A firmware update apparently has rectified the reboot-on-wake problem that has dogged the 2008 edition of the Mac Pro since its introduction just prior to the Macworld show in January.

I use the word “apparently” because Apple does not mention the issue in its explanation of the update’s benefits. Instead we get only a vague statement: “This update fixes several issues to improve the stability of Mac Pro (Early 2008) computers.”

Owners of the affected Mac Pros can obtain the fix by running Software Update. It shows up as “Mac Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.3.”

(I have blogged about this before, since I own an affected Mac Pro. Other owners concocted all manner of solutions, none of which worked consistently.)

On the main thread on Apple’s support site where this issue has been discussed, everyone who applied the update reported success in eliminating the reboot-on-wake problem. It’s only been a few days since Apple released the fix (March 27), but so far so good.

Users are still talking to each other because Apple has failed to clarify whether the update includes a fix for the reboot-on-wake issue (although it did lock the discussion thread Sunday to prevent further comments, if that means anything).

If Apple has fixed the problem, why not say so in the update’s documentation? Why leave users guessing?

For the past three months, Apple support has told many Mac Pro owners (me included) they knew nothing of widespread sleep issues. I suppose it would be bad form to admit you solved a problem that you previously refused to acknowledge.

I have never understood why Apple so often denies issues that affect thousands of users.

Sometimes if the issues are severe enough and generate significant Web chatter Apple will make amends publicly, as with the MacBook random shutdown and discolored palm rest incidents in 2006. Even then, affected customers were told only to “contact AppleCare for service.”

But in many cases, particularly problems that it can fix with a software or firmware update, Apple never admits anything.

Perhaps the company fears bad publicity would follow from admitting to its problems. After all, one of Apple’s Mac marketing angles is superior reliability over Windows PCs.

But you don’t retain the customer loyalty by jerking them around when things go wrong.

Apple might worry that owning up to its product flaws will damage its reputation for quality, and maybe it would a little, but that couldn’t be worse than the damage the denials are doing to the relationship with its customers.

Honesty, on the other hand, would build trust between the Apple and its customers. People are more likely to forgive problems with a product if the company that makes it resolves those problems quickly and fairly.

It’s virtually impossible to build technically sophisticated products such as those Apple makes without suffering a few mishaps here and there. Product flaws are not a sin, but ignoring them is.

Apple would be far better off coming clean whenever such issues arise. If a software update can rectify an issue, just tell us you’re aware of it and will have a fix out as soon as possible. If it’s a hardware problem, issue a recall – sooner rather than later.

Understand me, I’m thrilled that Apple has fixed my Mac Pro. I just wish Apple could be more candid with its loyal customers.

Is that asking too much?

Posted by David Zeiler at 7:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
                    

It’s not often you can get ahead by standing still, but Apple could be doing just that based on the latest survey on computer purchasing by Rockville, Md.-based ChangeWave Research.

The data on planned purchases among U.S. consumers and businesses shows Apple with steady numbers and those of its competitors, chiefly Dell and Hewlett-Packard, declining.

Rather than surveying the population at random, ChangeWave takes its samples from among its own 15,000-member “alliance.” It also conducts similar surveys at regular intervals, providing historical data for comparison.

Apple’s numbers are essentially flat from the last survey taken in January (see charts). The most encouraging news is that in the consumer segment, respondents saying they plan to buy a Mac are up more than 50 percent from the March 2007 survey.

Now compare those numbers with Dell’s numbers. Dell laptops are down 2 percent and desktops 4 percent with consumers (32 percent for desktops, 28 percent for laptops. As recently as January 2007, 44 percent of consumers were planning to get a Dell desktop and 34 percent a Dell laptop.

Planned business purchases have fallen to an all-time low (32 percent for laptops and 32 percent for desktops). At its peak in August 2005 Dell’s numbers were 45 percent for desktops and 40 percent for laptops.

HP’s numbers also showed an overall downward trend, particularly in the consumer space, where they’ve dropped from 27 percent for laptops and 28 percent for desktops last March to 19 percent for laptops and 18 percent for desktops in the just-released survey.

Assuming ChangeWave’s data is indicative of general buying patterns, Apple’s earnings should hold steady through the current challenging economic environment. And the Mac’s U.S. market share should continue to rise this year in the periodic IDC and Gartner reports.

Other findings in the ChangeWave survey:

Leopard rules, Vista drools: Of the corporate respondents using the Mac OS X Leopard operating system, 53 percents said they were “very satisfied” with it compared with 40 percent for Windows XP Pro and a sad 8 percent for Windows Vista Business. Linux beat both flavors of Windows with 44 percent.

The survey also asked corporations about their plans to adopt Vista. Only 18 percent said they were not planning to “slow adoption of Vista,” while 26 percent they were “somewhat likely” or “very likely” to slow adoption of Microsoft’s newest version of Windows. And a remarkable 43 percent said they had no plans to adopt Vista in the next 12 months.

If Apple successfully breaches the enterprise market with the iPhone, it might ponder pitching Macs to businesses. The sort of widespread rejection of Vista evident in the ChangeWave survey could encourage corporations to consider the Mac alternative just as consumers have.

Mac desktops surge: In the portion of the survey covering PCs purchased in the previous 90 days, Mac desktops showed stunning strength among consumers, with 21 percent saying they had bought a desktop Mac. Not only did Mac desktops gain 5 percentage points from January, the number tripled – yes, tripled – from March 2007. (The Mac laptop percentage among consumers dropped 1 point to 16 percent.)

And a bit of bad news: While most of the data in the ChangeWave survey is positive for Apple, I found one troubling anomaly. Alone among PC manufacturers, Apple’s numbers in the segment in which respondents report which brand of PC they purchased in the previous 90 days tend to be about half what they are in the planned purchases segment.

For example in the November survey, 29 percent of consumers said they’d buy a Mac laptop in the next 90 days but in the current survey only 16 percent did so. The desktop numbers are closer (29 percent planned, 21 percent bought), but it’s still a significant gap.

Such discrepancies don’t appear in the data on other PC manufacturers. Back in November 31 percent of consumers said they’d buy a Dell desktop in the next 90 days; in the current survey 28 percent said they did in fact buy a Dell desktop.

The laptop numbers are almost spot on: 28 percent said they planned to purchase a Dell laptop in November; in the current survey 27 percent said they did.

Apparently, potential Mac buyers are more likely to change their minds than potential buyers of other brands. But why?

Did they see ads for bottom-of-the-barrel PCs and conclude Macs cost too much? Are they Windows users fearful of making the switch? Or is it something else?

Whatever the cause, it would behoove Apple to invest some effort in figuring it out. Those lost customers translate to lost market share, lost revenue and lost profits.

Posted by David Zeiler at 5:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
                    

I don’t often write about rumors I read elsewhere, much less contribute my own, but I happened upon a tidbit of information recently that could very well come to pass.

My source is not a secret informant from deep inside one of the companies or a parts supplier in a distant nation – the sources of most Apple rumors. This information came up in a casual conversation with a salesman at a RadioShack store.

I had gone to get the batteries in my cordless phones replaced when I noticed the displays for the various cell phone providers, including one for AT&T. As the salesman was digging for my replacement batteries, I half-jokingly asked him when the store would be getting the iPhone.

To my surprise, he answered seriously. “They told us we were getting them in January,” he replied, “But we haven’t seen any yet.” He suggested he still expects to see iPhones in his RadioShack at some point.

True, this guy is at the bottom of the communication chain and could have been mistaken. But my sense was that the promise he had heard came from an authoritative source.

Since I’m already living on the edge today, let’s look at whether selling the iPhone at RadioShacks makes sense.

It’s not such a ridiculous notion. In addition to the existing relationship with AT&T, RadioShack currently sells Apple’s line of iPods.

As for incentives, RadioShack would love to offer the iPhone. It’s a sexy product of the sort RadioShack has in very short supply and would help generate traffic into the struggling chain’s stores. People coming to shop for an iPhone might buy some of that other odd electronic clutter you find there.

The more puzzling question is why Apple (or AT&T, for that matter) would feel the need to add RadioShack to the iPhone distribution channel.

It could be a simple numbers game. Apple sells the iPhone through its 170-plus U.S. Apple Stores, strategically located in high-end malls but not necessarily convenient for everyone. AT&T sells the iPhone through 1,800 of its retail locations.

But RadioShack has nearly 6,000 stores in the United States and 800 wireless phone kiosks. Putting RadioShack on the iPhone team would make it more convenient for more people to buy an iPhone (well, in the U.S. anyway).

Apple’s motive for partnering with RadioShack is its ambitious sales goals for the iPhone. The company’s objective is to sell 10 million iPhones in 2008; adding 6,800 locations could help a little.

That also would fit in with Apple’s aggressive iPhone marketing strategies. Recall the six months of hype before anyone could even buy the product. Recall the rollout just months later into the United Kingdom, Germany and France. Recall the recent release of the iPhone SDK to permit developers to write software for the iPhone.

And Apple’s move to give the iPhone corporate-compatible features to attract enterprise customers is almost shockingly out of character for a company that has for years willfully ignored business customers.

RadioShack selling iPhones? Crazier things have happened.

Posted by David Zeiler at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
                    

I’ve never understood why Apple conceals useful operating system features from its users. I’m talking about such things as changing the default file format for creating a screen shot or turning off the Dashboard app.

Sooner or later (usually sooner) some clever Mac geek figures out how to access and enable these hidden options via the Unix command line in the Terminal or writes a utility to facilitate the task.

Such is the case with Deep Sleep, a Dashboard widget that lets users put their Mac into a standby mode that completely shuts off the power, similar to the “hibernate” function in Windows.

I stumbled upon Deep Sleep in my continuing quest to resolve my Mac Pro’s reboot on wake problem. (It recurred for the first time in over two weeks yesterday. Nuts.) Several Mac Pro owners in the forums had suggested use of this widget to bypass the issue.

It turns out that the default sleep mode on a Mac is only one of three sleep options built in to the operating system. The others are “safe sleep” and “deep sleep.”

In the default sleep mode, the Mac maintains a continuous trickle of power to the computer’s memory. Without that stream of electricity, everything stored in the Mac’s memory (that is, whatever you have running on your desktop) would go poof in a nanosecond.

Because the information is preserved in memory, wiggling your mouse or tapping a key on the keyboard brings up your Mac desktop just as you left it.

Apple created the safe sleep mode for PowerBooks a few years ago, gradually making it a standard feature on all Mac laptops. To prevent data loss, safe sleep adds an extra step. It saves the contents of memory to the hard drive just before going into regular sleep.

With regular sleep, if the PowerBook’s battery ran out of juice, the computer’s memory would lose its lifeline of electricity. The state of the desktop would be lost, and any unsaved work in open documents with it. But safe sleep could retrieve that data from the hard drive. Once power to the laptop is restored, so is the state of the desktop.

The Deep Sleep Widget uses the safe sleep option of copying the contents of memory to the hard drive to eliminate the need for that memory-preserving trickle of electricity in desktop Macs as well as laptops.

The advantages of deep sleep over regular sleep is that 1) it saves your open files to the disk so you won’t lose any data and 2) it uses virtually no power. For laptop owners, the ability to sleep the Mac without consuming any battery power can be invaluable.

The primary disadvantage of deep sleep is that it takes several seconds longer to sleep the system (because the Mac must wait for you’re the contents of memory to write to the hard drive) as well as to wake it up (because the Mac has to read the data off the hard drive).

I have been using Deep Sleep for when I plan to leave my Mac Pro unattended for many hours (such as when I leave for work or go to bed at night) and use regular sleep the rest of the time. I started this to work around my reboot on wake problem, but I think deep sleep might be better for the Mac.

As for the potential power savings, don’t get too excited. According to an Energy Usage Calculator on Apple’s Web site, a Mac Pro running 24/7 (never sleeping) would use $120 worth of electricity in a year at 10¢ per kilowatt-hour, slightly less than the 10.86¢ BGE currently charges. (A 24-inch iMac would cost $123 because of the built-in monitor; a 20-inch iMac $74.)

Using regular sleep mode 12 hours a day would save a Mac Pro owner $57. Using deep sleep 12 hours a day should save you $60 -- just $3 more (assuming the Mac is drawing no electricity).

Not quite enough for a new iPod, but it could get you a movie rental from the iTunes Store.

Posted by David Zeiler at 3:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

According to Forbes magazine’s annual list of the world’s billionaires, Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ personal fortune declined to $5.4 billion from $5.7 billion as reported in last year’s list. His worldwide rank declined from 132nd to 189th.

Jobs’ wealth, though impressive, nevertheless places him behind most other well-known tech moguls, including several historic rivals: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer ranks 43rd with $15 billion. Michael Dell ranks 40th with $16.4 billion. Bill Gates, while still enormously wealthy with his vast $58 billion fortune, slipped from 1st to 3rd.

A number of Jobs’ friends and allies outrank him as well His old pal Larry Ellison (Oracle) ranks 14th with $25 billion. Sergey Brin and Larry Page (Google) come in at Nos. 32 and 33, with $18.7 billion and 18.6 billion respectively. Google CEO and Apple board member Eric Schmidt is 142nd with $6.6 billion.

At least Jobs walloped Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang, whose wealth measures at a relatively puny $2.3 billion.

Outside of the tech world, Jobs’ fortune fares much better. He’s richer than such notable figures as George Lucas (No. 277, $3.9 billion); Donald Trump (No. 368, $3 billion); Oprah Winfrey (No. 462, $2.5 billion); Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti (No. 897, $1.3 billion); and former Disney CEO Michael Eisner (No. 1014, $1.1 billion).

Concerned citizens who would like to make a donation on Steve Jobs’ behalf should increase their planned purchases of Macs, iPhones and iPods this year. I’m sure His Steveness will appreciate your support.

Posted by David Zeiler at 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Although Steve Jobs announced in his keynote at the Macworld 2008 expo that 1,000 movies would be available for rental from the iTunes Store by the end of February, it didn’t happen.

In fact, the number of movies you can rent from iTunes is well below half that number. A check by Chris Breen of Macworld found less than 400. An Associated Press story yesterday said the number fell between 400 and 500.

Just minutes ago I checked the “all rentals” box on the iTunes Store and got just 287 items, although a power search with the “Search movies available for rental” box checked turned up 436 films.

Many in the blogosphere have hammered Apple for what some are calling a broken promise. Paul Thurrott, who has an ugly reputation in the Mac community for his frequent knocks on Apple, actually called the mid-January announcement a “lie,” as if Jobs knew then the company wouldn’t make the 1,000-movie goal.

Yesterday Jobs told those gathered at the annual Apple shareholders meeting that he is “not happy” about coming up short. According to the San Jose Mercury News, Jobs “blamed the delay on the time it has taken movie studios to get the necessary approvals from various rights holders of particular films to distribute the movies via iTunes.”

One would think Apple had a high degree of confidence in having 1,000 movies for rent on iTunes by the end of February or Jobs would not have said it. Apple had little to gain by lying about it, though it may have sold a few extra Apple TVs. Even that would hardly have been worth it, as the Apple TV has an uncharacteristically small (for Apple, anyway) profit margin.

If Apple thought it would have 500 rentals by March 1 and 1,000 by May 1, Jobs just as easily could have said that. I think most customers realize that a major new service such as this will build inventory slowly. Remember, the music version of the iTunes Store had only 200,000 songs at launch in 2003, compared with 6 million today.

With Jobs himself on the hot seat, you can be sure Apple will resolve whatever issues are holding up the addition of more movies to the rental store. A few years from now, when Apple dominates the online movie rental business with Apple TV and the iTunes Store, this red-faced moment will be long forgotten. (OK, I’m going out on a limb here, but I think it’s a likely scenario.)

I also have to question the timing of the problems the movie studios are having. They didn’t know how long it would take to get approval from the rights holders? Please.

It’s not like the iTunes Store is the first entity to rent movies online. Amazon’s Unbox service has been doing it for over a year and boasts 10,000 titles. NetFlix rolled out its streamed-over-the Internet service last year; “Watch Instantly” has 7,000 movies in its catalog. Just last fall a company called Vudu Inc. began offering movie rentals over an Internet-enabled set-top box and now offers 5,000 films. All three have deals with all, or nearly all, of the major studios.

I’m wondering if the major film studios, fearing Apple’s ability to replicate its success in the music download arena, purposely dragged their collective feet to embarrass Apple and slow its entry into the market.

In any case, the studios have -- intentionally or not -- seriously annoyed Steve Jobs. And that, my friends, is never a good idea.

Posted by David Zeiler at 4:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

Uptime: Four days, 14 hours.

After weeks of frustration, I think I have resolved the issue of my Mac Pro rebooting at random times when I tried to wake it from sleep state, most often after an overnight sleep.

Many owners of the 2008 edition of the Mac Pro have struggled with this same issue. Forums at Accelerate Your Mac, Mac Rumors and even Apple’s own Web site have percolated with complaints, commiserations and proposed solutions for over a month.

The most suggested remedies – resetting the PRAM and SMC (System Management Controller) have worked for a few but often prove temporary fixes. The Mac OS X 10.5.2 update had no effect.

A few Mac Pro owners even returned their units to Apple, only to have the replacement unit exhibit the same problem.

I called Apple Support a little over a week ago and was told by the “product specialist” to delete three power management preference files. I did. The next morning after a night of sleep, I touched the space bar and the Mac promptly rebooted. Not a great moment for Apple product support.

During our conversation I had mentioned to the product specialist that I was booting off a hard drive I had added to the system rather than the one that came with the Mac. He suggested I also try booting off the original drive as part of the process of narrowing down where the problem might lie (hardware or software).

After his first suggestion flopped, I tried the second. Oddly, the Mac did not reboot for the several days I ran off the original drive. In fact, the problem did not surface originally until after I installed OS X on one of my new drives and started booting from it.

Still, I had all my new software installed on the new drive. I didn’t want to be stuck booting from the old drive forever just to avoid the reboot-on-wake issue.

Encouraged by several posts on the forums from Mac Pro owners who’d fixed the problem by swapping drives among the four available bays, I decided to give it a try. I put my preferred boot drive in Bay 1 and the original hard drive in Bay 3. (I left my third hard drive, which I use for Time Machine, untouched in Bay 2.)

I started up the Mac Pro, zapping the PRAM for good measure (the posts in the forums suggested doing it after a drive swap.) And I haven’t had the reboot-on-wake problem since.

I have not yet tried to boot off the original drive since I moved it to Bay 3 to see if it now is afflicted with the issue -- but I’m guessing it would.

I can’t guarantee the drive swap will work for every Mac Pro owner suffering from this problem, but it should work for some. Those with just the original drive could try plugging it into other bays.

Happy as I am to have (apparently) resolved the issue, I remain baffled as to why the drive swap fixed it. Does this mean the Mac Pro has an SMC firmware problem? Or is there a problem with the Mac Pro hardware itself (motherboard glitch? wonky SATA controller?)

I am not an engineer, so I can only puzzle over the possibilities (more knowledgeable readers are invited to contribute their thoughts below).

As far as I know, Apple has not acknowledged the problem officially, though some on the forums said Apple support people told them the company is aware of the issue and is working on a solution.

I hope so. At the very least Apple needs to add an entry to the Knowledge Base on its Web site so Mac Pro owners will have some information on the issue. I’d prefer a software patch eradicating the problem completely, though.

This much I do know: Apple owes the customers of its high-end Macs some sort of answer, and it needs to provide one ASAP.

UPDATE (March 10): I tried booting off the original drive in Bay 3. After three days, I've had no reboot problem. I still don't understand why, but I have not experienced the issue for nearly two weeks. Still no word from Apple....

Posted by David Zeiler at 3:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)