Rage at Being Left Behind

Dan Knight - 2001.12.24

Outrageous.

That's the only word I can think of to describe Apple's decision to leave millions of Mac owners with substandard graphics performance in OS X. Millions.

A special thanks to Remy Davison of Insanely Great Mac for pointing this out over the weekend.

Left out in the cold are the beige Power Mac G3s (Rev. A and B plus the All-in-one), Rev. A-D iMacs, WallStreet and Lombard PowerBooks, and the original iBook and iBook SE - along with all those who use them.

That's anywhere from 4 million to 6 million Macs built with one version or another of the ATI Rage accelerated graphics chip. All stuck with substandard graphics performance.

Yes, stuck. Apple states, "Use the latest version of Mac OS X for best overall performance and feature set. Further Mac OS X support for the graphic accelerator chipsets listed above is not planned." None. Nada. Zip.

It's like the OS X rapture has come, and millions who believed they had fully supported hardware have unexpectedly been left behind.

Apple's only suggestion: switch from millions to thousands of colors.

Where Next

Apple has been the subject of several successful class action suits over things like promised PowerPC upgrades for late 68040-based models. A class action suit with millions of members might get their attention. It's bound to be more effective than a petition signed by three or four thousand Mac users.

The other option is to make this part of Darwin, the open source side of Mac OS X, and give programmers the opportunity and information they need to create accelerated graphics drivers for the ATI Rage chips. This would be far more gracious than saying no further support is planned - and it could head off a potential class action suit.

I still think it's outrageous that Apple believes it can get away with abandoning accelerated graphics on older Macs. I hope Apple will try to save face by at least giving others the opportunity to provide support for ATI Rage graphics acceleration.

Links for the Day

Mac of the Day: Quadra 950, introduced 1992.05.18. Apple's huge tower has 5 NuBus slots and runs a 33 MHz 68040 processor.
May 18 in LEM history: 92: Quadra 950 - 99: OS 8.6 more stable - 00: What can you squeeze into a compact Mac? - 01: Friendly LC 500s - Leaving Win2k behind - 05: OS X 10.4.1 update - A new PowerBook with Tiger - Tiger: Lots to like, but some annoyances - 06: 400K floppy click of death - I wish Apple were more like Microsoft - 07: 9.9% notebook market share
Support Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Opinions expressed are those of their authors and may not reflect the opinion of Cobweb Publishing. Advice is presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all.
Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2013 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc. unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Low End Mac, LowEndMac, and lowendmac.com are trademarks of Cobweb Publishing Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iPad, iPhone, iMac, iPod, MacBook, Mac Pro, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.
Please report errors to .
LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
Email may be published at our discretion unless marked "not for publication"; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it, and we don't share the information we have with others. For more details, see our Terms of Use.