Buying Apple Products For A College, Dilemma for end user Options

[midiwife]

I wonder if anyone else is experiencing the poblems I face...

I ordered 7 Dual processor 2.7GHz machines at the beginning of July aiming to have them all set up with new software installed and ready to run a whole range of music tech courses beginning on September 19th. I don't think this is an unreasonable plan.

I'm still waiting for the macs and have had to postpone the start of all of our courses (Logic, Cubase, Reason, Live, Sibelius and ProTools).

I also ordered a 10 user educational package of Logic Pro on June 24th and only yesterday, September 20th, I received one media set. I received the dongles several weeks ago.

I also ordered a wide variety of other software updates all of which beat these orders even if they were placed much later.

I am a long time mac user and fan but in terms of running a department, I now feel that Apple have let me down badly. The Macs are on order from an Apple reseller but they have told us that there is a severe problem in fulfilling orders for the top spec 2.7 machines. The problem seems to be coming from Apple US who are failing to supply these orders.

Apparently, the Logic delivery problem was due to the fact that Apple have changed the way they package and sell multi user licences for education.

It seems to me that Apple are advertising products that they seem unable or unwilling to supply in a reasonable period of time.

I would be keen to hear from anyone else who has had problems with orders for this machine or any other Apple products when ordering for education as I don't think I can be the only one facing tough choices for the future.

[lepetitmartien]

There's always been some glitches in computers supplies but usually it's only from overwhelming orders generating backlogs. Here apple screwed the thing after stating publicly the 2.7 had problems IBM was working on. It's exactly the kind of thing we hear from Macbidouille/hardmac or from the rumor sites or MacNN. But the lack of communication is strange. It's not their fault if IBM did something wrong, but it surely is when customers are held in the dark.

About Logic, there's some real floating in the way post sales/support is handled. You are waiting for yours, meanwhile old registered customers wonder about simple things like who am I to call if I have a problem. Including some dongle issues questions (the blue ones) from 1/1/06 on.

Some customers have had great support, but there's definitely something not working on multiple issues.

The stupid thing is thru Applestore you would have had some updates.

I'd write to Apple Europe myself to shake things a bit. And send a copy to Cupertino is a good idea too Note that maybe it's the wholesaler managing orders in between which is mouth sealed stupidly, but there's no excuse for that. Those computers are for people who happen to work with, they expect them to come on time or at least to stay in touch with the state of things.