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Apple Prevents G3 Owners From Upgrading to G4
sammy baby writes "Wired News is reporting that Apple deliberately wrote the firmware in the Apple G3 computers to prevent owners from upgrading them using the G4 CPU. Damn shame - I would have considered buying a G4, but I don't want to give my money to a company that resorts to tactics like this."
Fuck Apple...fuck them right in the ear.
/. and swallow a lot of Anti-mac shit without comment. But I wanted to just pipe in and point out that A) All of us aren't into getting ass-rammed like a jailhouse bitch by Steve Jobs and B) most *pros* that *use* macs (web/design/graphics/science) as opposed to highschoolers that *brag* about them have learned to walk the thin line between Mac The Computer and Apple the Dicks that Make it.
Don't listen to this MacMoron...listen to me...
A different Mac Moron.
Points:
1) The present G4 works perfectly in the G3. Well, it *did* at one point.
2) These things (the cpus) were ready back in May. Apple was not. Apple asked Moto to hold off shipping the CPU's till Apple was ready, so that 3rd parties wouldn't get the jump on Apple. Moto Laughed.
3) many people (*many*) Knew the chips were ready and were complaining, so Apple A)changed the firmware in the Rev2 G3's and B) issued a firmware update trojan.
4) Anyone who didn't get sucked in to the initial round was sucked in when Apple issued and upgrade to OSX Server which "required" the firmware "patch".
5) As the final blow, OS9 will *not* install on a G3 without this firmware "upgrade". Fortunatly, this has gotten out, so that Rev1 G3 owners can be made aware of this latest trick.
The fact of the matter is, regardless of what the majority of you all believe, Apple makes good stuff. I use it, its alright. Runs Linux great.
But there is no way in hell *anyone* can justify or evangelize this predatory bullshit behavior on their part...and if you look around on Mac Sites, you'll find most aren't.
This is a Steve Jobs production, plain and simple, and he going to get his hand spanked quite hard for it. There are legions of folks pulling their G4 orders on General Principle until the block is reversed.
I spend a lot of my web time here on
We like our Macs but could do without Apple...especially *this* Apple.
-K
One day, you'll learn to watch what you post...
Aside from the fact that there are third parties that have used/made G4 upgrades in those "tampered" Blue & Whites, this doesn't dismiss the fact that a G4 put on a Yosemite (Blue & White) motherboard does not give you much of a perceptible speed gain. In FPS's like Quake and Unreal, you get about 10% and that's it. The 400mhz G4 Apple is shipping now proves that (of course, there isn't much AltiVec-enabled software to test that yet.
To get the real power out of the G4, you need a Sawtooth motherboard, which takes advantage of all the G4's new features (increased memory bandwidth, etc.), and also gives AGP, btw. If I were to get a G4 upgrade and slap it into my Beige G3 system, I wouldn't get much of a difference than if I bought a similar-speed G3 upgrade.
Although, yes, I would still see a large speedup with AltiVec-enabled programs, but until I got some of those (Q3 probably isn't one of them, and I don't do much video editing right now) it's not much of a difference. You could see this as Apple making sure that the ones who want the best processor they can buy also get the system that will let them use it to the fullest. I would feel gipped if I have a hugely fast processor and find out that I'm not using a lot of what it can do because my older architecture is preventing the processor for really churning out numbers.
Before you all start smacking Apple for something, think about what it means in some other terms than your anti-corporation (they only want money), free-everything view.
The Happy Blues Man
The Happy Blues Man
I accept on blind faith that Cincinatti exists.
And you think a G3 fits in the processor "socket" in a Performa 6100?
There will always be companies like Evergreen who make socket-adapted upgrade products, and there's almost always an "Overdrive" processor. They suck compared to the real thing, and they cost more than replacing the motherboard, but the price points are about the same as G3 cards for lesser powermacs. So are the performance specs, for that matter.
Apple is just trying to make sure there's no such thing as a "G4" card you can slide into a 6100 you picked up for $100. If you want a G4, you buy the whole tamale.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
Any public company (except Red Hat, of course) is populated by sheep shaggers and well poisoners. This move should surprise no-one.
The interesting this is now that the cat's out of the bag, will apple recant and release a firmware patch? My guess is... no.
Having said that, the unfortunate mac user quoted in the article over-reacted; "It's like a computer date rape by slipping a drug in my Mac!" Stupid similes like that do no-one any good.
Compaq used to tinker with hardware such that you couldn't use standard IDE drives. They probably had a reason, such as increased performance. They lost a lot of potential customers. They managed to get enough customers to still be around...
you don't know what you are talking about. you can update the firmware just like any other piece of software. it is software not hardware. please do your research before you assume.
Uh, no. Why would I keep my computer on that long?
It never ceases to amaze me how Linux people find pleasure in bragging about how long their computer has been on. Unless you're running a web server or something mission critical, I have no idea why you would want to leave your computer on all day; especially with a terrible (I'm talking about energy saving here, people) OS like Linux. My computer goes to sleep after an hour and the screen shuts off after 15 minutes. Today's computers use so much power, I find it disgusting that people would waste that much energy and then have the nerve to brag about it.
So, no, I haven't had the computer on the entire time, but I've used it intensively (i.e. Photoshop, Netscape, GoLive, IE, Word, Acrobat, MacAmp all open at the same time) for 12+ hours at a time and STILL have never had a crash.
Anyway, I only mentioned that point to head off the losers who start coming down on MacOS when they realize that the hardware is superior.
rooooar
The PII and the PIII are the same chip, retard. That's why it was so easy.
Oh, all you have to do is get a new Motherboard and CPU??? Gee, isn't that basically like getting a new computer? All you have to do to upgrade from G3 to G4 is get a G4 motherboard, then, which apparently IBM has released.
Just out of curiosity, how much $ IS a quality PIII motherboard?
rooooar
Please send me, FedEx overnight, at least one ounce of whatever you're smoking.
The products that made 3d graphics take off on the PC are most definately based on closed, proprietary API's like Glide and Direct3D - OpenGL, for that matter, isn't exactly open either. See the disclaimer in the Mesa docs where it explains that they can not legally make the statement that it is "OpenGL Compatible" as that would require having run the OpenGL compatibility tests, which you can only do after having signed a pricey license agreement with SGI.
Even so, while Quake uses OpenGL, the vast majority of games use D3D, or, when taking for instance Descent 3, they support both, but the D3D support is far superior.
Why? Because Microsoft goes out of their way to make sure people can and do use D3D effectively, and SGI has neither the money nor the pull to do the same with OpenGL. At least not on the Windows platform.
The 3D graphics industry has taken off due to intense competition and price wars. Openness had little to nothing to do with it.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
Whatever comes off as ethical to the consumer most likely ties into marketing of some kind.
Unfortunatly, that is all too often exactly what is going on. It does not relieve big corperations of their obligations to society (even if society's stewards (legislators and courts) are also shirking their duty)
I have no problem with a company giving me what I want (a great product) in return for what they want (some of my money) as long as they stay within ethical bounds. It IS possable to do that. It is the basis of ALL trade since before there was money (barter).
Reasons why corperations need to be concerned about ethics:
Note that for corperations, the last item can include boycotting your product and cheering as some politition who needs votes (or your competition's dollars) goes after you.
Personally, I believe that if corperations want to enjoy the legal fiction of personhood, they should also face the same consequences as a person. Forget fines for criminal acts (which often don't add up to the profits from those acts). Substitute forced closure of the company for jail time, and forced disolution of charter for the death penalty.
(compare what it takes to get TCP/IP networking work on each platForm, for instance).
Control Panel/Network/Add/TCP-IP/
enter ip#,sUbnet,Dns/reboot (ok thats the pathedic step).
Only enough to know that you couldn't put the kernel into it (nowhere near enough space; even the floppy-based distro kernels are probably too large). Besides which, that would mean yet another rewrite of the kernel into portable fcode (the bright side of this is that the same kernel would then be able to run on any OF-based machine without ever being compiled on any of them).
Problem is, there's nowhere near enough room in OF to do that. There are some other pretty cool things you can do with it, though. One guy even wrote a playable version of Pong for OF.
Hardly. Maybe to YOU, but who the hell are you to say what every computer should do?
iMacs are the right computer for a whole lot of people. That's why Apple's selling a ton of them.
If you don't think computers should be easy to use, you're part of the problem.
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
Hrm, lets see...
:)) Getting it to work over a modem, generally requires you to enter a phone number, an L/P, and nothing else. I know, I've done it.
1) Plug in Ethernet card
2) plug in cable
3) turn on computer
that's all it took to get *me* on the net (DHCP is nice
Really!? Well you're lucky then. I talk to countless people almost every day who canNOT get their ethernet card to work let ALONE their modems.
Here at the University, there's just one extra step (get your network card "certified" or the DHCP won't assign you anything). Everything else should be easy, right? Put the card in, reboot, plug-n-pray detects it, drivers install, DHCP assigns, and away we go. Nope! Not in 9 cases out of 10.
Most of the time, Plug-N-Pray doesn't detect the card (usually they're 3com EtherLink cards) which means a driver installation. Then there are the lovely times that there are hardware conflicts. Then, we get into the network configuration (adding tcp/ip for your network card at *least*). Then we reboot and MAYBE you have a network connection.
Modems? Ha! Sure they're similar to the NIC to install (plug in, see if Plug-N-Pray detects, install drivers if not). We've had a LOT of cases where the modem conflicts with the ethernet card and won't dial up; remove the card's tcp/ip information and it magickally re-adds itself again!
Then there's the dial-up configuration. It's "easy" if you have an ISP that doesn't have assigned DNS/WINS IPs (just enter the phone number and away you go), but what if you do? Then it's even MORE fun!
So we look through our dial-up packet for the PC... about 10 pages (conservatively). Then we hit the Mac packet... 5 (generously). Yes, I said five and that's on the HIGH end. Given that both are recent systems (MacOS 7.something and win9x), the Mac system is MUCH easier to set up on the 'net.
If you disagree, I welcome you to come down and work a busy afternoon doing phone helpdesk support for me. After it's done, you can let me know how many problems you had with the Windows TCP/IP garbage.
-nicole
Robert Morgan of RFI has seen Firmware 1.1 machines running with G4 chips. They were running Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X Client. These two OSes contain code to allow a machine to use a G4. The firmware was implemented to make sure that no non-OS 9/X G3 uses a G4 chip, because the machine will die... in a big way. The G4 does things really differently to the G3, and OS 8 of any version just cannot handle it. So it's not a block. It's a bug fix. Get a copy of Mac OS 9 or Mac OS X Client, and you'll be sweet. all the best, base2_celtic (pipeline 256)
Using the holy grail of OSes...
http://discuss.info.apple.com/boards/powermac.nsf/ ccb088a1de6aac738525631c0067846b/79720ab 376a518ed862567e00068b29d?OpenDocument
s f/by+Topic?OpenView
is a thread on an Apple message board, where supposedly Apple will post the info about whether they'll fix the ROM.
http://discuss.info.apple.com/boards/powermac.n
That's a more general link to the PowerMac forum, where lots of people are complaining
http://www.maccentral.com/forum/
Is a forum on MacCentral.com, where I have put up lots of comments about this problem, and other users have also been talking about it.
http://www.macintouch.com/bg3upgrade.html
Is a link to a Macintouch area where user e-mails are posted.
What it comes down to is that Blue G3 owners(like me) are extremely mad. We have been hearing daily about the amazing things some developers are going to be doing w/ the G4 and AltiVec and we want in.
Apple got a lot of the early buyers(like me) to install a ROM update that was advertised as improving PCI performance(and probably did) that disabled G4 support. Apple did not tell us this and still has not admitted it.
Many Blue G3 owners have already said they will never buy a Mac again, others are looking at legal alternatives(class action suit because Apple removed a feature that was in our machines when we bought them w/o our knowledge).
Basically, Apple is in deep shit. If they don't know it by now, they've gotta be brain dead.
Apple had better put out an explanation and a fix real fast.
That's the whole point, they will release a fix for it, but only after a couple of months, so that people who want the very latest and very best have to buy a whole new computer.
This beats the never realized Intel plan to lock the clocks of their processors in lameness factor.
-
Did any of you actually read the story? A simple firmware update solves the problem. Hell, they've put out a few of those already, to fix problems with the iMac cd-roms. Look people, just because you see the Apple logo, doesn't mean in you need to type some half assed tirade that Jobs is evil, Apple is the same as *insert company name here*, or complain about Apple being "closed".
p.s. No one *cares* if you think color cases are ugly. They were not designed for you.
What I meant by 'pervasive multi-threading' is the integration of threading in the GUI. Under BeOS, if I have two browser windows open and one is loading a page, I can concurrently type into the other window and/or bring up a new window entirely. I've seen this in other Be programs, so I think it's a feature of the OS.
I don't see that in Netscape for any platform, SGI and Linux included.
D
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No tiresome IRQ or compatibility messes.
That's why it's a lot easier to get video editing stuff working on the Mac, and it keeps on working once installed.
Both of those issues are probematical with the PC.
A Mac is still a lot more fun to use than a PC, because it has a far more aesthetically pleasing look and feel. The Windows(tm) interface is both ugly and byzantine (compare what it takes to get TCP/IP networking work on each platform, for instance).
Whenever I need to use mainstream software such as Photoshop, I go gladly to my Mac. I'm glad it's there - and I have Irix, Linux, BeOS and Windows systems.
D
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It'd help a lot of those both on /. and those that post to /. would research what they are talking about.
/. to proliferate half-truths.
The G3s are upgradeable. If Apple or a 3rd party company wishes to offer G4 upgrade cards they can, just a little more work. In fact, there is one company that already has working cards (can't remember the name right now). I'm not saying that the firmware decision was a good one, but they never said you could upgrade a G3 to a G4 in the first place. This "story" was out months ago in a number of places. Too bad it took wired.com and
Cameroon
I think what hapined is that when Apple was testing this rom update, since they didn't ever claim that the machines would be G4 upgradable, they simply didn't test it with a G4 chip.
Consider that it is XLR8, not Apple, that is saying that it was intentional. Now when XLR8 comes out with their upgrade that gets around this, they will have that added 'cool' factor of having beaten the big evil Apple. Therefore I find anything that XLR8 says on this issue to be suspect.
That being said, it is certainly possible that Apple did this intentionally, but I think that the scenerio described above is more likely. In any case, there will be a fix that will get around this, with or without Apple's help.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
I don't know about you, but for the most part I find that upgrades are not cost-effective - you won't spend much more if you buy a whole new machine and sell your old one.
I think Mac users got into the habit of doing upgrades during Apple's darkest days, when they were just not responsive to consumer demand. Based on the reaction of people to the new G4, I don't think we can accuse them of that now.
I'm not inclined to think of Apple's action as a good thing - I think it's a mildly bad one. But I'm not sure it warrants the extreme negative reaction it's received so far.
D
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The vMac people have been doing ROM patching for quite some time, and BasiliskII is practically built apon it.
How hard could it be to write a G4 enabler via an OF-based bootloader?
The video editing card for my beige G3 is a third-party card. The only thing closed about the hardware is that Apple's the only company that can make it.
Open hardware tends to drive down prices very fast, but it doesn't seem to lead to innovation. I think this is because consumer demand is not for innovation, but lower prices above all.
You know, it's interesting that the most intriguing hardware comes from closed or partially closed systems. We hear more "cools" and "awesome" when we talk about vendors of closed systems like Apple or SGI. When's the last time we featured an article like "HP comes out with new Pavilion line of PCs"?
Granted, we may not be able to afford some of these "cool" systems. But I have yet to see proof that openness can create something "insanely great" like the Mac or BeOS. And - before you ask - I consider Linux "great". But not insanely so, because it's just an excellent copy of something that already existed. MacOS and BeOS both broke new ground in some way - Mac with the GUI and BeOS with the pervasive multi-threading.
D
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Not that Apple doesn't use cutthroat business techniques, (as do most other Big Money Corps) but I have to defend them here. They didn't 'Disable' anything. Can you upgrade a Pentium (586) to a Pentium II? Not really... not directly anyway. Sure, you can stick an 'upgrade' CPU in A PCI slot or retrofit it into the socket7(?), but there needs to be new hardware surrounding the 'upgrade' chip that makes it look like the OLD CPU to the motherboard's chip set. This has been done for years. In reality, it's usually a waste of money. No matter how fast your 'upgrade' CPU is, you're limited by the bus and by the chipset(s) that funnel data to and from the CPU. This is just common sense.
:-)
The G4 has a different Architecture compared to the G3. And yes, you CAN upgrade a blue G3 with 1.1 firmware to a G4. But why? it will make the machine go a little faster, but you won't get the performance of the new G4, since the support chipset won't know that it can send 4 simultaneous instruction streams at the thing anyway. So what's the big deal. If you *really* want the G4 machine's performance, sell your G3, and buy a G4. The resale value on the G3's won't be much lower than what you paid, and the price difference would probably cost less than an upgrade card (Since you aren't wasting a G3 in the process)
OR, save your pennies, and wait for the G5
To some extent. However, I'm typing this on a no-name PC running Linux. I like it much better than what the competition was offering. Want a good computer w/ a pretty package? Buy a good motherboard w/ Athelon and hire an air-brush artist to make it pretty.
As for the G4 upgrades, Apple is trying to stop them because of the same reasons they killed the Mac clones: they want the third-party vendors to provide the low-end solutions, not the cutting edge stuff where the best profit margins are.
This policy is obviously questionable, but you have to remember that Apple is not just yet-another-computer-maker, they are a systems company. There isn't any free competition in the RS/6000 or HP/UX markets either.
Marko Karppinen
- Ok, for starters, I am here to defend Apple. If you don't like that, go somewhere else. I've seen a lot of people complaining about Apple starting to use business tactics that they don't like. Well, let's see here. When was the last time you saw a 486 motherboard that was upgradeable to a pentium? Or even a pentium motherboard that was upgradeable to a pentium 2? On top of this, Apple has never ever said their G3 systems would be upgradeable to G4. For that matter, they never said any of their prior systems would be upgradeable to G3, but lots of third party companies made those upgrades, and believe me, there are companies that are making G4 upgrades, even for those G3 users who installed the ROM which purportedly makes them unupgradeable. No one really knows this for sure, as no one has tried AFAIK. All this hype is about mere rumor, and every last one of you fell into the media pitfall.
- Now, for those of you still spouting the rhetoric about apple's prices, I'd like to remind you that the new G4, classified as a supercomputer by the government, thus a weapon (and as of yet, unexportable to other countries), is available for a starting price of 1599. If anyone out there tells me that is too much money to pay for a computer with a top of the line processor, Modem, Ethernet, Firewire, USB, 128-bit video card, and more, plus the wonderful support of Apple (rated very highly every year) and the ease of use and increase in productivity it brings, well, then they really don't know a good deal when they see one.
- Those of you complaining about the death of clones: The clone idea was initially to help spread the Mac platform. It didn't. All it did was cut into Apple's own user base far deeper than they could have handled. If Apple didn't kill the clones, the clones would have killed Apple, and we wouldn't be having this debate.
- For anyone complaining about the OS: Install LinuxPPC. Or, realize that the OS is getting better with every revision, and the OS X is going to put Microsoft, and particularly NT, to shame.
Myself, I'm looking forward to purchasing a new G4, and selling my old Beige G3, as soon as I have the disposible income to do so. The price is right, the hardware offering more than tempting, and the OS better than ever."Is this not a rare fellow, my lord? He's as good at any thing, and yet a fool." -from "As You Like It", Act 5,
One company has already figured out a way around the G4 lockout. Either others will follow, or that company will share its info with the upgrade companies (I hope it does this; while I'll never switch away from my Mac I'm quite pissed off at Apple right now, and certainly won't be buying a new one for some time).
What apple did was release a firmware patch which makes the computer check to see if its using a G3 cpu before allowing startup (it's not a patch to the normal ROM - if it had been, any idiot would have been able to reverse the patch, as the MacOS ROM is a file on the disk on recent Macs).
It was known before this batch of G3s even shipped that they'd be G4 upgradeable, but apple released a software patch which seems to prevent g4 upgrades. OH NO!! Not a software patch! The treachery! They'll never get around THAT! Apple knows the futility of this.
Apple has not (in recent history) even marketed CPU upgrades for their computers. They've always been third party. XLR8 was quoted on MacInTouch on September 1: "A special fix will be needed to run G4 with the 1.1 firmware in a Blue and White. Users get 5 tones, like the emergency weather warning. We have a fix in hand, using DayStar magic." XLR8's press release on August 31 (the SAME DAY apple announced G4 products) says: "Additional AltiVec(TM) performance software with blue & white compatibility is being readied in our labs now." -Gary Dailey, Director of Marketing for XLR8.Lets look at what Apple actually has done for their customers, upgrade-wise. The long lived family of PCI powermacs, the [789][356]00 series, all have processor daughterboards, which are replaceable, all the way up to G3 or even potentially G4 CPUs. Earlier powermacs can be upgraded to G3s with "L2-cache" upgrades (a CPU on a card fits in where the L2 cache normally goes, and overrides the existing CPU). Apple's G3 desktops all have zif sockets for easy and cheap upgradability. Apple's entire line of desktops uses one type of socket. I think that's pretty good. How many different sockets do you get across the pentium/ppro/p2/p3/celeron/k6/k7-athlon? How many such cpus can be used as an upgrade for one of the other cpus?
I own one of the first PowerMac G3/400s (Blue & White). I remain quite confident that by the time I want to upgrade it, G4 upgrades from third party companies like XLR8, newertech, and powerlogix will be waiting for me.
I'm not a smorgasbord.
Sure, all of us who just read this on /. are probably pretty anoyed with Apple. But this makes no difference to them whatsoever because we're not the market that they cater to. Apple's main demographic are those who buy them because of their ease of use. Just look at the iMac for instance: it's a piece of crap, yet at the same time Apple's made millions off of them because people buy them because "they're pretty" and not because they're good computers. Those Apple customers who are planning on buying a G4 (most of which won't know about the G4 until it hits the market or something like "Mac World") won't know nor care whther or not they can upgrade. They see a newer machine from Apple and decide they want it (of course it must look pretty). I really don't think this will make much difference.
This is one of those times I'm ashamed to be a Mac defender. Simply put, Apple has gone too far. This is a dirty trick, and Apple knows it.
Still, there's hope. Several possible scenarios exist:
1) This really is a dirty trick by Apple. I hope this isn't the case, but it sure looks that way at the moment.
2) This is some sort of bug, which Apple is for some stupid reason not fixing (this is how I would approach Apple with the subject if you write them about it; don't be accusatory or you'll just piss them off).
3) It's well-known that Apple asked Motorola to hold off on releasing the G4 until Apple had a system to put it in. Perhaps this was insurance against that policy, and once Apple has a ready supply of G4-based machines they'll undo the lock.
Anyway, all is not lost; one company (XLR8, if I'm not mistaken) has already found a way around the bug, and may well be sharing it with the other upgrade companies.
I certainly won't be buying a new G4 box. My Beige G3 is still upgradable to the G4, and I have no intention of letting that go. Hopefully by that time Apple will have seen the error of its ways.
One other thought I had: something isn't right about this. Consider that Apple has been lowering its prices, opening parts of its system (and even its QuickTime Streaming Server), and all sorts of other trends towards a more open company. This would seem counterproductive. I never said Steve Jobs wasn't a jerk, but he isn't stupid either, and this doesn't seem to make much in the way of sense. I think he's up to something.
Oh, and one other thing: what exactly is the nature of this lock? I've heard that it's in the Mac OS ROM file; if this is the case, then perhaps it is still possible to upgrade a Linux-only G4 box (anyone tried it?) If it's in OpenFirmware (the only other place it could be on the machine, since it has no hardware-based ROM that can be flashed), then it must be in the form of an OF patch, which means that getting the source to the lock ispossible.
Do you think Intel is going to make it possible to upgrade your Pentium XVI to a Merced or a McKinley? Unless Apple specifically said that the computer would be upgradable to a G4, they have done nothing wrong. Sure, it sucks for the G3 owners. But Apples' upgradability isn't one of the more touted features. It has been known for a while by those "in the know" that the B&W G3s were not upgradable to G4. If anybody wanted a G4 that bad, they would have waited. I don't think anybody said "let me buy this G3 so that I can upgrade to a G4 later."
I'm not trying to say Apple can do no wrong, I'm saying that all the hypocrites out there need to go take a jump. The recurring theme I see on any Apple story posted to Slashdot is this inbred hatred of anything Apple does, with those who hate Apple saying "One more reason not to buy Apple's crap" or, my personal favorite, "When will Apple die?"
Y'all just can't cope with the fact that the system you were sure would die and were taught to hate from such a young age is now simply better. That's right, it's BETTER, and you can't deal with that fact. Say whatever you want about the OS; I've had my PowerBook for over a month and it hasn't crashed yet. But in the hardware arena, you simply can't beat Apple. Maybe you gamers who need voodoo whatever graphics cards will poo-poo that, but for serious work, the design of the system as a whole is much better than, say, Dell. And while I'm not a fan of the new plastics for the G3s, They look infinitely better than the disgusting Dell boxes.
Face it; Apple is here to stay. They may not make the right choices sometimes (see floppy drive, iMac mouse, etc.) but they're not going anywhere.
rooooar
Ok. What did cloning ever do for IBM, and how could it be beneficial for Apple?
It vastly expanded the market for PCs. Would you rather have 100% of a million dollar market, or 5% of a billion dollar market?