I just got a call back from the only place in BR that services macs. My G4 Powerbook 400mhz from almost 2 years ago is in the shop. They just told me that the display needs to be replaced, cost=900$! AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!! for that cost, i could practically buy a new iBook. I consider myself stupid for not even realising what AppleCare was until about 1 month after I couldn't buy it anymore. Which was also about the time that I started needing it. :( If i'd known to spend the 250$ on it then, replacing my stupid fucking display would be FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!0000000 FCUK
brandon [email] said at 3:59 PM 01-06-2004: Zack, seriously, just by the ibook. I wouldn't pay fucking 900 dollars for repairs on a two year old machine.
kevin [email] said at 4:12 PM 01-06-2004: that sucks. yeah, new ibooks are like 1k.
fyi: today was mac day hype and smaller (!!?) ipods and stuff were announced. so maybe they will be lowering prices on existing stuff like older ibooks.
myriam said at 4:35 PM 01-06-2004: yep. i just sold my g4 and bought a new p-book. do it!! everyone else is! ;)
oh yeah--btw i sold my 3 yr old, 400mhz g4 tower for $750, plus another $100 for the monitor--if you add on what you would be paying to fix it then essentially you have $1750 right there to spend on a new machine
also remember if you wait any longer you won't be able to sell it EVAR
also also remember that they start at 1,000mhz now!!! think of p-shop at that pace! wow!
kevin [email] said at 4:54 PM 01-06-2004: yeah, i'm keeping one machine set up for os9 (cause of all my OLD software) and wanna get a backpack smallish 12" new ibook/powerbook machine for portable photo editing and stuff like that.
myriam said at 5:34 PM 01-06-2004: silly silly! you can run all your apps in an os9 environment within osx. you just open the app like normal and it runs!
i would definitely recommend the 12". i got the 15" and much prefer the 12" size--the 15" is hard to manage one-handed (holding it and using it at the same time). but--i didn't think i could use p-shop without extra screen room for toolbars! ergh. good luck!
kevin [email] said at 5:44 PM 01-06-2004: yup. i know that option exists. do 0s9 apps run slower in that "classic" mode on osx? or are there conflicts when using stuff on usb/fw in both os's?
i have an older powerbook g3 400 (great machine!) and i think i'm just gonna leave it set up for os9. everthing works great on it, it is just kinda old and stuff.
myriam said at 12:22 PM 01-07-2004: actually my os9 apps run faster in Classic environment in OSX than they did on my old comp. I'm not sure if that's because the processor is ridiculous faster... i use formZ (3d modelling program) in classic mode and it renders in like half the time it used to. plus since it's only running in classic enviro i can shove it to the side and continue doing other stuff in OSX while it's rendering--i used to have to leave my comp alone for like 10 hours to render!
josh [email] said at 4:59 PM 01-06-2004: Buy a new display on ebay, get jeff sheldon to put it in for you for the price of dinner and a 6 pack.
Alternatively, find the same ibook you have on ebay, except find one that has a bad hard drive or some other part, and just ahve jeff cannibalize that.
zack [email] said at 1:59 AM 01-07-2004: Would you do this Jeff? I assume you can, I've heard you were the WIZARD of electronics.. I will go ahead and buy that cheap display josh's pointed out, if you think it's feasable? IM me?
jeff [email] said at 8:01 AM 01-07-2004: I've never opened a Ti before, but if someone else was able to yank one out and sell it on eBay, I'm certain we could throw a new one in.
myriam said at 11:49 PM 01-07-2004: Oh. My. Goodness.
This is way easier than the aluminum. Man... you are lucky, zack :)
the al-book keyboards don't lift out. The individual keys are clipped in with this complex and TINY clip-and-hook system. Plus to get at the insides you have to crack the case in half. NO EASY FEAT.
jeff [email] said at 8:44 AM 01-07-2004: So as not to scare you, I should probably add that I've done screen transplants before in laptops. Knowing this is Apple, I'll bet it'll be a whole lot easier than some of the crap I've been through to get Compaq* & Toshibas apart.
[* - to remove a DVD drive on a certain model Presario, you had to have a specially-indented hex key, open much of the re-enforced snapped case, remove the keyboard, the processor heatsink (!!!), and unscrew the drive.]
jeff [email] said at 8:27 PM 01-07-2004: Woah, unrelated story, yo. Your Presario harddrive died a miserable sector death and is in a drawer right now. The ThinkPad you gave me still has all the good stuff...I really should get you those files already. I keep the ThinkPad on my workbench as a sound card -based oscilloscope since I gave the wireless card I bought for it to my brother. Eventually it'll go wireless again (it's amazing how fast 16Mb of RAM with Windows 95 is on the web).
loren [email] said at 6:28 PM 01-06-2004: another long shot... not sure how long the warranty is, but if you bought the thing on a credit card, a lot of them double the original warranty. Worth a shot to check out.
loren [email] said at 6:29 PM 01-06-2004: man. . . I'm lusting after a new Powerbook so bad. I'm sick of PC's... the only reason i switched from Macs years ago was so i could run Softimage and maya, but Maya now runs on OSX, and all the killer apps for the mac these days are amazing, as is OSX. I think i'm going to take the plunge soon. So much fucking $$ though.
myriam said at 9:03 PM 01-06-2004: OSX *is* amazing. Every day at work when my pc craps out and slows down all my other apps when autocad is open... and when it does stupid shit like not remembering which folder i was in last... yeah well, every day man, every day.
which is partly why i'm quitting in 4 weeks.
don't you guys have macs at pixar? i have no idea, i'm just assuming?
loren [email] said at 1:47 PM 01-07-2004: Oh man. IF I ONLY worked at Pixar... which i don't. I work at LucasArts. But anyhow, no, they don't run on Macs at Pixar, at least the animators don't. They run Linux boxes.
myriam said at 4:56 PM 01-07-2004: aww... I totally thought you worked for pixar, for some reason. Oh well. And yep, I should have realized they used linux boxes. actually i think maybe i did know that somewhere.
neilbert said at 8:58 PM 01-06-2004: What killer apps are left that are Mac exclusive anymore, or pc exclusive?
Yes, the new Powerbooks look very sexy and are powerful, but the newest pcs kick the powerbook's collective asses over and over again. I don't see the big deal about apple anymore, especially after WinXP Pro came out. I have had very little problems out of my pc since I built it and installed XP Pro. Don't get me wrong, I love Apple, their philosophy, design and innovativeness, I just wish they would come down on their prices a -tad-. If they made Apple OS "open source" it would at least put the Linux users down once and for all (except for server use, of course) :)
I am just curious as to where Apple goes from here.
Michael said at 2:56 AM 01-07-2004: The whole iLife suite is amazing, especially with the new GarageBand addition, the way those apps work together beats anything in Microsoft land to hell. The GarageBand exhibition at MacWorld today was sweet. And OSX, especially Panther, kicks ass. I definitely think that the power of the new Macs and the cheapness of these apps more than makes up for the initial sticker price of the machine itself.
jeff [email] said at 8:17 AM 01-07-2004: All these talk nearly brings a tear to my eye. I grew up, the awkward Mac kid in a world of Commodore 64, Amiga, and 386 users. I had to defend myself when I'd spout about how much better SCSI was than IDE (which it really was at the time and still generally is for performance), how ADB kicked ass before there was USB, how
>Apple always came out with things that were actually firsts in the field, usable, or built-in (laserprinter, networking, GUI, digital cameras, PDAs, wireless, and the iPod could be argued to have started mainstream product explosion and affordable products). Sometimes they existed before Apple, but weren't even close to making it to the average person or with a design/budget for non-specialty fields.
For some reason I was really looking forward to this keynote address and was ready to watch it stream at 11am CST, only to have LSU's primary gateway literally die at 9:40am. It isn't even all that exciting with the stuff they came out with, but everything announced were really cool additions to an increasingly cool array of products. I'm glad over-all people are feeling much more positive about the company and accepting them as a place to look for solutions.
With that said, I betrayed my 1985-1997 Apple dedication years ago and my primary machine's an AMD/Debian combo. I use my Newton daily, if that counts and run BasiliskII under Linux, but I really, really wish Apple's hand an x86 hardware solution. I'd pay extra for a dual-G5 system that included an AMD Opteron daughterboard and transparent binary execution layer.
josh [email] said at 1:02 PM 01-07-2004: I like Apple products because they are generally easier to use and look nice. I don't usually buy them because they are more expensive, however.
If I rode public transit to work, I would definitely buy an iPod, since I like them more than any other MP3 player I've seen.
Now that I have a DV cam, I may get an eMac simply for Final Cut Pro. GarageBand seems cool as well.
loren [email] said at 1:55 PM 01-07-2004: The thing is that their campaign of "it just works" is so fucking true. Now, i used to be exclusive mac up until right when the G series of processors came out. My last mac was a Power Computing 225. And i KNOW how much of a pain in the ass Macs can be. They fuck up just as much as the PC did... at least they did in that day. Nowadays it's a bit different. The narrowness of options for macs is actually something i WANT now. I don't have time to research all the millions of programs there are for PC's to do every little thing. If you want to make a DVD on a Superdrive equipped mac, you just do it, and it works.
I think i just long for the simplicity again. Options are definitely nice in the PC world, but they take time and effort. The older i get the less time i have to mess with that shit. The less time i have to deal with configuring this and that and reinstalling windows every 6 months. I've got perspective, i've used both for many years, and if it weren't for the insane price of Macs these days and the utter lack of games, i'd have switched right when OSX came out. I think i'm just going to get rid of all of my PC's but one that i'm going to attach to my plasma as a game/entertainment PC, and get a 15inch powerbook for my main computer.
Unix built into the OS is another key... i can't farking wait.
myriam said at 4:07 PM 01-07-2004: yeah, they're expensive, but the resale value is pretty good (I found).
Anyway it's hard to compare since PC's running windows or whatever are quite different. How do you compare prices? Sure I could get a Gateway tower for $800, but do I want one? It's probably way slower, crappier videocard, etc etc than my laptop.
I dunno. The other arch. kids were all buying laptops our fifth year (last year) and after tons of research most went for the top-end Toshiba (it's pretty cool), a Sony Vaio, or a PowerBook. There were about 15 kids who bought one of those three. The prices of all three were literally within a hundred dollars of each other. (And if I recall correctly the Vaio was the most expensive). So... yeah, PC's are cheaper, but not if you're going to need something that can handle intensive modelling or image processing.
Ok, that's all.
Oh this isn't really directed at you Loren, it's a general comment.
josh [email] said at 4:38 PM 01-07-2004: I agree if you want a high-end machine, then, yeah it's not as big of a price difference.
However, for most of what I do, even heavy photoshopping, my 1.3 GHz Pentium III is quite adequate. The sole, single reason I am building myself a new system is to play the newer games. And that system will cost me about $800 total and still be a games monster.
courtney [email] said at 10:20 PM 01-07-2004: AppleCare fucking rocks. And you can even get an educational discount on it, along with applying the discount to your hardware purchase itself.
If you buy a PowerBook or iBook, it's an essential addition. I dropped my PowerBook once, and they even fixed the cosmetic damages on the thing. RUOK!
byron... said at 1:05 AM 01-08-2004: I'm glad this discussion started, because in a month or so I'll be buying my first laptop. I've always been a fan of macs but currently work on screaming fast PC's I've built for peanuts. Also, I can't run 3ds Max on the Mac and I'm really not in the mood to learn a whole new modeling system. If anyone has gone from 3ds to Maya or any other 3d app for the Mac, let me know. I'm seriously eyeing the ibook.
loren [email] said at 2:59 AM 01-08-2004: 3ds max is a clone of Maya these days... at least the interface is. Have you compared them lately? I'll admit, all i do is animate, but for that it's way better. Modeling i'm sure they are comperable, but the tools availabe free for Maya via the MEL scripting language would put it ahead as far as i see. Not sure if an ibook would run Maya well though... i'd check on that.
