to this day). The Moral of the Story: Apple, under Steve Jobs, did NOT, emphatically, NOT learn its lessons. That period extends to what, the summer of 1985? Has anyone read "Odyssey," Sculley's book about all that? -- Robert Dorsett {allegra,seismo}!sally!ut-ngp!walt!mentat University of Texas at Austin {allegra, seismo}!sally!ut-ngp!auscso!mentat