Slashdot Mirror
Apple to Accept Returns of Mac OS X on Some G3s
An anonymous reader writes "A class-action lawsuit was filed over Mac OS X not working correctly on some of the older G3's, and Apple has tentatively agreed to refund the purchase price of the OS ($129) to people who purchased it for use on those computers, and wish to return it." The agreement is not final. If you wish to continue using the OS on your computer, despite it not working fully, you can instead receive a $25 coupon. The deal will, apparently, apply to the iMacs through the fruit-colored models; the pre-chiclet iBooks; the PowerBook G3s; the first three Power Mac G3 models; and the all-in-one Power Mac G3.
I think the nicer term is "clam-shell"
-1 (Troll) is antihammer
No, IceBook is the term for the present-gen iBooks. Clamshell is the polite term for them, iToiletSeat is the impolite term for them.
Interesting that the Wallstreet Powerbook is also part of the return program. I have one, and has basically decided to stick with 9.1 and Linux on it instead of braving the waters of X.
However, my blue-and-white G3 is getting X as soon as Panther (OS X.3) comes out. People are having good success with New World Macs, even really old ones like the blue-and-white.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
It's because Apple said it would work on all G3's as mentioned in a higher thread. Had they not done so, plaintiffs would have had no case. So no precedent set, except that things won't be guaranteed to run on any older platform from now on.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Unfortunately, that's not a viable option. The Broze G3 PowerBook, for example, has DVD-playback hardware. Running in software only (as with VLC) gives extremely poor performance, and bogs down the machine.
Running under OS-9, the DVD playback is beautiful, and can happen in the background as one does real work at the same time
Again, it comes down to promises Apple made, and then didn't come through on.
From the article (i sugest you read it):
I probably should've stayed with OS 9 on my Wallstreet too, but I was one of those people who just had to see what OS X was like on it. I managed to have the slowest Wallstreet there is (233MHz with no L2 cache), so that turned out to not be the greatest idea. 10.0.* was nearly unusable for just about anything, but at least it ran without complaining. As of 10.1, if I didn't mind doing much outside of Terminal, it was almost tolerable, but I still ran stuff in Classic a lot of the time, just because it was noticeably faster that way. When I tried to upgrade it to 10.2, the installer trashed my 10.1 install instead of updating it, probably because I'd moved a bunch of things around to different locations, including putting the Applications folder on a different partition. The installer is (or at least used to be) very picky about some things and didn't fail gracefully.
Anyway, the moral of the story is that it's extremely slow, more so if you don't have at least 256-384 MB of RAM. iTunes uses over 60% CPU just to play an MP3 (although mpg123 and the sound daemon it uses only took a combined total of around 12%...), and doing two things at once really brings performance even farther down. But hey, at least it was as stable as it was slow and didn't act strange on the old hardware at all. I'm much, much happier with OS X on my current model iBook.
My former roommate has had good luck with it on his (G4-and-Radeon-upgraded) B&W G3, though, as of 10.2. It was perfectly usable before he upgraded it, but he didn't like 10.1 enough to stick with it then. It's probably worth trying out on yours, just to see how it goes, in my opinion at least.
-Nalgas D. Lemur
- iBook: P1 (aka ToiletSeat, 1999), unsure about P1.5 (ToiletSeat2, 2000).
- iMac: Bondi (aka RevA & RevB, 1998), LifeSavers (aka RevC & RevD, aka 5 Flavors, 1999).
- PowerBook G3: Hooper (aka original, 1997), MainStreet/WallStreet (aka G3 Series, 1998), Lombard (aka Bronze, 1999).
- PowerMac G3: Beige (aka Gossamer, 1997), All-in-One (aka Artemis, 1998),
Not covered:Read this: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106 470
Apple never said it would work on all G3s. Check the fine print and you'll see that firmware updates and SCSI card updates are required for some computers, but the PowerBook G3 (original with rainbow apple on the top) isn't supported at all.
Again, read the fine print for Quartz Extreme and you'd find that only GeForce and Radeon 7500+ cards are supported not the Rages.
Yes it would've been nice for the DVD Player to work on non-agp machines and that is probably why Apple made this submission rather than continuing this in court.
Yes, your friend is quite correct. Regarding those power supplies on the Powerbooks though - I think some of the problem has more to do with how they're handled by the users.
From what I've read and observed, the most common issue is the thin, somewhat fragile cable with the barrel plug on the end (that goes into the notebook itself) gets twisted and stretched/flexed until the wires inside break. When this happens, sometimes they short together, causing the power supply to burn out or in a worse-case scenario, possibly even catch fire.
If people were a little more careful with their AC adapters (and didn't insist on wrapping the cords around the power "brick" tightly, stressing the wires in the cables - they would probably get much better service out of their adapters.
Apple didn't exactly show much interest in helping reduce the problem though. (Last I heard, they added a 3 prong plug to the adapters instead of a non-grounded 2 prong plug. That might save their butt in a lawsuit over someone getting shocked on a shorted power adapter - but it's not nearly as good as using better, thicker wire that won't break as easily!)
This has nothing to do with your machine being old.
The 10.2.0 installer disk is the easiest way to trash any Mac, new or old. Check out Apple's support forums, there were people buying brand new Macs which came with 10.2 who reformatted their drives so they could re-partition it, and they couldn't install 10.2!! They were left with useless Macs with no operating system (except for OS 9, if they wanted that).
My own examples,
Apple never really responded to the outcries on their forums, people thought their logic boards were f'd up or something and many just decided to buy new Macs (and again, people with new Macs were having the problem!).
Eventually Apple released the 10.2.3 installer disk - I got one as part of the Developer Program. This thing is a God Send (or rather, a really good bug fix). It runs perfectly on every Mac with no complaints, especially the Beige G3!
The Beige G3 was originally a 233, it's been upgraded to a 400MHz/1MB backside cache from OWC (you can get that for about $150, makes your Mac very usable. Get a USB card too).
The Beige G3 running 10.2.6 is far more stable than when it's running 9.2.2 or 8.5.1 (I have all three on the same box). It's faster, easier to work with, and a heck of a lot more modern. Honestly, I've been toying with some old hardware and old versions of the Mac OS for the last couple of weeks (8.1, 8.5, 8.6, 9.0, 9.2..), and playing with what's supported on what (8.5 supports the GeoPort, 8.6 does not, 8.5 does not support USB hard drives, 8.6 does, 9.2 does not support my DVD drive, 8.5 does.. etc). In OS X, everything works perfectly (except the GeoPort, of course). And reliabily. You get used to all the little patches and extensions and your perfectly selected Extensions Manager Set to get your Mac booting perfectly, with 10.2 things just work. I don't need no friggin' driver for my DVD drive in OS X. OS X didn't freeze because my HD has a corrupt hard disk driver -- it mounted it anyway! This is all on the G3! With 10.1/10.0, using Mac OS X was iffy. But with 10.2.3+ Mac OS X is FAR better than using OS 9!! I've used a B&W G3/400 daily 'once upon a time' with 10.1 a bit over a year ago. This G3 running 10.2 is far smoother.
"Funky" and old world hardware still isn't supported - the AV personality card I've got on the G3 that gives me video/audio in/out doesn't work (just the basics work, audio), but hey, when I reboot into OS 9.2.2 the Finder crashes because it doesn't like my Toshiba DVD drive's driver (OS X uses it automatically).
Assuming there's no regressions with Panther, OS X runs fine on these old Macs. It's running great on that PowerBook too, we've got a PowerLogix G4 upgrade for that thing as well, but the develop
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.