More BTO Options from Apple Computer, Inc.

In the Wintel hardware world, there are hundreds of choices of different motherboards, video cards, and cases from dozens of different manufacturers at various price points, depending on the features you want or don't. This is one of the few features I admire about the Wintel world.

Wouldn't it be great if we had similar choices in the Mac world? While I wouldn't expect Apple to license their technology any time soon to companies like Asus or Abit so that they could build all kinds of different Mac motherboards, maybe we could get Apple to rethink their "BTO" Power Mac strategy. At the minimum, it would be great if Apple allowed us to purchase only the components we needed to build or re-build our own Power Macs. However, I don't think this would ever happen, at least not as long as Steve Jobs is the CEO at Apple. Maybe we could convince Apple to re-think their BTO Power Mac options:

This is what I propose - Lets start a petition to get Apple to offer REAL BTO options whenever someone goes to buy a Power Mac at the Apple Store. This petition would collect the names, e-mail addresses, and comments of all Mac users who'd have an interest in seeing Apple offer TRUE BTO options. What do I consider "TRUE BTO OPTIONS"?

A - Three (minimum) different motherboards - Low, Medium, High End - with different price points to match:
- Low End: 3 PCI slots, 1 AGP, 1 USB, 1 Firewire, 10MBps Ethernet, 1 UDMA66 Connector (Supporting 2 Hard Drives)
- Medium End: 4 PCI slots, 1 AGP, 2 USB, 2 Firewire, 10/100 Ethernet, 2 UDMA66 Connectors (Supporting 4 Hard Drives)
- High End: 5 PCI slots, 1 AGP, 2 USB, 2 Firewire, 10/100/1000 Ethernet, 2 UDMA100 Connectors (Supporting 4 Hard Drives)
- G4 Processors - 733Mhz, Dual 733Mhz, 800Mhz, Dual 800Mhz, 867Mhz, Dual 867Mhz - These would be able to be used with either MB.

B - Three (minium) different Tower Case Designs - Small, Medium, Large (possibly with different colors) - with different price points to match:
- Small: (1) 5.25" External Drive Bay, (1) 3.5" External Drive Bay, 2 internal Hard Drive Bays for SCSI or IDE drives (3 different color options minimum)
- Medium: (2) 5.25" External Drive Bays, (1) 3.5" External Drive Bay, 4 internal Hard Drive Bays for SCSI or IDE drives (3 different color options minimum)
- Large: (3) 5.25" External Drive Bays, (2) 3.5" External Drive Bay, 6 internal Hard Drive Bays for SCSI or IDE drives (3 different color options minimum)
- Power Supplies: 250Watt, 300Watt, 350Watt, 400Watt - with different price points to match - any of which can be used in either case.

C - Video Cards - As it now stands, the choice is decent, but lets throw a 64MB ATI Radeon 8500 AGP, 32MB ATI Radeon AGP, Formac Proformance 3 and 4 AGP into the mix as well.

D - BareBone Power Mac: Any MOTHERBOARD from above, with any CPU from above, in any CASE from above, with any VIDEO CARD from above -
- This should require the purchase of the lastest version of OS X.
- NOT NECESSARY to purchase - RAM, Hard Drive, DVD/CDRW/SuperDrive

Unfortunately, I do not have my own website where I could host this porposed petition. If anyone who reads this likes this idea, please feel free to "take the ball and run with it." Feel free to use any ideas/wording from this posting in the petition. Lets try to get Apple to Re-think Differently about their BTO Power Mac Strategy. Lets let them know that we want more choice. I would love to be the first one on this petition. My idea would be to run this petition for at least 1 month if not 2 to collect as many names as possible.

While this type of BTO system would increase the cost of Apple's R&D, and as a result increase the price of Macs or BareBone Macs, I believe the price increases would not be dramatic, and it would in my opinion be worth it to get the kind of Mac motherboard/case/video card that I would want.

I believe this would also have a good chance of increasing Apple's market share and OS X adoption. Consider one scenario - Joe, a life-long Wintel "Poweruser". He's seen OS X and is interested - Unix core, reliable, powerful, with plenty of eye-candy too. Maybe he even likes the design of Apple's hardware. He'd like to give it a try, but he doesn't want to spend a minimum of $1699 for a low-end Power Mac since he spent about $1300 not too long ago for a high-end 1.4Ghz Athlon. But for say $1000 (or somewhat close to this) he could get a Low End motherboard, 733Mhz G4 CPU, Small Case, 32MB Radeon AGP Video Card, and OS X. Then all he'd have to do is take the RAM, Hard Drive, DVD/CDRW from his Athlon and put it into his new BTO Power Mac (or at worst spend another $150-$200 on some RAM and a Hard Drive from any reseller for his new G4).

-Vlad1966