May I suggest another possiblity, one that doesn't involve any bribery or back-room deals between Apple and upgrade manufacturers?
Because the G4 was stuck at 500 MHz for 18 months, Mac owners had substantial time during which their computers didn't "age" relative to the high-end Powermacs. Meaning that if you had a 400 MHz tower when the G4 was first bumped to 500 MHz, then a full year later, you still had a Mac that was only 100 MHz slower than the high end tower.
What this meant for the upgrade manufacturers is poor sales. For over a year, nobody was buying upgrade cards, except for a few smurf G3 owners who upgraded to G4s. Poor sales led to the bankruptcy of one of the upgrade companies, and the others no doubt suffer from poor revenue. Thus they have little cash reserves, not enough to buy new, faster G4s in large enough quantities to get a reasonable deal. Remember if they pay over $400 for the G4s, then the upgrade cards are going to run at over $600, probably closer to $800.
The other problem is that since PPC MHz have stagnated, used Macs are a much more viable option than they normally would be. This means that for a person who wants a faster Mac, they can sell their current Mac for unusually high prices, making a new Mac's effective price much lower. Thus it is more economical to sell your old mac and buy a new mac, than it is to buy an upgrade card.
What this means for the upgrade companies is fewer sales...they are stuck with a glut of G4 CPUs they must get rid of, and they don't have the cash reserves to invest in faster G4 CPUs.
The best scenario for upgrade companies is for the MHz to increase consistently and substantially. This way used Macs don't hold their prices as well, so rather than selling a Mac and putting the money towards a new Mac, a user is more inclined to keep their Mac and add an upgrade card. With fast, consistent MHz bumps, CPUs will also drop in price faster, so the upgrade companies can get good deals on relatively recent CPUs, and make a good margin on those upgrades, while they also buy brand new CPUs and sell them for very high prices (less volume, but it makes the cheaper upgrades look like better deals than they really are).
This is just speculation, but it seems more likely to me than Moto and Apple cutting smoky backroom deals....I just have trouble imagining Apple have any success at all convincing Moto to do ANYTHING. If Moto has the CPUs then they will sell them, they don't care so much to who, right?
And any fallout from the clone wars is going to be at the R&D end, not the sales end. Once the chips have been fabbed, Moto's interest is to sell them. And if they actually were going to try to screw Apple, then Moto would sell MORE, CHEAPER chips to the upgrade companies, not fewer.
When I started this thread I was just frustrated that there hasn't been a speed increase on the Duet. When I bought my 400Mhz G4, I bought as much as I could with the idea that I would upgrade later. From what I gather from this thread, no one here knows of any technical hurdles that would prevent Sonnet or anyone else from offering faster G4's as soon as they can afford to put them on an upgrade card. If this is the case, then sooner or later I can look forward to something faster than a duel 500. Does anyone know any different?
Since spring 2000 those CPU upgrades had officially entered the "dark age" No speed increase while selling at the still-ridiculous price
this is bad, really bad
Sell your old machine and pay the extra (same cost as what you pay for the upgrade) and you get a BRAND NEW machine with bigger hard drive, more RAM, etc.....
Trouble is my computer is probably the most upgradeable Mac ever and what if I just want a faster machine? PC users can have a whole new computer without going to Dell's website and ordering one. They can take their existing computer buy a new mobo new cpu yadda yadda et voila! I would be losing things like room for floppy, zip, cd-rw, dvd-rom or dvd-rw. Trouble is I probably will just buy a new machine. Maybe a hack job will give me that 2nd full drive bay.
Comments
Because the G4 was stuck at 500 MHz for 18 months, Mac owners had substantial time during which their computers didn't "age" relative to the high-end Powermacs. Meaning that if you had a 400 MHz tower when the G4 was first bumped to 500 MHz, then a full year later, you still had a Mac that was only 100 MHz slower than the high end tower.
What this meant for the upgrade manufacturers is poor sales. For over a year, nobody was buying upgrade cards, except for a few smurf G3 owners who upgraded to G4s. Poor sales led to the bankruptcy of one of the upgrade companies, and the others no doubt suffer from poor revenue. Thus they have little cash reserves, not enough to buy new, faster G4s in large enough quantities to get a reasonable deal. Remember if they pay over $400 for the G4s, then the upgrade cards are going to run at over $600, probably closer to $800.
The other problem is that since PPC MHz have stagnated, used Macs are a much more viable option than they normally would be. This means that for a person who wants a faster Mac, they can sell their current Mac for unusually high prices, making a new Mac's effective price much lower. Thus it is more economical to sell your old mac and buy a new mac, than it is to buy an upgrade card.
What this means for the upgrade companies is fewer sales...they are stuck with a glut of G4 CPUs they must get rid of, and they don't have the cash reserves to invest in faster G4 CPUs.
The best scenario for upgrade companies is for the MHz to increase consistently and substantially. This way used Macs don't hold their prices as well, so rather than selling a Mac and putting the money towards a new Mac, a user is more inclined to keep their Mac and add an upgrade card. With fast, consistent MHz bumps, CPUs will also drop in price faster, so the upgrade companies can get good deals on relatively recent CPUs, and make a good margin on those upgrades, while they also buy brand new CPUs and sell them for very high prices (less volume, but it makes the cheaper upgrades look like better deals than they really are).
This is just speculation, but it seems more likely to me than Moto and Apple cutting smoky backroom deals....I just have trouble imagining Apple have any success at all convincing Moto to do ANYTHING. If Moto has the CPUs then they will sell them, they don't care so much to who, right?
And any fallout from the clone wars is going to be at the R&D end, not the sales end. Once the chips have been fabbed, Moto's interest is to sell them. And if they actually were going to try to screw Apple, then Moto would sell MORE, CHEAPER chips to the upgrade companies, not fewer.
[ 02-11-2002: Message edited by: PowerMacFan ]</p>
this is bad, really bad
Sell your old machine and pay the extra (same cost as what you pay for the upgrade) and you get a BRAND NEW machine with bigger hard drive, more RAM, etc.....