winuser3162 wrote on 2024-10-21, 23:49:

Errius wrote on 2024-10-21, 08:08:

Oh yes I remember that. Mac OS X dropped support for the ATI GPU used in the iMac G3. People who 'upgraded' to OS X could no longer play recently-bought games.

Apple's recommended 'solution' was for people to buy an iMac G4. This used an Nvidia GPU which was fully supported by OS X.

There were lawsuits over this.

Does this include the ATI rage 128 cards? My iMac g4 came with one and Mac OS X supports it.

Jo22 wrote on 2024-10-22, 04:58:

I think so. Basic 2D support should work on Mac OS X, but 3D support might be missing.
I suppose a Radeon is required here, rather than a Rage.

I don't know about this - I had an iMac DV (500 MHz G3 with a Rage 128) and I was playing Unreal and Quake2 on it just fine in OS X. 10.3 or 10.4, if I recall correctly. Maybe the first iMacs with a 233 MHz G3 had some older variation of the Rage that couldn't do 3D in the new OS? I was shocked how well OS X ran on that Rage 128 with its paltry 16 MB of VRAM, effects and all.

leonardo wrote on 2024-10-24, 22:11:

winuser3162 wrote on 2024-10-21, 23:49:

Errius wrote on 2024-10-21, 08:08:

Oh yes I remember that. Mac OS X dropped support for the ATI GPU used in the iMac G3. People who 'upgraded' to OS X could no longer play recently-bought games.

Apple's recommended 'solution' was for people to buy an iMac G4. This used an Nvidia GPU which was fully supported by OS X.

There were lawsuits over this.

Does this include the ATI rage 128 cards? My iMac g4 came with one and Mac OS X supports it.

Jo22 wrote on 2024-10-22, 04:58:

I think so. Basic 2D support should work on Mac OS X, but 3D support might be missing.
I suppose a Radeon is required here, rather than a Rage.

I don't know about this - I had an iMac DV (500 MHz G3 with a Rage 128) and I was playing Unreal and Quake2 on it just fine in OS X. 10.3 or 10.4, if I recall correctly. Maybe the first iMacs with a 233 MHz G3 had some older variation of the Rage that couldn't do 3D in the new OS? I was shocked how well OS X ran on that Rage 128 with its paltry 16 MB of VRAM, effects and all.

Hi there, I've just checked..

"Q3: Which ATI graphics products have 2D and 3D support under OS X?

A3:
ATI and Apple® have worked together to provide built-in 2D, 3D, and QuickTime™ acceleration support on OS X for all RADEON™, RAGE™ 128 PRO, and RAGE™ 128 based products (this includes RAGE™ ORION, NEXUS 128™, XCLAIM™ VR 128, RADEON™ MAC EDITION AGP and RADEON™ MAC EDITION PCI). It is not ATI’s intention to provide OS X support for RAGE™ PRO based products."

[..]

"ATIRadeon.kext
ATIRadeonDVDDriver.bundle
ATIRadeonGA.plugin
ATIRadeonGLDriver.bundle
ATIRage128.kext
ATIRage128GA.plugin
ATIRage128GLDriver.bundle
ATIRagePro.kext
ATIRageProGA.plugin"

"Apple provided hardware acceleration with the Rage Pro in Mac OS 10.1"

[..]

"ATIRageProGLDriver.bundle"

Source: https://macosx.com/threads/opengl-video-drive … 105/#post-38292

So I think that it was ATI Rage IIc or a similar card that was lacking 3D support in OS X.

Jo22 wrote on 2024-10-24, 07:53:

Edit: What intel did to PC platform in recent years by forcing UEFI platform onto PC industry wasn't nice, either. Intels iniati […]
Show full quote

Edit: What intel did to PC platform in recent years by forcing UEFI platform onto PC industry wasn't nice, either.
Intels iniative to force removal of CSM (BIOS) means the end of openness of PC platform.

While today BIOS is just seen as an irrelevant piece of archaic firmware to most, it really used to be the very heart of x86 PC architecture.
Along with 86 instructions set it gave the PC life and made it compatible.

That's why I think it would just be fair if intel would vanish before it can succeeed in ruining x86 PC platform.

Is it Intel or Microsoft? Microsoft started a lot of this with their secure boot, even if public (and regulatory?) pressure prevented them from the dream of a system that could only boot Windows...

Honestly, I think the open PC is dying. Doesn't help that the Windows PC seems to be ever more business/enterprise/legacy-centered, and big corporate clients want those locked down systems with their secure X and their secure Y and their remote management of everything.

If you want to see something scary, look at a Windows 10/11 machine managed via Intune. It behaves a lot more like a smartphone than a traditional Windows PC in a number of ways... e.g. the ability to 'resets' to the operating system. I remember back when you 'reset' a PC by grabbing the installation media and doing a FORMAT C:...

https://www.zdnet.com/article/ati-suffers-wrath-of-jobs/ [July 24, 2000]
http://www.macworld.com/article/1003272/g3osx.html [Jan. 30, 2002]
https://www.geek.com/apple/lawsuit-g3s-lose-f … in-os-x-548216/ [offline and not on Wayback Machine, hopefully it will become available after WM fixes its current problems]
http://archive.arstechnica.com/archive/news/1012671972.html [Feb. 2 2002]
https://www.zdnet.com/article/mac-os-x-refund … reliminary-nod/ [Oct. 30, 2003]

So the decision to drop support for the older G3 model [and to put Nvidia chips in the G4 iMacs] appears to have had a mixture of mercenary (planned obsolescence) and spiteful (stick it to ATI) motives.

ETA: BTW, due to the uncertainty over the future of the Wayback Machine, it's important for everybody to start local archiving all interesting webpages. Save pages as MHTML, or use something like Httrack, or simply paste text into Word or other text documents.

Errius wrote on 2024-10-24, 22:59:

So the decision to drop support for the older G3 model [and to put Nvidia chips in the G4 iMacs] appears to have had a mixture of mercenary (planned obsolescence) and spiteful (stick it to ATI) motives.

And then fast forward a few years, and I think Apple went in the other direction. There was an incident one year where I think it was Nvidia leaked some Apple product details and Apple angrily ripped out the Nvidia cards for previous-gen ATI cards in the demo systems at WWDC or elsewhere?

And then in the 2010s, it's been increasingly clear that Nvidia was less and less well-regarded in Apple land. By the end of the decade you couldn't even run an Nvidia GPU in your Mac Pro...

Jo22 wrote on 2024-10-24, 22:30:

Hi there, I've just checked.. […]
Show full quote

leonardo wrote on 2024-10-24, 22:11:

winuser3162 wrote on 2024-10-21, 23:49:

Does this include the ATI rage 128 cards? My iMac g4 came with one and Mac OS X supports it.

I don't know about this - I had an iMac DV (500 MHz G3 with a Rage 128) and I was playing Unreal and Quake2 on it just fine in OS X. 10.3 or 10.4, if I recall correctly. Maybe the first iMacs with a 233 MHz G3 had some older variation of the Rage that couldn't do 3D in the new OS? I was shocked how well OS X ran on that Rage 128 with its paltry 16 MB of VRAM, effects and all.

Hi there, I've just checked..

"Q3: Which ATI graphics products have 2D and 3D support under OS X?

A3:
ATI and Apple® have worked together to provide built-in 2D, 3D, and QuickTime™ acceleration support on OS X for all RADEON™, RAGE™ 128 PRO, and RAGE™ 128 based products (this includes RAGE™ ORION, NEXUS 128™, XCLAIM™ VR 128, RADEON™ MAC EDITION AGP and RADEON™ MAC EDITION PCI). It is not ATI’s intention to provide OS X support for RAGE™ PRO based products."

[..]

"ATIRadeon.kext
ATIRadeonDVDDriver.bundle
ATIRadeonGA.plugin
ATIRadeonGLDriver.bundle
ATIRage128.kext
ATIRage128GA.plugin
ATIRage128GLDriver.bundle
ATIRagePro.kext
ATIRageProGA.plugin"

"Apple provided hardware acceleration with the Rage Pro in Mac OS 10.1"

[..]

"ATIRageProGLDriver.bundle"

Source: https://macosx.com/threads/opengl-video-drive … 105/#post-38292

So I think that it was ATI Rage IIc or a similar card that was lacking 3D support in OS X.

ya cuz i ran quake 3 arena with no problems a few days back in my power mac g4 with an ati rage 128 pro using mac os 10.3

VivienM wrote on 2024-10-24, 23:18:

Errius wrote on 2024-10-24, 22:59:

So the decision to drop support for the older G3 model [and to put Nvidia chips in the G4 iMacs] appears to have had a mixture of mercenary (planned obsolescence) and spiteful (stick it to ATI) motives.

And then fast forward a few years, and I think Apple went in the other direction. There was an incident one year where I think it was Nvidia leaked some Apple product details and Apple angrily ripped out the Nvidia cards for previous-gen ATI cards in the demo systems at WWDC or elsewhere?

And then in the 2010s, it's been increasingly clear that Nvidia was less and less well-regarded in Apple land. By the end of the decade you couldn't even run an Nvidia GPU in your Mac Pro...

i find the politics between apple and other tech companies aside from microsoft to always be tricky and funny at times.