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Apple Businesses

Apple Disabling 3rd Party CPU Upgrades? (Updated) 174

Posted by Hemos from the yanking-it-away dept.
mrwiz writes "According to this article at Appleinsider, it looks like Apple may be removing the upgradability of processors even further with their next generation logicboards, codenamed "Shark", by moving the boot ROM off of the logicboard and onto their processor daughter cards. " Update: 09/07 07:56 by CT : The Happy Blues Man writes "MacOS Rumors has an update on the "trojan" firmware upgrade for Blue & White G3s. It seems that even in Apple itself, the issue was hotly contested and the proponents' reason was to stop 3rd parties from shipping G4 upgrades before Apple's G4s were shipping. Apple sources have confirmed a fix will be available. " Update: 09/07 08:54 by H :I've been told by numerous people that this is NOT true-more to follow.
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Apple Disabling 3rd Party CPU Upgrades? (Updated) More

Apple Disabling 3rd Party CPU Upgrades? (Updated)

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  • Apple has made it very possible for past users to upgrade and will continue to do so. I recently upgraded my 166MHz 603e to a G3. It can be done even farther back to the original PPC's (60MHz?) They are no orgre and have been very good to customers.
    With Steve they just like to steal the show. (Did you see the intel booth at Seybold? Completely empty! Laff!!!)
    I continue to word if this site is becoming an Apple Hater's Rumor Mill. (Past few Apple Articles have been false AND bad PR... geez guys)
    -Curt
  • Well, after reading some of the later comments on this thread, I think it's safe to say people jumped the gun (myself included) over the processor thing. But I still stand by my opinion that Apple made a series of blunders which limited it's market share to education.

    --
  • I'd take this news with a grain of salt. This is reminiscent of the PII/Celeron bus speed limiter rumors that went around about a year ago. I still have yet to see a current Intel chip that outright reject anything above its rated bus clock.
  • This is not true, while it *seems* you only copy files, the Finder automatically writes a boot signature when it sees that you created a valid system folder (it also changes the icon of that folder so that it contains a little mac classic (pre 8.0) or the MacOS logo (8.0+). It would be like if you copy io.sys, msdos.sys and command.com to a floppy, dos/windows would automatically fill in the boot sector.
  • Apparently the last person who moderated this has pretty damned thin skin if they were somehow offended by the previous post -- a troll?? Huh?

    Hopefully meta-moderation will take care of retarded stuff like that.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • If you have an AT PC, you'd have to change the case, the motherboard, the CPU, and the ram. If you're unlucky enough to have a bunch of ISA/EISA cards, you may have to replace one or two of those as well.

    If you're lucky enough to have an ATX PC, you may only need to change the motherboard, CPU, and ram.

    If you're really lucky you only need to pop in a new CPU.

    Only in the last case is it really affordable to upgrade.

    For Pentium users, you'd probably need to change case, memory, CPU, and motherboard. For PPro users, the same. For PII users, you may be able to just upgrade the bios and CPU. But a PII user doesn't need to worry too much about upgrading...

    On the mac side I've heard that one can upgrade all the way back to the 7100 Performa series to a G3 or maybe even a G4, with a daughtercard. That's unheard of in the Wintel world; it would be like upgrading a Pentium or Pentium Pro to a PII, Celeron, or PIII, none of which are possible.


    -AS
  • Hang on a minute :)

    I own a couple of Macs and PCs (hardware nut!)

    I have an original 6100, from 1994 (or 1993, whatever) with a 60MHz ppc 601 etc etc - I can currently buy a G3 upgrade for it, running at somehting like 400MHz - that's more than enough speed for any normal user. G4 upgrades are / will be available (they have been announced)

    I also have one of the original beige G3s - I can upgrade that to a G4 as well.

    I also have a P133 (well a P120 I clocked) It's about the same age as the 6100, maybe 1995 or so. The equivalent upgrade would be to plug a PIII into the socket 7 on my motherboard. Ooops, won't fit. Fair enough - the 601 on my 6100 is soldered to the board, the upgrade is a card in it's PDS slot. So there must be an adaptor for the pc? nope. There are those crappy evergreen overdrive things but they suck (tried one)

    Yeah - sure I can get a new motherboard, but I'll need to get a new case as well, probably new ram too, not to mention the processor - that's not upgrading a system, that's replacing a system.

    And intel will be changing their slot design again. Great. No wonder my pc is still a P133.

    John
  • While there is certainly a dark side to this issue: the argument that Apple is abusing its position, there is a another dimension to be aware of.

    The huge G4 introduction at Seybold was a major step in reminding the world that there are more options out there than Windows running on Intel.

    If a company such as Newer Technology or XLR8 shipped a card with the G4 on it first, Apple's announcement would have been pretty anticlimatic. No one is going to be able to generate more interest in the G4 than Apple. So, IMHO, it's overall better for the Mac industry (and all non-Wintel platforms everywhere), if Jobs gets first shot at promoting something like this.

    And I know what some people are thinking: "Free market -- it's Apple's fault if they don't ship first." But it's not that simple. Apple has to ramp up tremendous volume before they are able to ship a product, which is something upgrade board manufacturers do not have to do. This gives them the illusion of being significantly faster than Apple at getting things to market.

    This was the exact same issue with PowerComputing. They came out with faster machines before Apple did, but they could do this because they had so few customers. For example, I believe PowerComputing shipped 200,000 machines TOTAL in the several years they were in business (all to Apple's high-end, high-margin customers), whereas Apple has received 140,000 preorders for the iBook alone in the last two months.


    So, in the end, these tiny little hardware vendors would give the Mac market a short-term gain, in exchange for a long term loss. It's much better for the platform (and all non-Wintel platforms everywhere) if Apple gets to make a big show about new techology.

    So while blocking upgrades is pretty drastic, I don't think it would be unreasonable for powerpc upgraders to wait until Apple brings major new chips to market before they ship theirs.

    Based on some quotes that I'm not able to reference at the moment, it seems this is how Jon Rubenstein (Apple hardware VP) feels as well. Upgrade cards add value, but it's not in the platform's best interest to be leading the way.

    It's not a black-and-white issue by any means, and I welcome other viewpoints.

    - Scott
    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • Of course, this would only happen if they were open sourcing MacOS to compete with LinuxPPC.

    Compete with LinuxPPC. Hmmmm... okay.

    Anyway, as far as open sourcing Mac OS, they've made great leaps towards that. I'm not sure how much sense it would make to open source Mac OS 8.x. But they have open-sourced the foundation for Mac OS X. Mac OS X (Consumer), Mac OS X Server and Darwin all come from the same bloodline.

    The largest difference is the windowing evironments. The other difference at this point is that Mac OS X Server and Darwin are using Mach 2.5 (modified) and developers builds of Mac OS X Consumer is using Mach 3.0. Though perhaps that has changed for Darwin through community efforts.

    - Scott
    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • Do you really believe this contributed to the conversation in a positive, constructive way?

    - Scott
    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • >then blunders that all up and gets stuffed into a niche market (education).

    What??? I figured education to be a bloody enormous market! The graphics business, where Apple had a massive presence until Adobe finally managed to get Photoshop to run properly on NT, now *that's* a niche market... big, but still niche.
  • Pay attention sir. CHRP is everywhere inside Apples these days. CHRP, if you look at the old MacWorld specs, was supposed to use PC standard ports and cheaper motherboard hardware. This is happening and is quite obviously the direction that Apple is taking with their mb's these days. AGP ports, IDE hard drives, USB ports, 100 mhz system buses..the list goes on and on. The day a pc can straight swap it's hardware with a mac is upon us. All it takes is a driver.
    Don't forget, too, that hardware vendors love this opportunity. Anyone that makes a USB mouse/hub/camera can easily write a little driver for macos and sell their hardware to mac users. It reminds me of the Church of the Subgenius. The picture with the slacker taking money from both sides...

  • "They make firewire proprietary, which effectively kills it."

    Um...excuse me? What exactly is "proprietary" about IEEE 1394?

  • Well, Apple is a hardware vendor. I wouln't be surprised if the OS actually costs them money. After all, in the market they were targetting, they couldn't charge thousands of dollars per licence like many other providers of a single vendor solution seem to do.

  • Why? (Score:2)

    by Bwah ( 3970 )
    Upgrade manufacturers would need a license to clone the ROM. (Can't just stick a new cPu into board and screw with firmware--whole new rom chip with valid Apple firmware required!)


    Why? It's perfectly legal to recreate a boot ROM. I'm talking re-engineering here, not copying verbatim. You could even use the clasic "one engineering takes it a apart, another (clean) engineer puts it back together based on the report" method or something.

    /dev

  • Now THIS is the kind of bullish propoganda one would read on Mackido. Sure, you'll have to buy a new motherboard if you want the newest generation of CPU's. I guess if you wanted to, you could slap a new proccesor on your old board, turn that 133 mhz Pentium into a 233, but as you say, that doesn't give much of a performance increase. What you don't realize is, that unlike on Macs, PC motherboards don't have a whole hell of alot on them 'cept the bare esentials. Sure they have the chipset, your little pci/isa/agp slots, and usually IDE/floppy controlers. They don't include things like video,sound,3d hardware, ethernet, and whatever else you want on your computer. That meens you don't have to thrown away everything else when you upgrade your motherbaord. The motherboard is just another component in the system. It happends to have alot to do with your computers performance, so it's replaced alot.

    How modularized PC's are is very important. It's probably their greatest strength. While macs are prone to the all-in-one problem. "Ooops, the sound in my iMac just died. If I want it working again, I'll have to trade in the whole unit." If such a thing happends to your PC, you can just pull out the old sound card and insert a new one. That's why Apple pisses me off. I'm just a kid and I can not afford a Macintosh. PERIOD. A PC offers me alot better price to performance ratio inside my price range. I can customize my system, and buy junky components where I don't care about their quality. "Hey, I could give a flying %&$# about sound quality and I'm on a budget. I'll just pull that sound card from a 386 and use it in my speed demon!" Where would Apple let me save money on a Macintosh by doing that? Beleive me, if I could put together a PPC machine, capable of running MacOS, for the same price of a PC, I'd be browsing this from LinuxPPC right now.

    Sorry if I ranted on for a long time. It's just that I hate it when people spread misinformation(even if it's not directly lies).

  • My thoughts of Jobs aside, I think Apple's best profit has come from it's non-clone products. My understanding of the Clone-Age of Apple was a fiasco, leading to them getting rid of the clones.

    While I would love to think that Apple is doing everyone a favor in the future, it just seems like Apple going back into it's shell. If their _not_, though, and this is to help open up Apple, I'd eat my thoughts and do a "Happy Apple Dance" on my desk.

  • Well, on a PC it would be easy, but, this is not a PC. PCs have had a standard boot procedure for the past 15 years or so. I believe it just loads the first 100 bytes of the disk. (witch in turn loads the OS, or more recently the OS loader).

    On a mac however, there is no clear distinction of where the ROM ends and the OS begins. To make a Mac OS boot disk, all you need to do is put some certain files on it. So the boot ROM needs at least to know the Mac's file system...

    In short, there would be no way for you to do it without analyzing the code on the ROM chips. And this might destroy the 'clean room' that you need for legal coverage. I'm sure it would be possible, but, much more difficult then for a PC.
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • Good point on the cost cutting reasons to switch to different chipsets and whatnot, but it all really does come down to promoting more and more lack of upgradiblily. Take the soon to be implemented Intel 810e and 820 chipsets. Sure this is meant for the low end of computers and not for power users, but unfortunately the entire computer industry, on the PC side of things at least, seems to be moving away from the power user's needs in the hurry. Please don't let talks of the Merced and E2k and whatever the newest flavor of the week processor sway your thoughts. Sure there is lots of talk of extremely powerful systems that all seem to be just around the corner, but for every one post of a power chip or device, it seems as if products designed to apeal to the low end computer user and limit upgradability are actually being implemented. The 810 and 820 chipsets integrate just about everything that you could every imagine to cut costs. I mean where the hell are you going to find hardware designed for the AMR riser slot. Not to many sounds/modem cards out there in AMR. It seems as if everything that you see out there is now sub 1000.

    I think that I will have to look at it this way. Just be happy that Apple even has a G4 to buy. If this all keeps up, we will no longer see any power systems.

    The day that I sub $1000 SGI, I'm quiting computers for good!!!



  • Why, oh why, is it that every time a rumour surrounding Apple gets into the public domain (sic) we get all manner of flamewars, this-really-is-the-end-for-them apocalyptic stories, etc etc etc.??

    To put this all in perspective (and I'm not from the good ole US of A so forgive me for not knowing your cars very well) let us consider wanting to change your car...

    How many of you with (say) a Chrysler Neon go out and buy a new engine that fits in, ummm, a Grand Cherokee?

    Now, how many of you would complain if it didn't work? Or if you couldn't take your favourite steering wheel off the old car and onto the new one?

    Try to keep some kind of perspective here kids. Remember that these things we're all using are *only* computers. You don't like what Apple are (rumoured to be) doing?

    Don't buy a Mac then

    But hey, I guess most of the flames on here aren't from Mac users anyway...
  • You are right of course. It is in Apple's best interests. It's the same thinking that accounts for the relative use of Macs vs PC clones. It's the kind of thinking that makes you glad that there's an Athlon out there, and that IBM has released specs for PowerPC systems.

    Really, if somebody doesn't like Microsoft, they have much more reason to not like Apple also.

  • Why? (Score:1)

    by BradyB ( 52090 )
    I can see that they may be doing this sort of thing to get people to buy the new model, but they are going to piss a few people off I would think that bought a G3 just before the G4 was released
  • I would love to see Apple focus on hardware and get out of making MacOS. This would give Be Inc. a chance to make BeOS run on the G3/G4's!

    However, I do not see this happening. Apple seems to aviod too much compitition within its own platform. If they stopped making the MacOS and thus opened the platform for other operating systems, how long do you think it would take M$ to write one? Now thats a Scary Thought (tm)

  • Hmm...PC Users getting abused by mac Zealots...for some reason i have trouble feeling sorry for you.

    If the mac users should check their info before posting, so should you.

    What will you do when the P3-700's come out? I believe the BH6 doesn't have a multiplier setting that high.

    Oh wait. You'll get a new board, or just whine.

    When the P2's came out, everyone needed to get a new board. Sounds strangely familiar. I suppose you just did some custom soldering through a custom chipset to get your P2 to work in a socket 7 board.

    The differences between PC and Mac Motherboards are disappearing quickly.

  • MacOSRumors Has Different Story (Score:4)

    by BeIshmael ( 34304 ) on Tuesday September 07, 1999 @08:46AM (#1696968)
    www.macosrumors.com has a slightly different version of events. Of course, they are only talking about Sawtooth not Shark, but it sounds like the recent controversy has changed Apple's attitude a little.
  • In this case, a third party upgrade company could simply write an openboot firmware monitor, and Bobs your uncle etc.

    Or is this being over simplistic?

    Christian

  • Mmm... Apple's quality reputation during the "Performa era" was, IIRC, not very good. They were using cheap parts, throwing them together cheaply, and had an alarmingly high return rate. (This isn't just my perception--it was the perception of someone I know of who worked at Apple designing Performas!) And we won't even get into the flaming Powerbooks....

    Granted, the Quadras never suffered from that reputation. But there's a reason every iMac went through a long burn-in process--as the "consumer Mac" it was going for the same space the Performa failed in, and it needed to have close to 100% reliability. And it has.

    For what it's worth, the Macintosh IIsi systems we had when I worked at Kinko's were close to problem free, but so were the IBM PS/2s that arrived while I was working there (when I started Kinko's was a Mac-only chain). It comes down to build quality, and that's not an Apple exclusive.

    Hmm. IIsi and PS/2. I feel old now.

  • Hmm... (Score:1)

    by Bwah ( 3970 )
    Seems to me that moving the boot ROM onto the proc card could actually make it easier to add a 3rd party proc upgrade. Granted, you would have to write your own boot ROM, but from my experience (and I admit I know NOTHING of apple/PPC boot ROMS)that shouldn't be too painful.

    Interesting move by apple in anycase.

    /dev
  • It is an enormous market. We're talking everything from your little kids' preschool (used by the administration, teachers, staff mostly) all the way up to colleges and universities (used by everybody). And every single step in between. And the Macintosh dominates there.

    It's the primary reason Apple's still alive :)


    "I don't believe that there is one, single, perfect spiritual way and, in realizing that, obviously you become a lot more open."
  • Not just apple. They share that patent with Sony, TI, and others.
  • Apple can't seem to make up it's mind. First it comes out with the Apple IIe, make a fortune, then blunders that all up and gets stuffed into a niche market (education). Then they get their act together, come out with the iMac, and refocus their corporate efforts. Sales soar. They open source (kinda) Darwin, and release OS X - a modern, fast, unix-based OS. For awhile, everything's going good. Then they start in on this hardware thing. They make firewire proprietary, which effectively kills it. They modify their new CPUs to not be backwards (and possibly forward) compatible with even their own products.

    Did I miss something? It seems to me like Apple open sourced, inserted their foot in their mouth, and then shot themselves in the foot.

    --

  • Well, I suppose this could be bad news; on the other hand it's possible that Apple have given up on making money on operating systems and are concentrating on the hardware. Of course, this would only happen if they were open sourcing MacOS to compete with LinuxPPC. Probable? Probably not. Possible? Possibly.
  • read today's MacOS Rumors [mosr.com].

    it seems the debate about being able to upgrade or not is a tricky one. of course, if apple has gone out of its way to disable upgraes, the third parties will have to go to all new heights to work around apple. they've figured out how to put a g3 in a 6100 (pizzabox with a soldered 601) and the terminally non-upgradeable performas, so i think a little hardware trickery isn't going to deter them.

  • Patience Young Jedi (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Don't go flip flopping on your reasons for purchases based on rumors and half truths from some news sites. Wait a few months and see what's really up. If Apple isn't doing it for decent reasons (as in 3rd parties having G4 upgrade cards out before Apple has G4s on the market), then there is reason to be concerned. Even then, with enough protest, they may (and probably would) listen. In this case it isn't completly outrageous for them not to listen to public demand (as compared to say, listening to people telling them to open source every piece of software they ever had).

    If they still don't listen, and upgrading CPUs is a very important thing to you, write them and buy a PC. Although they probably wouldn't listen to one letter, but if people start leaving their platform and informing them they are....
  • Actually, hardware quality gargles my nuts. It's sad, but it's true. I'm sitting next to about 50 thousand dollars worth of SCSI disks, etc, about 25 thousand dollars worth which don't work. From the 24 disks on RMA now, to the dead Adaptec cards, to the dead motherboard, it's all crap. The worst offender is intergrated motherboards, with onboard everything - I've personally seen 3 of them fry. Usually it's just an ethernet card or something, but hardware quality is pretty low, as compared to the grand ole' IBM 8086, which still runs. (No it doesn't run linux, and no - you don't wanna beowulf it, either!) But you can use it as a jackstand.
    http://www.bombcar.com It's where it is at.
  • ". . .and there are
    rumors that they will be releasing a patch in the near future to fix that. "

    and so, IT guys are supposed to make purchasing decisions based on rumors?

    Apple is clearly at fault here. They sit back and watch the rumors press gather the pitchforks and torches, and don't issue a press release or tech article, or tip off ADC members or anything. I don't think that they can say anything that would make this situation worse than the rumors, unless Apple IS planning on cutting off upgradability. At this point it would simply be damage control. Much desperately needed damage control. People are pissed.

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
  • If everything on AppleInsider were true Disney would have bought Apple 10 times.

    I saw a story on the Weekly World News that an alien tried to mate with a Harley, you should probably. And as far as rumors go I'd say AppleInsider is on par in terms of accuracy as the Weekly World News. (Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, heh)
  • "the decision to put it there in
    the first place was very controversial and was mainly intended to insure that 3rd-party processor
    upgrade makers didn't beat them to the market with a G4"

    That's simply inexcusable - if true. Unfortunately, it looks very bad for Apple, because it was the same reason Apple killed off the cloners. They were making kick ass machines that were eating Apple's lunch, big time.

    The end result of this mind-set?
    WE - (the consumer) end up with slower machines than we otherwise would have been able to get.



    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."

  • Re:While we're quoting the rumor mills... (Score:3)

    by jafac ( 1449 ) on Tuesday September 07, 1999 @10:04AM (#1696987) Homepage
    Oh, and as far as MacOSRumors vs. AppleInsider, AppleInsider has long been known to spout garbage, and you can tell it's garbage when it damages Apple's image. They do it to make it look like they're scooping the other rumors sites. IIRC, they got horrendously burned on the Apple Media Player (AMP) story, which turned out to be an Apple Corporate ruse to root out leaks. AppleInsider ends up with more ad revenue that way, but they have the reputation among Mac rumors site watchers of being somewhat irresponsible with their reporting.

    I hit both sites regularly, but I trust MacOSRumors more, and I think true insider sources trust them more too.

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
  • While I generally dont like saying bad things about websites, macosrumors will often make up complete crap. For instance the Sawtooth article from a bit back, notice there are no pictures?
    No real benchmarks? Vague assertions?

    quote:
    >"We have not yet been able to gather exact >MacBench numbers because of benchmark performance
    > differences between various seeded Sawtooths, >but it didn't take much of these sorts of >experiences with
    > the beautiful machine to realize what a speed >demon it is shaping up to be. "

    Yes, thats because you dont have one!

    From todays page:
    >In a related note, we were surprised to hear from >several third party developers that not only
    > had they succesfully used prototype >multiple-G4 upgrade boards on Beige and Blue G3s.

    Uhhh yeah, apple is just handing those SMP g4 prototype upgrades out left and right. And they all leak info to you of course.

    If you want real mac news sites try macintouch.com
    or macnn.com or maccentral.com.

    It just upsets me to see people actually believing some of the crud that appears on that site.

    -N
  • that's why there's a moderation system - so you can sort thru that sort of thing.

    Face it, so long as people are free to express their opinion, you're going to see far far more than your share of trolls, idiots, and Persons For Whom I'd Make An Exception To The First US Constitution Amendment.

    That's what moderation (them little score thingys) is supposed to fix. But letting anyone moderate doesn't exactly work, I think.... I note one moderator gave you a point - another moderator might just dink you a point for being offtopic.

    Even tho I haven't a clue as to how it works, this nifty-sounding "meta-moderation" thing might take care of that.

    sorry for the long offtopic post :)


    "I don't believe that there is one, single, perfect spiritual way and, in realizing that, obviously you become a lot more open."
  • Sorry - it's Raspberry-Grape-Blueberry ;)
  • As an Apple customer, this seems more to me as a big misunderstanding of what is a sound business decision.

    The didn't want G4 upgrade companies getting the jump on them. Now, they're fixing it.

    Apple has made decisions like this before - the difference NOW is that they actually listen when there's an uproar. There was a similar problem with the pricing for AppleShare IP's 6.2 upgrade - it was way too expensive. People yelled, apple listened - it is now a free download for 6.1 users.

    Apple ain't perfect - licencing for OpenStep on windows is still in the air, WebObjects' pricing is very skewed to the high-end, they killed the Newton, etc. But, I do think that lately they have displayed more pluses than minuses.
  • that's not a decent reason. Customers have every right to expect that they can rely on fair competition from third parties to allow them to get the fastest machine possible. Apple shoved a bicycle pump into the accellerator-makers' spokes.

    "The number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months."
  • I've been waiting since 1996 or so. I remember telling a boss that with the new CHRP/PREP architecture that would be available in "just a few more months", we could fill our student labs with PPC hardware and supply the users with MacOS, Windows NT, even Solaris on a few machines for certain departments. It'd be so great to have a single, common hardware platform to maintain. Blah blah blah.

    Glad he wasn't paying attention.

    There is a clear reason to buy a G4: To run Photoshop real fast. For a lot of Apple's customers, this is the difference between an eight hour workday and one of 10+ hours. I can appreciate that, and can totally understand their willingness to pay a premium for that ability.

    Hopefully the new IBM motherboard spec will result in commodity PPC hardware for the tinkerers and home-built crowds who also happen to love Linux, but please don't bet the farm on it right now. I think you might be in danger of retreading my three-year old path. Let's just wait and see if anyone comes up with a compelling story there.

    jm
  • This used to be true, but it isn't true anymore. All of the so-called "New World ROM" machines (iMac, blue G3, possibly the latest powerbooks, iBook) have only a standard OpenFirmware boot loader actually in the ROM itself. The MacOS "ROM" is actually a big file on the hard drive that is loaded into memory at boot time.
  • Apple may piss you off because you don't give a flying smurf about sound quality and they don't give you the option to get a cheapo sound card, but guess what? To be extremely blunt, Apple doesn't give a flying smurf about whether you care. You are not their target market. Once all of those people out there who feel this way realize that, I think you'll be a lot happier. Apple doesn't cater to geeks who want to build their own PCs. Apple caters to people who want a tool, something to work with, not work on. Lots of people are willing to pay a premium for a computer that simply works, and if it does break, can generally be fixed fairly easily. You are not one of them. I know this. You know this. Apple knows this. Stop whining about it. If you're happy with your PC, great! If you're not, then buy a Mac, but don't whine that its specific set of features costs more.
  • why would I need to do that? They still make AT motherboards, for whatever chip I want.
    you should at least make an *effort* to be informed, I mean, really.

    Anyway, what difrence does it make *how* you upgrade your system, upgradeability is upgradeablity, no matter how you cut it. If I wanted, I could take an IBM PC XT and upgrade it to a k6-3. I would only need a new motherboard ($50) and a power supply ($10)
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • Well, it depends on how you want to do it. if you go with an AMD 6th generation CPU, it *would* fit in the socket, you would probably want to get a new motherboard though (so you can run it faster and, ahem, at the right voltage)
    You would still be able to use the same ram/case.

    It *is* posible to get AT Slot one and socket 370 boards, most of the most popular are ATX, though. I personaly hate ATX "software power control" though, ug...
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • As an owner of a 604 mac (PPC 8600) I know that I can upgrade to a G3 and I've read ads for ZIF socket daughter cards that guarantee upgradeability to G4 (XLR8, I believe). Since G3 is going to be the minimum for Mac OS X, I'm going to need to upgrade relatively soon.

    Ain't Unix grand

    TML
  • So when they ditched their proprietary bus (nubus) and their marginalized I/O (ADB and the RS-422)and start using standards based hardware (PCI, USB) all you can do is whine?

    Oh come on. You might as well complain about Compaq, IBM, Dell, and any other company that doesn't take an anonymous cloner attitude and just compete solely on price. People differentiate with all sorts of design issues and they try to lock you into their brand. So are you going to feel different buying Compaq proprietary than Apple proprietary?

    TML

  • How sad,

    I hope that you either own your own business or do not work for a company with a fiduciary duty to its stockholders. If Apple has the best solutions, it should be what you recommend/buy. If you don't out of personal pique, all you are doing is putting yourself out of business.

    Oh well, good luck!

    TML
  • What makes you think I'm uninformed?

    Last I checked, AT motherboards cost more than ATX motherboards, and still used newer memories.

    I am aware you can upgrade a Pentium up through the AMD line, up to near Celeron performance levels. So my old Pentium can go from a P133 to a AMD K-63? No, the motherboard isn't that up to date, and bios releases don't allow it to use the k-63. So I need a new motherboard.

    I haven't been seeing $50 AT motherboards. And don't forget the cost of memory, as your IBM PC XT more than likely does not have a significant or useful amount of memory. How you upgrade is important; I thought we were talking about reviving 3, 4, 6 year old PCs to modern performance levels in a similar way one would upgrade a 7100 Performa to a 400MHz G3 or G4. Which is just bios and daughtercard on the Mac, but memory, motherboard, CPU, possibly power supply, possibly case, and possibly peripherals like mouse and keyboard on the PC side.

    It would be very nice to be able to pop in a daughtercard into my P133 motherboard's PCI slot and use a Celeron or something.

    -AS
  • Giving a CPU more voltage may improve it's stablity when overclocked. lowering it may let you get higher speeds. So, motherboard manufactures built the ability to change voltages into the BIOS to sell to hard-core overclockers
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • http ://rook.pricewatch.com/search/link.idq?ne=14821&l= 14775&qc=@ctd+2+AND+@contents+SUPER7*&ca td=2&cn=Motherboards&cr=Motherboards+Super7&n=14&C iCodePage=Windows-1252&a=2 [pricewatch.com]

    The third one down is an AT $50 (well closer to $60), see? I've never seen a socket 7 motherboard that *didn't* support SIMM memory.
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • Clarification:

    Intel makes the Pentium processor. Apple does not make the G4 processor.
  • Apparently, at least two other moderators agree with you. Gotta love moderator flamewars.

  • Quoted directly from MacOS Rumors: [mosr.com]

    Working closely with our friends at Appleinsider, MOSR has confirmed two very positive developments in the ongoing effort to discern Apple's willingness to keep its professional computers upgradable:

    Very importantly, it has been confirmed by reliable Apple sources that the company is planning to include fix for the G4 upgrade block installed with the latest Blue G3 Firmware. Apparently, the decision to develop the block code was extremely controversial within Apple, and even its proponents generally stated that their intentions were only to provide insurance that Apple was not "surprise attacked" by third parties shipping G4 upgrades before Apple was able to ship their own G4 machine.

    Secondly, MOSR has confirmed that the recent confusion over whether the new Sawtooth-based G4s were processor-upgradable was caused by outdated diagrams of the board. Once more recent versions were uncovered, it was clear that the Boot ROM continues to reside on the main board, and there are no obvious barriers in hardware nor software for the new G4s to be upgraded for years to come.

    In a related note, we were surprised to hear from several third party developers that not only had they succesfully used prototype multiple-G4 upgrade boards on Beige and Blue G3s...at least one has also completed a proof-of-concept test for a multi-G4 card that would support the use of the 128-bit, enhanced-performance MaxBus as a "backplane" bus for the processors and cache chips to use for incredibly efficient inter-processor communication -- but would still be compatible with all upgradable PowerPC Macs and their 64-bit "60x" bus protocol. MaxBus, which many insiders had previously not expected to be applied to the Mac until mid to late 2000, could offer dramatic benefits even in this only partial implementation.

    Admittedly Apple has that "Oh Shit!" look of kindergartner caught with both hands in the cookie jar, but it does represent a positive thing for any computer company: Listening to your pissed off end users.


  • True, but the new ROM-in-RAM only replaces about 1/2-3/4 of the old Apple ROM (judging by its size). Even in new Macs, the firmware does a lot more than the firmware in most PCs.

    So the comment that it would be much more difficult to reverse-engineer than the ROM on a PC still holds.

  • AppleInsider... (Score:3)

    by Millennium ( 2451 ) on Tuesday September 07, 1999 @01:15PM (#1697025)
    About the only time you can count on anything from AppleInsider anymore is when it has screenshots (the one thing it does better than MOSR).

    It's sad. Back in the days when it was MacNN Reality, it was quite good. Now, I rarely trust what it says without a picture.

  • Learn a lesson from DEC (Score:4)

    by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Tuesday September 07, 1999 @11:19AM (#1697030) Homepage Journal
    Digital Equipment Corporation used to handicap its own products in order to protect other products it also sold - for example, any new, lower-cost system in the VAX line was deliberately made to be lower in performance than the 780, even though the technology was improving rapidly. They also introduced gratuitous incompatibility - remember the DEC PC floppy drives that were incompatible with the IBM PC floppy format?

    What happened? Sun Microsystems wasn't interested in protecting DEC's products and took over their market. DEC should have known better, they'd pulled a similar trick on IBM years before.

    Here's Apple boosting PC sales by alienating its own customers. Mac customers have seen how easy it is to get a new motherboard and CPU for your PC. Their faith has made Apple a success again, and this is how they are paid back? If I were an Apple customer, I'd be losing faith about now.

    Thanks

    Bruce Perens

  • Intel makes the Pentium processor. Apple does not make the G4 processor.

    Apple is the A in AIM. Apple may not own the fabs but they are involved in the chip design.

  • Actually, Apple wouldn't let the cloners build their own motherboards in the first phase of cloning; Apple mandated the fact that they had to license Apple motherboards.


    It was when the second phase was to begin, and the companies like Motorola and IBM were going to be making their own motherboards, using the CHRP standard, that Apple ended cloning.

  • I personally think Apple is doing this because they are strongly focusing on building their customer-base back up.

    Apple doesn't make the G4 - Motorola does. Apple would be getting royally screwed financially if they allowed upgrades from the G3 to G4 - they wouldn't be making any money whatsoever, only motorola.

    Same reason why all PC's are built proprietary (compaq, packard bell, acer, ibm) - they are only upgradable to a certain point, then after that they expect you to buy a new one. The thing is, people fall for it... And the companies profit big.

  • Where is the outrage? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I am amazed.

    Apple made NO promise of g3->g4 upgradability, yet the sheep are bleating about the abuse.


    Apple makes a promise to ship Rhapsody on *ANY* Mac sold by Apple in 1997, and x86 op-code machines.

    Yet, on a *REAL PROMISE* that is broken, no one is saying boo. Real abuse of consumers....and not a word.

  • uh, faster chips *need* less voltage. my old p75 took 3 volts. some of the orgionals need 5, you can't really fault intell for that... Faster chips, need lower voltages. chirst. any motherboard with shit will let you chage the voltage. hell Abit boards let you chage the voltage in *software*
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • but you can get a cheap adaptor for slot1/socket 370.

    there is no way to get around different physical specs for chips and such, would really want a CPU that had to fit in the 16-pin 8088 sockets?.

    besides, motherboards don't really cost that much money, like $90 for a good Abit board
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • So I looked at all the Super7 motherboards at the site. All used DIMMs, no SIMMs. Oh, and the MB5077 doesn't exist(at least not on AltonPC site). The closest is the M577, an AT formfactor with 3 DIMM slots.

    We are talking about the same thing, right?

    My original point was that a PowerPC Performa 7100 could upgrade to a G4.

    To be fair, that meant upgrading a PC from a Pentium to an AMD K6-3 for a reasonable cost.

    On the Mac side you just pop in a daughtercard and off you go(you probably need to patch the BIOS and use a OS that supports the processor as well, but the same holds true for the PC)

    On the PC side, if I were to upgrade my Pentium, not only do I need to use a something like the AltonPC M577(let's assume it's $60), I need to grab the processor, an AMD K6-3 for about $100, and finally ram. Let's say I grab 64MB. Best of my knowledge then, that's $80, because prices are going up right now.

    So I just spent $240... assuming I'm not also forced to replace an ethernet card, video card, sound card, or SCSI card as well.

    For a Mac person, a Performa 5400 to a G3 costs $299 (From a PowerPC 603e@160MHz to a PowerPC G3@300MHz)

    So you can't be arguing it's easier to upgrade a PC than a Mac, though I do cede that it costs $59 dollars less on the PC(assuming that the M577 is indeed $60, and not closer to $100, as I suspect)

    I never said one couldn't upgrade a PC; just that it was much easier and hassle free on a Mac.

    -AS
  • Most mac people use macs because they think Windows is too hard to get set up. They're proud not to know what an IRQ is. You think they give a shit if they can look at a bunch of gobbly gook (C code) that they don't understand? "Duh.. what's the () thingie for?"

    -Warren
  • Perhaps I've missed something, but while "Firewire" is a proprietary Apple item - a trademarked name - the technology isn't proprietary at all. It's all over the place. Moreover, the licensing fees ($0.5 a box, not a port) get split up between a bunch of different companies. While Apple might have wanted $2 a port at one time for itself, it backed away from that stance pretty damn quickly when smacked over the head by Sony and others. Anyway, you're dead on about the Trojan G3 ROM...if Apple doesn't release an fix by the time OS 9 shows up, I'm definitely going to have to rethink my technolust for that G4. For a few months at least. That might be as long as I can hold out...
  • You're thinking of the wrong "ROM". Linux or BeOS could run fine without the "ROM file" that is loaded into RAM when the computer starts up. (This code used to be in ROM, up until the iMac, hence the confusion.)

    However, a Mac without anything in firmware (which is what this story refers to,) would be very much dead.
  • Well actually you couldn't trap the hardware bootstrap so sheepshaver can't even use the code in the boot ROM to boot MacOS. It's loader is in fact the only thing really emulated. From the sheepshaver page [sheepshaver.com]:

    On which systems does it run?

    SheepShaver should run on any BeOS/Linux-ready PowerPC system (including BeBoxen and PowerPC Amigas). It does not run on Intel machines because MacOS and PowerPC Mac applications run natively under SheepShaver (there's no slow CPU emulation involved, it's comparable to the "Blue Box" of MacOS X). SheepShaver/BeOS requires BeOS/PPC R4. SheepShaver/Linux will require at least glibc 2.0, GTK 1.2, and a 2.2.x kernel.
  • You'll still need a boot ROM. Apple used to put quite a bit of the Mac OS in ROM (back when the OS was very small), and until the iMac there was still some OS code in there. Starting with the iMac, all OS dependent code began getting moved off the ROM, but since the OS still wants it, it was moved to a file on the HD and loaded into RAM from there.

    The iBook will be the first machine to be released based on Apple's universal logicboard architecture (the G4 is based on it as well, but not the low-end model, and remember the high-end models aren't shipping for a couple months), which moves all OS code out of ROM. But you still need a boot ROM. The boot ROM in the G4/iMac II/iBook essentially serves the same function as the BIOS in a PC, except that Open Firmware is something nice that the PC doesn't have. (OF is not proprietary BTW, I believe Sun uses it as well.)

    --
  • To some extent, but consider: would you buy an upgrade to a chip which had never even once been used in any computer being produced at the time? I wouldn't have done that, and I doubt most other people would have done it. Yeah, upgrade companies want to go up to faster chips, but you'll notice that even before the ROM block issue came up, they had G4 upgrades ready but didn't sell them (as evidenced by the fact that not only were they announcing G4 upgrades the same day as the G4 machines, but the fact that they were able to find the ROM block on the day the trojan^H^H^H^H^H^Hsystem update was released even though the block hadn't been removed).

    The upgrade companies had been holding back on purpose; the ROM block changed nothing (which renders it worthless from a business perspective, but Apple decided to be paranoid).

    I'm not defending Apple at all; that was a dirty trick that they pulled. But consider everything before accusing people.
  • (as evidenced by the fact that not only were they announcing G4 upgrades the same day as the G4 machines, but the fact that they were able to find the ROM block on the day the trojan^H^H^H^H^H^Hsystem update was released even though the block hadn't been removed).

    That should read as follows:

    (as evidenced by the fact that not only were they announcing G4 upgrades the same day as the G4 machines even though the block hadn't been removed, and by the fact that they were able to find the ROM block on the day the trojan^H^H^H^H^H^Hsystem update was released).

    I should have used the Preview button, I guess. Actually, Rob, you should consider forcing a preview before any message is posted. It would cut down on errors and also give flamers one last chance to cool off before posting a flame.
  • Also, one of the main selling lines in the past for Macs have been that they last 25% longer than wintel machines because of upgradeability. Why would they change this? well, I'm using the same PC that I was in 1995, can you say that about your Mac? (it's a little out of date now, but for only about $120, I could give it some real speed). The fact is, all you have to do is swap that motherboard. *can* you even buy strait Mac motherboards?

    btw, PC motherboards cos about $50 for AMD k6/origional pentium board, and and $90 for a slot one. cheaper then one or two new video games...

    More apple BS, I see *sigh* that really irritates me :(
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
  • These are just rumors. If we took rumor for fact we'd be in a RIGHT bloody mess. Chill out...sheesh. I'm not a big Mac fan either, but some of you out there seem to have no lives and just JUMP on this crap. It's like you're waiting for it. Grow up. Maybe then Slashdot won't be the laughing stock of the geek world like it's beginning to become. I'm talking the REAL geek world, not the made up crap this place is. Solution? TAKE AWAY THIS SILLY FEEDBACK FORUM FOR EVERY STORY HERE. If Slashdot wants to be a place where kewl stuff is gleened from the rest of the net for geeks thats one thing. But this place has gone SO far downhill. All that's here now is a story of maybe 4 to 5 lines, then HUNDREDS of responses just saying "you suck, that sucks, no you suck and that other things sucks". This happens on EVERY story. What is the purpose of feedback on a story here? Do we really gleen any more info? No, it's just people pissing other people off. It's just a "FUD spreading/Linux should be everywhere and everything else sucks and if you don't use Linux then you suck too/Bash everything else/bash every movie/bash every person no matter what except of course for Linus" kind of place now. I think it's time we move on to some other site until they "fix" this problem.

  • News second-guessing.... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think the flipflop nature of this news item, right there on the home page for all to see, is troubling.

    At this point, there are no hard and fast answers to this story. Moreoever, Apple's rumor world has always been a dark and murky place with no real certainties until Apple announces. I know- I've been there and worked with several Mac rumors sites.

    I find it troubling that some of the people who post news articles on /. seem to have a prejudice against Apple- specifically one who seems to pick up on an issue a few days late and highlights it as an "Apple BAD" issue. I think what happened with this story (synopsis: Apple stops G3->G4 upgrades.../Apple will reverse the patch now that the G4 machines are out/NO IT WON'T) is shoddy journalism.. especially "Several people tell me this is not true... more later"

    Who are your sources? And when exactly is later? You've already done the damage by spreading possible falsehoods about the company. Let's ask for some accountability here, please. If Apple is actually trying to hinder the upgradeability of its machines for good, yes, I'm pissed off too. But I don't know that for sure, and neither do you.

    Slashdot shouldn't post unsubstantiated rumor unless it is clearly marked as such, which it was not tonight.
  • What do you think those 400MHz, non-AGP ones are? Those are the Yikes models AppleInsider talked about.

    The Sawtooth ones aren't going to ship until October or later. I think Appleinsider was pretty close.
  • There's probably be a bit more to it than keeping processor upgrade makers from beating Apple to the punch. It's worth keeping in mind that at the present time there isn't a release OS for the PowerPC that is AltiVec aware. And if applications are AltiVec aware and the OS isn't, we have a bit of a problem on context switches. This may partly have been a ploy on Apple's part to keep the world simpler for application writers, and a little less freaking weird for users.

    But the conspiracy theories are of course more interesting. Of course, time will tell.
  • Ok, motherboards last *a lot* longer then 6 months. Most boards can last for a few years, and still hold top of the line Chips. In fact most of the most popular boards For sale *today* were designed, and on sale over a year ago (when the 440bx chipset was released).

    A friend of mine built a computer for his brother last fall (one year ago), I built a computer for a friend this fall, and we used the *exact* same Motherboard. the Abit BH6. Another friend who uses the same board (one of the most popular) upgraded his celeron 266 to a pIII 500. I also upgraded my PC from a Pentium 75 to a p200 without changing the motherboard (actually it wasn't the same board that I got with my computer, I got the board about 6 months before because it had a 1meg catch).

    CPU's may not last that long, but PC boards do.

    by the way, the selling price for an AT super7 board is $55, making the motherboard one of the *cheapest* components in the system. slot one's usually go for about $90 online (the bh6, anyway)

    oh and one more thing, the BH6 is a "scaled down" version of the BX6, witch is even older.

    could you at least *try* to get your facts strait before posting? Please? I am so sick of my platform of choice being bashed by uninformed Mac zelots
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"

  • Apple will do the right thing (Score:4)

    by Drizzit ( 18580 ) on Tuesday September 07, 1999 @02:20PM (#1697059)
    I think Apple will do the right thing, under Steve Jobs they have been one of the few companies willing to change things, because of user input. and I think that their track record on reversing stupid decisions supports my hope.
    1. iMac originally supposed to have a 33.6 modem, changed to 56K when users complained
    2. Opened source several key technologies
    3. When their Open Source license was deemed too restrictive they changed it
    4. They tried to charge $1 a port for Firewire, but then formed a patent pool with Intel, Sony, Compaq, Philps and others, and changed the fee to $.25 per system, unlimited ports.
    5. Have made an effort too hold and in fact reduce the price on every system, introduced under Steve jobs, no they are still not as cheap as X86 systems, and probably will not be unless they can start to claim 20%+ market share, because the economies of scale are not there for them.

    (please do not bring up promises made pre Steve Jobs aka Scully and the other dumb asses) and yes I know that they have screwed people around on OS X for Intel and free/low cost yellow box licensing, but the conspiracy side of me thinks that more of the blame lies with the Microsoft Office for the Mac deal. 150 Million bucks does not HELP save a multibillon dollar company, but having M$ Office does. Also Steve's cutting of the clones, Newton and things like Open Doc I believe was necessary. Apple it seems was like an old house the foundation was still good, but the upper floors were rotten. So just like a renovator Steve had to to tear it down to the foundation which is, easy to use multimedia computers, not cool but expensive handhelds. True sometimes good wood gets torn down too, but this is the price you pay for a renovation. And since I am rambling, the clones will probably return, once OS X is out and the Mac only needs a open standard Open Firmware to boot, the first time around Apple had to do so much design work on the boards, for the clone makers and it was not getting enough money to support the R & D for and entire industry. Just look a the motherboard for a StarMax 3000, its got Apple Computer silk screened on it not Motorola.

  • While we're quoting the rumor mills... (Score:5)

    by Valdrax ( 32670 ) on Tuesday September 07, 1999 @08:51AM (#1697063)
    Check out Mac OS Rumors [macosrumors.com]. The article for today (9/7) mentions that they are working on the firmware patch to the G3's mentioned on AppleInsider, but also that the decision to put it there in the first place was very controversial and was mainly intended to insure that 3rd-party processor upgrade makers didn't beat them to the market with a G4. Still not very nice, but not as ogre-like as forever baring G3 owners from upgrading. Plus the G4s themselves are easily processor upgradable for future SMP cards. It may not be as bad as AppleInsider makes it out to be. Plus, this is just an early prototype. The earlier Sawtooth prototypes also had the boot ROM on the processor daughtercard rather than the motherboard as it is currently.
  • I know for a fact myself that this is FALSE... ...but if you read the www.MacOSRumors.com article, well you see this for yourself. Outdated information. Happnes alot. Stop bbelieving something that (I, atleast) consider rather ridiculous. Btw... Shark refers to several of the next motherboards to be released, including Sawtooth, the one that will be shipping around October. (Shark names, ha ha, get it?) Other ones will apparently have Shark names too. Geez guys stop spewing false, bad Apple PR. Same problem with the blue g3-g4 issue. Apple just didn't want some 3rd party company spoiling their party by releasing a g4 first. There will be an update soon(TM) Apparently this caused much distress in the insides of Apple, but it was necessary, and will be changed back to the good side of the force (allowing upgrades). Hey ever seen an Pentium chip come out before Intel said so? Nope. Same general idea. -Curt
  • On the other hand, you will be able to switch out your Mac BootROM so if you wanted to run an O/S such as Linux or Be, you could free yourself completely of the MacOS. I think that most of the other hardware under the hood is understood well enough for some third-party to engineer a BootROM independent from Apple's. You wouldn't be able to run MacOS or OS/X but there's always sheepshaver [sheepshaver.com]!

    ~GoRK

  • Its Apple... you should know this by now (Score:4)

    by D_Nice ( 18143 ) on Tuesday September 07, 1999 @08:58AM (#1697068) Homepage
    I don't see all the shock that is being expressed over the lastest move by Apple. Apple does like other people making money from their product, without first taking a really nice cut of it. They have done this from the begining and will continue to do this until the end. Whenever that may be. (Hopefully not too soon) Not letting you you upgrade your system to the latest and the great equipment out on the market has always been around in computers, Apple just likes to take it one step further. They always had.
    When Intel decides that it would be fun to change the voltage on the board for the Pentium III, so you can't bring your 350 PII to a new level of Quaking, there was really no uproar. Why should Apple's move be that much different.

    Basically, if computers companies don't create a cut-off point, how are they going to get everyone to buy they newest products every year or so. I'm not saying that it is fair, but I guess that I have become too desensitized towards corperate computer practices.

  • Before you explode realize... (Score:3)

    by Skankmofo ( 12963 ) on Tuesday September 07, 1999 @08:59AM (#1697069) Homepage
    Everyone chill your nuts, I can picture apple loyalists going on murderous rampages, slaughtering helpless sheep and launching their innards at Apple HQ.

    THIS IS A RUMOR! There is nothing announced yet, and no one outside of apple and its tight ring of beta testers has seen this machine yet. Also, one of the main selling lines in the past for Macs have been that they last 25% longer than wintel machines because of upgradeability. Why would they change this?

    Most importantly people, look at the competing Mac rumors site Macosrumors.com, they claim that the boot rom is not on the daughtercard but on the mainboard as it should be, and it is all confused. Realize that these sites sensationalize and sometimes probably make up the rumors they post. They have seen all the commotion over the boot ROM patch and this site has found a way to stir it up even more and get hundreds of thousands of more hits by getting posted here on Slashdot.

    To Rob - have we had enough Apple stories for one day?? I mean I love Apple but this is starting to become a little overkill. Also this story was a little out of line, it is a malicious rumor that is probably not true.

  • Apple has some patent on Firewire, and is requiring a per port fee for all devices.
  • Hello ignorant PC buyers!!! When was the last time you've upgraded your Intel-based PC WITHOUT buying a new motherboard? Doesn't happen, never has since the early of the Pentium (P60-P233). Ever since then a mainboard lasts 6 months, coincidently as long as the time for the next generation CPU to come along.

    Oh wait a second, yeah you can upgrade a 400 P3 to a 450 PC.... I forgot about that, sorry.


    "The voices in my head say crazy things"
  • Geez. All this rumor mongering and negativity!

    I've heard rumors on both sides; Apple disables G4 to prevent future upgradeability *or* to prevent 3rd party from introducing G4 to early.

    We won't ever know which one is true if Apple has indeed decided to fix the B&W G3s in the near future.

    Likewise this boot rom thing.

    I had heard news/rumors that Apple has been designing their OS and PCs to not need the bootrom, with the advent of MacOS X. Is this true, can anyone confirm, acknowlege, or speculate? Anyhow, by moving the bootrom off the motherboard it means that future motherboards would not need to be changed if bootroms are unnecessary, reduced, or modified. Instead all Apple has to do is produce a new daughtercard at significantly less cost.

    Yes, this may *become* an issue if they refuse to license out the bootrom to 3rd party upgrade manufacturers. It may also become a *boon* if, for example, someone wanted to convert G4s to Be boxes(and wrote/designed their own bootroms for BeOS), or Linux, or what have you.

    Did I mess something up? It's possible. Please correct!

    -AS
  • Even if this were true, it wouldn't mean the end of 3rd party hardware. Apple likes to control their hardware - and why not? It allows them to take shortcuts in their OS. Apple would (and does, I've had several friends intern/work for Apple) call this level of control "assuring a high-quality customer experience".

    When Apple couldn't keep up with demand and was strapped for cash, it licensed its hardware technology out and Mac clones started to appear. The most successful of these companies was Power Computing. When Apple had some money again and decided that they couldn't get MacOS to run "just so" on the souped-up Power Computing hardware, well, this press release [apple.com] speaks for itself.

    Bottom line - Apple will let people make compatible hardware when/if they have to. They never want to.

  • This could be a very good thing. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Imaging if you will. It has been rumored that Apple may one day allow clones to be made, again. By moving the ROM to the processor card, Apple rids the mainboard of the proprietary Apple parts. It is a standard "open" PwerPC motherboard design. LinuxPPC and Be would be much more able to support the hardware. Clones could produce nonMacOS systems easily. Apple would sale more Power Macintosh machines. And there would be an increase the PPC market share. Mr. Jobs was smart enough to bring Apple back from it's death bed. Do you really think that he would let it go back?

  • Re:Hmm... (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Upgrade manufacturers would need a license to clone the ROM. (Can't just stick a new cPu into board and screw with firmware--whole new rom chip with valid Apple firmware required!)

    So this is either the return of clones (which Apple doesn't seem to have alerted any upgraders, or former cloners about) or the end of upgrades. Which is it?

    Let's see. Bogus rom "update" to block G3 -->G4 conversion...Rom installer doesn't willlingly go backwards (can't take a g3 v1.1 rom back to v1.o using Apple's ROM utility)...New ROm checks in OS-9 beta build requiring the new bogus blocked firmware...Adobe releasing Altivec plugins for Photoshop only through Apple--Apple only bundling these plugins with new G4's...now Shark has boot rom where upgraders can't get at it.

    See a pattern here?

  • Enough of this, eh? Here is an excerpt from the MacOSRumors [macosrumors.com] information posted today.

    "Very importantly, it has been confirmed by reliable Apple sources that the company is planning to include fix for the G4 upgrade block installed with the latest Blue G3 Firmware. Apparently, the decision to develop the block code was extremely controversial within Apple, and even its proponents generally stated that their intentions were only to provide insurance that Apple was not"surprise attacked" by third parties shipping G4 upgrades before Apple was able to ship their own G4 machine.

    Secondly, MOSR has confirmed that the recent confusion over whether the new Sawtooth-based G4s were processor-upgradable was caused by outdated diagrams of the board. Once more recent
    versions were uncovered, it was clear that the Boot ROM continues to reside on the main board, and there are no obvious barriers in hardware nor software for the new G4s to be upgraded for years to come.

    In a related note, we were surprised to hear from several third party developers that not only had they succesfully used prototype multiple-G4 upgrade boards on Beige and Blue G3s...at least one has also completed a proof-of-concept test for a multi-G4 card that would support the use of the 128-bit, enhanced-performance MaxBus as a "backplane" bus for the processors and cache chips to use for incredibly efficient inter-processor communication -- but would still be compatible with all upgradable PowerPC Macs and their 64-bit "60x" bus protocol. MaxBus, which many insiders had previously not expected to be applied to the Mac until mid to late 2000, could offer dramatic benefits even in this only partial implementation."




    ________________________________________________ _____________
  • This is a rumor . There's another rumor going around that Apple's going to reverse the G4-block in the Blue G3's. They can't both be right (well, I suppose they could, but it would make no sense at all).

    Wouldn't matter anyway, seeing as how OSX (and therefore Darwin) requires no proprietary boot ROM. Nor, actually, does OS8.6 (the G4's and iBooks have no proprietary ROM in hardware, therefore MacOS wouldn't be able to boot at all if it still required one. Truth be told, MacOS has booted on CHRP machines since 8.1!) All the upgrade makers would have to do is trot on over to FirmWorks and get their OpenFirmware ROM's from there. No big deal.Linux already works with these OF modules, so it doesn't hurt them in the least. MacOS... well, what do you think OSX is for?
  • But I'll humor you =)

    So lets say I upgrade my PPro...

    I have to replace the motherboard. Mine has SCSI. That already places me into the $300 motherboard range. None are Celeron compatible, so minimally I need a slocket and PPGA Celeron, so I spend $400 or so already. Then I need to upgrade the ram, as I have the measly SIMM type, and no one supports it anymore. I have 96MB. Lets say I buy up, into 128MB. Last I checked, sdram prices have gone up. So now I'm spending almost $570 for an upgrade.

    All Apple users, if I am not mistaken, of the G3 series can upgrade to the G4, with a minimal amount of hassle. B&W G3s need a bootrom patch(or something like that), but that's it.

    Heck, I suspect all PowerPC users, 603, 604, 603e, etc, can upgrade to the G4... THough I can't be certain, not owning a PowerPC.


    -AS

  • Silly rabbit, didn't you know that according to Apple Corp. internal documents, RGB will heretofore stand for "Raspberry-GeminiGreen-BondiBlue"?

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • Oops, I misspoke.

    What I meant was not removal of the bootrom, per se, so much as removal of OS dependent stuff from the rom, leaving, essentially, just the BIOS stuff.

    Previously some part of the OS was stored in the bootrom, and from what I've heard Apple is migrating away from that model. That's what I've heard, at least.

    -AS

  • Lessee how fast we can spin... (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Shepherd ( 17338 ) on Tuesday September 07, 1999 @09:08AM (#1697109) Homepage
    Why is it a blunder to get into a niche market as education? Their blunder was to not capitalize on their strength(education) and grow outwards as students moved up through the school system, into college, and into the business world.

    And about firewire: as far as I can tell, they didn't make it proprietary, they just charged a $1 per port(it is now, I've heard, $0.25 per machine) fee for it's use. And it is far from dead, as Sony, a large, well entrenched, and savvy consumer products giant, has been putting firewire (called iLink) into every single product than can, from camcorders, VCRs, TVs, etc. Don't tell me that there is a smaller market for consumer electronics than PCs/iMacs! So firewire isn't dead and it isn't going to disappear, especially as lots of other consumer giants are using firewire for storage, consumer products, PC peripherals, etc.

    And about backwards compatibility: they didn't do anything to make their CPUs non-backwards compatible. They released a patch to make their B&W G3s not-forward compatible, and there are rumors that they will be releasing a patch in the near future to fix that.

    A lot of general hype, mis-information, and bad press is floating around.

    Even I may be guilty of spreading some, so please correct me if I am wrong! But be careful of spreading more rumors and buzz or hype.

    -AS

  • I don't know... (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Shepherd ( 17338 ) on Tuesday September 07, 1999 @09:14AM (#1697113) Homepage
    I'm not sure I believe that Apple has *ultimately* decided to disable G4 upgrades from B&W G3 machines. I hear rumors that they are going to fix it, especially after this uproar.

    I'm not sure how Apple took this one step further than anyone else... Intel released the PPro socket8, then(ostensibly to cut costs) went to the PII Socket1, then(again, to cut costs) went to the Celeron PPGA Socket370, and will in the future migrate the PIII to the flipchip Socket370.

    Now since there aren't any clones for any of these chips(barring Athlon's use of the socket1), I'd imagine Intel does the same thing to force purchases of new motherboards, memory, and CPUs all at once. So you're right in that this isn't a new tactic.

    What's amazing is that even with this problem, there still exists the ability/possibility of B&W G3 owners upgrading to G4s and beige G3s upgrading to G4s.

    Thats as if I had the chance/option to upgrade my PPro to a Celeron or PIII.

    So Apple still wins, I think.

    -AS

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