Two of the largest Macintosh installed locations outside of the Cupertino campus itself are government facilities at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory with 13,150 and 8,100 Macs respectively, according to MacWEEK's top 200 list. So how could Apple prevent itself from being Apple to sell to these huge customers, as well as hundreds of other government agencies? The simple answer is that Apple's G3 "Blue and White" PowerMacs are not Energy Star compliant, though both the 17" and 21" Apple Studio Displays meet the standard. We're told that government agencies are not allowed to buy products that don't meet the standard.

What is Energy Star? It's a program sponsored by both the EPA and Department of Energy to help reduce the energy used by common appliances like TVs, CPUs, Monitors, and the like. They describe the program as:

An appliance or product with the ENERGY STAR label means that it's in the top of its class for energy efficiency. Products that meet EPA and Department of Energy efficiency criteria qualify as ENERGY STAR. Consumers save money with ENERGY STAR products because they use less energy than conventional products and cost less to operate. ENERGY STAR products also offer the same or often better performance and features as conventional products.

Technically, computers must draw below a certain amount of power while operating, and must be set by default to power down within a certain number of minutes to meet the Energy Star specifications. We don't know which of the criteria listed that Apple's newest Macs don't meet. It stands to reason that if Apple's 333 MHz iMac is compliant running the same Mac OS as the PowerMacs, it's something in hardware that's preventing Apple from being awarded the status. Apple is planning to stay with the current PowerMac case, with a few modifications for the next generation of machines, currently codenamed SawTooth, which could debut as early as October at the Seybold conference. Whatever specification Apple's machines don't meet must be addressed in this PowerMac revision if Apple is to continue to sell Macs to some of its largest customers, various government agencies. Apple itself asserts that it was one of the first three computer companies to be contacted when the Energy Star program was conceived. Hopefully Apple can clean up its act, both for the sake of the environment and their bottom line, as the government orders come rolling back in.

UPDATE:The technical reason the Blue and Whites aren't ES compliant is they do not cut the power to the monitor pass through power outlet on the back of the machine during low-power mode. The system's operation itself is ES compliant. However, when used with a ES compliant monitor, the system is compliant. Since virtually every monitor available is compliant, in most situations the system is compliant.

We'd love to hear your feedback on this article. Any information on work-around to this limitation, or any new information is certainly welcome.



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Written/Edited/Published by Doug B. Landry
Logo by Jon Iverson
Apple, Mac, Macintosh, Mac OS,The Apple Store, and Powerbook are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc.
©1998 Doug B. Landry. All rights reserved. All or part may not be reproduced or distributed without prior consent.
Coded on a Apple Macintosh Powerbook G3 Series from Baton Rouge, LA

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