Not happy with Apple Computers Inc.

[dan828]

i learned my lesson the hard way, wanted the new mac mini, bought it online with the 512 ram upgrade. now apple tells me a week a ago it will ship on or before the 10th and i called again today and its back to the 21st. i cant wait too much longer.....plus their service representatives arent much help either......

Yeah, I was in the same boat. Ordered it from Apple, got the date moved back until March 1 (four weeks lead time).

I just went ahead and bought one at Frys Electronics and bought the memory from Crucial. It's a bit of a pain to put the memory (opening the case, but once that's done it's easy).

 

[mmoy]

They're built in China. The main shipping facility is in Shanghai.

Last I heard, Shanghai was not a part of California.

Same route my Compaq took. Built in Shanghai and it took a week flying
all over the place to get to me. Have never been to Shanghai but have been
to a bunch of other cities in China before. Things must really be booming over there.

 

[crazycanadian]

the thing that really ticks me off is that i needed to order directly from apple.com. the apple store near me told me that i needed to this is since they have no way of putting in airport extreme card.....if i didnt have a wireless network i would be enjoying my new mini much sooner.....

 

[warrenbert]

They are made in China. Your order ships from California. The costs of shipping individual machines from China would be ridiculously expensive and inefficient. They ship container-loads of Apple stuff from overseas; it's cheaper that way. Apple's distribution center is near Sacramento, CA. Any upgrades, downgrades or customization is performed in California.

 

[dan828]

They are made in China. Your order ships from California. The costs of shipping individual machines from China would be ridiculously expensive and inefficient. They ship container-loads of Apple stuff from overseas; it's cheaper that way. Apple's distribution center is near Sacramento, CA. Any upgrades, downgrades or customization is performed in California.

Quite a bit of stuff is shipped direct from China these days. I bought a laptop from HP and it did ship directly from Shanghi via Fedex. I've seen numerous postings on this forum about Apple doing the same thing. Seeing as there is such a huge market of products from China I'd bet that the major carriers run several cargo planes full a day.

 

[mmoy]

They are made in China. Your order ships from California. The costs of shipping individual machines from China would be ridiculously expensive and inefficient. They ship container-loads of Apple stuff from overseas; it's cheaper that way. Apple's distribution center is near Sacramento, CA. Any upgrades, downgrades or customization is performed in California.

I don't see how they could send my system on a
container ship and get it to me in 10 days.
Especially with the port issues in Southern
California. For laptops, it's clearly easy to dropship
via air. Dell is building a new manufacturing
facility in North Carolina for desktops as shipping
them is more expensive due to their weight.

 

[MichaelSullivan]

They are made in China. Your order ships from California. The costs of shipping individual machines from China would be ridiculously expensive and inefficient. They ship container-loads of Apple stuff from overseas; it's cheaper that way. Apple's distribution center is near Sacramento, CA. Any upgrades, downgrades or customization is performed in California.

You are incorrect. Here are the stats on my recent PB purchase.


Package Progress:

Mar 6, 2005
9:14 P.M. SHANGHAI, CN DEPARTURE SCAN
1:12 P.M. SHANGHAI, CN ORIGIN SCAN

Mar 5, 2005
9:15 A.M. SHANGHAI, CN ORIGIN SCAN
5:21 A.M. CN BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED

Tracking results provided by UPS: Mar 6, 2005 10:52 A.M. Eastern Time (USA)

 

[warrenbert]

I suppose everyone has different experiences. My G5 came from Sacramento, CA.

I think it's terribly lame of them to ship individual computers from China. Either their volume is too low, or they have lots of underage slave laborers doing their hardware upgrades.

 

[MichaelSullivan]

I suppose everyone has different experiences. My G5 came from Sacramento, CA.

It would be faulty to assume that every apple computer ships from CA, as in your case. This thread (http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=243715) clearly shows that most PB orders ship from Shanghai, China. In fact, I've only read one post to date that indicates an order shipped from CA, all else have been shipping from China.

Of course, your signature shows that you purchased a refurb, no? That could be one reason it came from CA... where everything is recycled!

 

[IChing]

My powerbook on the bottom says manufactured in china, however when I got the powerbook a big piece of paper laying on the top of the powerbook inside the box said:" assembled in California." Hope you get your computer soon.

 

[Dark Matter]

My Powerbook G4 shipped from California the middle of last week.
I, too, had my delivery time pushed back. Mine changed from Feb. 25 to March 02.
I guess it's because a couple of days after I ordered ( I ordered Feb. 16) I called them up and had them change my order a bit, upping the RAM to 1 gig and upgrading to 128 mb vram.
According to Fedex's tracking site, I ought to recieve my Powerbook tomorrow (March 07).
Can't wait.

 

[dan828]

My powerbook on the bottom says manufactured in china, however when I got the powerbook a big piece of paper laying on the top of the powerbook inside the box said:" assembled in California." Hope you get your computer soon.

Hmm. Are you sure it didn't say "Designed in California" like Apple has with all the rest of their computers? That's what the paper that came with my Mini said. Computers, and especially laptops are made in China. As a matter of fact I think only a few companies in the world actually build laptops, and none of them are in California. I Believe Powerbooks are usually made either by Acer or Quanta which are Taiwanese companies that mostly sub out their manufacturing to mainland China.

 

[warrenbert]

What we were discussing was where your Mac shipped from. We are all pretty clear on where they are manufactured. Some are shipping directly from China and others are shipping from California.

 

[mmoy]

Looks like my unit is being shipped from California. Just got off the phone with FedEx and the origination is California. The initial notification was on Saturday but I haven't seen any updates yet. UPS is much better at tracking stuff compared to FedEx but I expect that it's on a truck heading east with a commitment date of this Friday.

 

[RC23]

It is however apples fault for defaulting ram it stupidly low modules.

256 in a freaking g5 tower? it would literally be a waste of power to get that little ram.

 

[mmoy]

It is however apples fault for defaulting ram it stupidly low modules.

256 in a freaking g5 tower? it would literally be a waste of power to get that little ram.

Maybe they figure people will upgrade it anyways using 3rd party memory. I usually get the minimum from the vendor then add my own and toss out the original stuff (all of my machines only have two slots).

 

[DCyamaha]

thread hijack anyone?

just kidding

back to the original post. Yeah, the dam thing still isn't here! and there is no update on when it will be shipped. It keeps saying open ship date of 3/9/05

ugh!

 

[mmoy]

Went down to shipping and saw a big PowerMac G5 box and I do mean a big box.

I thought, wow, that was fast. As I looked at the shipping label, though, I saw that it had someone else's name on it. So I was a little disappointed there.

 

[RC23]

heh, true mmoy, but.. even installing 3rd party ram voids some parts of the contract (not that i have a problem with that considering im a computer technician i can take care of my own problems) its still dissapointing

 

[mmoy]

heh, true mmoy, but.. even installing 3rd party ram voids some parts of the contract (not that i have a problem with that considering im a computer technician i can take care of my own problems) its still dissapointing

I'm used to that. On my r3000z, I called up to ask for driver
help to get Windows 64 Beta running. They told me that
installing Windows 64 Beta voids the warranty. But they wanted
to play with Windows 64 so they tried to help. I found the
drivers and let them know.

I overclock and underclock too and that typically voids the
warranty. On hobbyist aftermarket chips, you fry them and it's
your loss. I can only overclock by 12% and then the system
gets unstable.

Out of curiousity, can you overclock PowerMacs? How about underclocking them? Is it easy to do?