We believe in the long term value of Apple hardware. You should be able to use your Apple gear as long as it helps you remain productive and meets your needs, upgrading only as necessary. We want to help maximize the life of your Apple gear.
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.
Kinda,
sorta supported, As the Apple Turns, 12.21. "...lots of
'supported' Mac hardware isn't supported when it comes to
graphics acceleration - and apparently never will be."
OS X and the beige G3, Adam
Robert Guha, Apple Archive, 12.21. OS X runs decently on a
beige G3, but also cripples the floppy drive, printer port,
graphics performance....
Do the right thing, Apple,
Dan Knight, Mac Musings, 12.18. Why Apple really should provide
accelerated graphics drivers for older Macs that run Mac
OS X.
We believe in the long term value of Apple hardware. You should be able to use your Apple gear as long as it helps you remain productive and meets your needs, upgrading only as necessary. We want to help maximize the life of your Apple gear.
