- 2006.11.10
People have been "building their own" PCs for years now - and
for just as long, clones of "the original" have been available:
Apple II clones, IBM PC
clones, and even Mac clones.
Many of the early IBM PC clones were built around motherboards
manufactured in Taiwan. Then came the Compaq Deskpro and its
clones, which used standard ISA slots and gave users more control
over what they could add to the machine.
Proprietary Architecture
Proprietary anything tended to fail miserably in the PC
compatible world. Just look at IBM's PS/2 line of desktop computers
from the 1980s. They were very solid computers meant for business
use. Their cases could be compared to the case of the Power Mac G5 and Mac Pro in terms of construction.
However, IBM insisted on using its own Micro
Channel Architecture slots on all but the entry-level models
instead of the ISA slots everyone else used. While theoretically
better than ISA, MCA didn't catch on due to the expensive cards and
IBM's licensing fees, so very few other manufacturer adopted the
technology (only NCR, Apricot, Tandy, Research Machines, and
Olivetti used MCA at all, and then in only part of their product
line). Therefore the PS/2s became a bit of a pain to deal with
toward the end of their useful life, as cards were rare and
expensive. A used ethernet card, for example, could cost $50 or
more in the 90s.
On the Mac side of things, Apple had NuBus, SCSI, ADB, and the
Mac
serial ports. None of these technologies were compatible with
anything on the PC side (with the exception of SCSI, which few PCs
supported, and there were cables that allowed use of RS-232 serial
devices with the Mac's DIN-8 serial ports), so some people avoided
Macs for their lack of compatibility with the "PC standard". (For
example, a Mac's 800K floppy wasn't compatible with a PC's 720K
format.)
Upgrades
The processors in Macs were also more difficult to upgrade, and
sometimes the motherboard was designed specifically to address
certain chips (for example, the Mac IIx
was designed to work only with a 16 MHz 68030 processor, even
though the CPU was removable).
Today this has changed, and now I can take the hard drive from
my PC, put it in a Mac, and access the data just as if it was a Mac
hard drive. RAM (provided it's the right type) is generally
interchangeable (and I say generally, because Macs tend to be more
picky about how close the RAM is to its specifications), video
cards sometimes work in both Mac and PCs (provided there are
drivers, and sometimes only after the firmware has been "flashed"),
and now Macs and PCs use the same Intel processors.
Overclocking
PCs have been targeted by overclockers far more than Macs. In
the past, users had to move jumpers and play with DIP switches to
get their PCs to run the CPU at a higher speed, but these days most
PCs provide an option to change the clock speed of the processor in
the BIOS, along with the bus speed.
Apple's recent issue with MacBooks overheating, and their
subsequent firmware update that reportedly slows the processor down
slightly, shows that this is possible for the Intel Macs, too.
Faster CPUs
If the processor in my PC is way too slow, I can generally
exchange it with a faster one. This was possible with the
daughter cards used in many of the PCI Power Macs and Mac clones
sold in the mid to late 90s, as well as with the ZIF sockets in
G3-based and G4-based Power Macs.
The Power Mac G5
essentially eliminated the possibiity of processor upgrades, but
the use of Intel processors in the 2006 Macs brings it back. For
instance, the Mac mini can be
upgraded to a Core 2 Duo processor relatively easily. This is excellent
news, as a seemingly un-upgradeable, "cheap" desktop computer is in
some ways more expandable than some higher-end systems. It also
helps to remove some of the old stigma left from the CRT iMacs that
Macs are generally not upgradeable.
In my IBM ThinkPad 600E, the slow 200-300 MHz processor that
came can easily be swapped out for a faster CPU. Since the machine
runs very cool as it is with a 300 MHz processor, upgrading to a
500-600 MHz chip isn't something that will cause the computer to
have problems.
Unfortunately my 12" PowerBook G4
runs too hot to be able to upgrade the processor with something
faster, although there may be hope for the MacBooks. My sister's
2 GHz black MacBook runs
fairly cool, with the fan only coming on occasionally. If the
processor isn't permanently soldered in place, it may be able to be
upgraded as faster ones become available.
Upgrade Value
Given that the Intel processors are used in both PCs and Macs,
the price of upgrades for Intel Macs should be very reasonable,
increasing the value-for-money ratio for Mac users looking to
upgrade to something faster.
That said, as of now the Intel Macs are new enough and fast
enough that upgrading them shouldn't matter for most users - at
least for the next year or two.
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