Uh-oh, there goes Apple, "drawing ire" again. It's no secret that third-party Apple resellers and service providers have had a lot to complain about in recent years as far as policies from the Mothership are concerned; indeed, many of them point to signs that Apple wants them all to quit and go away, leaving the entire market for itself-- signs like increasingly-unreasonable reseller contracts, Apple's own online and retail stores seemingly getting first dibs on high-demand new products, and Steve Jobs turning up to reseller meetings wearing a t-shirt that says "WE WISH YOU'D ALL QUIT AND GO AWAY." Still not convinced? Then wait 'til you hear what's allegedly going on with Power Mac G5 repairs...

Here's the thing: according to Think Secret, when a service center replaces any of a number of specified parts in a G5 in the course of a repair, it also has to replace the entire aluminum enclosure-- the parts in question are "not separate, orderable parts" and only come with the perforated aluminum itself. That wouldn't be so irksome if not for the fact that some of those "separate, orderable parts" are such piddling little things as "hard drive cables" and "rear panel latches." In other words, a service center allegedly needs to swap out the entire freakin' enclosure just to replace a bad IDE ribbon cable. Go figure.

So far the story is more bizarre than upsetting, but wait, because here's the punch line: by some freakish oversight (or an "accident" as dictated by the aforementioned anti-reseller conspiracy), the enclosure is reportedly "not covered under Apple's AppleCare warranty," at least as far as the service center is concerned; while the customer gets his new ribbon cable (and whole new enclosure) for free under standard warranty coverage, the service center reportedly has to pay $475 for each enclosure, or "work with Apple on a case-by-case basis to obtain an exception." Apple reportedly justifies not covering certain service parts under the standard warranty because they're "not necessary for normal operation." Now, we don't know for sure, but we wouldn't mind going out on a limb just this once and assuming that running a G5 sans enclosure constitutes a technical no-no-- even though it might look kinda cool, in a dirty Wintel Frankensteiny kind of way.

Now, we really have no idea if any of this is true or not, since we've only seen it reported by Think Secret, but in our experience those guys have a pretty solid track record with this sort of thing. Perhaps there's some technical, non-conspiracy-related reason why a ribbon cable replacement should necessitate a $475 enclosure swap-out, but we're at a loss. Our pet theory right now is that someone working on the assembly line lost a contact lens and Apple instituted this policy to get as many enclosures back as possible to try to find it for him. (The guy has a really strong union.)

On another note, does anyone else find it intriguing that if you know a tech you can apparently buy a Power Mac G5 aluminum enclosure from a service center for under 500 clams? If you're the arts-and-crafts type, we bet you could turn one into a swell spice rack!