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.

[midiwife]

I'd like to know what everyone thinks is a way to highlight this and to deal with it.

OK, I bought through educational suppliers, Music Village in the UK for Logic. They've only ever been extremely helpful and brilliant in the past. They were stunned at the lack of help from their suppliers on the Logic side of things. MV very helpful and resourceful.

The computers were through a London based reseller and I don't want to make them public unneccessarily. It's true about the 2.7 machines having problems and I haven't got them out their boxes yet. I hope they will be OK. Now though, I'm worried. Why are we, the valued customers, kept in the dark?

Time was when buying and Apple was buying reliability, build quality and something worth the money, especially when buying in bulk for a college. But... ask me about my 2.7s in 3 months or so...

The jury's still 'out' as far as I'm concerned!

Good luck to others.