Mac Musings

Where Apple and ATI Have Gone Before

Dan Knight - 2001.12.27

Both ATI and Apple have given up on the old Rage II+, IIc, Pro, Pro Turbo, LT Pro, and Rage Mobility used in the beige Power Mac G3, drawer-loading iMacs, WallStreet and Lombard PowerBooks, and the first iBook and iBook SE.

By today's standards, these are primitive, slow, outdated, obsolete graphics sets. That wasn't true when these models were introduced between 1997 and 1999. And those who own these computers and have used Mac OS 9 know that the OS X drivers do not allow these chips to live up to their full potential.

By my estimate, somewhere between 4 and 6 million Macs that can run Mac OS X are negatively impacted by ATI's and Apple's decisions to offer no more OS X driver support.

Gene Steinberg tries to put a different spin on the situation on Mac Night Owl. His thought is that maybe there isn't much more performance Apple can wring out of these chips, so it's not worth the effort. It's plausible, but an email from Remy Davison of Insanely Great Mac got me to thinking a step or two further.

Point One: These chips are capable of better performance - noticeably better performance, according to those who have seen the graphics acceleration at its best under Mac OS 7.x-9.x. There is a lot more potential here. For the sake of millions of Mac users, better drivers would be justified.

Point Two: Davison points out that Apple needs to do everything they can to keep those old beige G3s and iMacs from being replaced by Wintel boxen. Pathetic graphics performance under Apple's great new OS will be just one more argument for the Wintel proponents to use in undermining Apple's presence in the workplace and in schools.

Despite this, neither Apple nor ATI want to invest another cent in creating better accelerated drivers for these old chips. That speaks very poorly of both companies, but their bottom line is the bottom line. As Rodney O. Lain loves to remind us, Apple is in the business to make money, not friends.

On the other hand, making friends and making money need not be mutually exclusive. And there is one way for Apple to make friends without spending much money at all (the same goes for ATI): Release all the information necessary for others to create accelerated drivers for the old ATI Rage chipsets.

For the right individual or business, there's potential gold in creating the accelerated drivers that Apple and ATI don't want to create. If 10% of those Macs afflicted with abandoned Rage chips go OS X, there's a potential market of a half-million buyers off the bat. Long term, several million of these older Macs may end up running OS X.

The person making these drivers and selling them for $10 could pull in millions of dollars over a few years as more and more Mac users embrace OS X.

But Apple and ATI need to facilitate that by releasing the information necessary for someone to do this.

We know these chips have more potential than the current drivers enable. We know that the Mac with these chips are sorry examples of how good Mac OS X is. We believe the only solution to this problem is enabling the free market to create and benefit from drivers that will solve a problem neither Apple nor ATI are willing to tackle.

Apple and ATI have delivered good drivers for these graphics chips in the past. If they won't develop them for OS X, the least they can do is allow someone else to do it.

Dan Knight has been using Macs since 1986, sold Macs for several years, supported them for many more years, and has been publishing Low End Mac since April 1997. If you find Dan's articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.

Recent Mac Musings

Recent Content on Low End Mac

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2008 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, PowerBook, MacBook, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.


Have a question?
Ask an expert!

Low End Living

Amazon.com

Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Best Used Macs
Video Cards
Email Lists
InfoMac's Low
End Mac Forum

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
MacMall
TechRestore
MacResQ
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.