It does, since the driver pointed to by TheRoadWarrior does *not* support OpenGL.
[quote]<strong>
So, Wintel uses DirectX or OpenGL. Of OS X only has to support OpenGL, it would seem that, on the surface, Apple should have an easier time in that, as suppliers of hardware and software, in ensuring proper support for their graphics. Is that the obvious conclusion, or am I missing something?</strong><hr></blockquote>
No, basically that's true, but I'm still sceptical if "supports DirectX 8.1" in that webpage actually includes proper HW-accelerated Direct3D support, or whether it merely means "works with DirectX 8.1" (Direct3D has a software emulation layer too, you know) - especially given the fact that two of the chips this specific driver is supposed to support (the Mach64 ones) don't even have any 3D hardware at all.
<strong>The reason for DirectX's superiority over OpenGL is that DirectX encompasses more than just 3d...it includes 2D and sound/music/audio as well.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Networking too. But at least the sound part is handled pretty gracefully in OS X - CoreAudio is in many ways superior to DirectSound.
[quote]<strong>This is a major reason why DVD playback on a PC is far superior to DVD playback on a Mac as it latches into the hardware abstraction layer created by DirectX.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Is that true? ATi chips have pretty good video/DVD acceleration features (motion compensation, iDCT, ...) - are they just left unused in OS X?
[quote]<strong>
In fact, typically, DVD playback on a Mac takes twice the processing time as it does on a PC, regardless of CPU speed.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Sure sounds like they are
[quote]<strong>
How does this relate? Apple needs to work on something similar to DirectX for the Mac. That one set of APIs has done wonders for game development, in addition to giving video card manufacturers some other option besides Open GL.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, there are other, more platform-independent such APIs (OpenML, e.g.), but IIRC most of them are still in the developmental stage.
[quote]<strong>
And, DirectX is backwards compatible, which is why "ancient" chipsets are easy to support in a new OS like XP.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
This doesn't have much to do with DirectX being backwards-compatible - you still have to write the drivers according to the target OS' driver architecture (which is different between Win9x and WinNT/2k/XP).
<strong>BTW, that's an interesting debate, but, Open GL is supported in XP, otherwise, I couldn't play Quake III, RTCW, or Medal of Honor: Allied Assault in XP.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
On a RagePro?
Or do you mean generally? In that case, I don't think anyone would disagree with that.
[quote]<strong>
Likely the complainers' problems are that they are using generic Microsoft provided drivers for their video cards.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, WinXP still only supports OpenGL on cards that support it. Besides, as stated on the web-page you linked to, there are no other ones for the RagePro except for those provided on the WinXP CD.
[quote]<strong>They would see if that they installed proper drivers for their video card, the proper OpenGL driver would be installed, as does the "nvOpenGL.dll" file when installing the XP drivers for any Nvidia card.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Sure, but that required that such drivers for a given card exist in the first place, which does not seem to be the case with te RagePro.
If you have OpenGL in XP you did not get it from Microsoft. Windows XP does not have OpenGL. You got it from a third party.</strong><hr></blockquote>
As far as I can tell, they do (\\windows\\system32\\opengl32.dll), but like in the previous versions of Windows, it's only the software renderer. Hardware renderers are provided by the video chip manufacturers.
Well, you'll have to understand that Apple is primarily a *company*, and as such wants to (and actually is obliged to try to) make *money*. So, from an economical point of view, it might not be sensible to pay ATi enough money so they devote some of their crew to writing RagePro drivers (instead of any next-generation stuff that ATi is currently working on, which is of course much more profitable for ATi) just for idealistic reasons, "doesn't matter what little it may help."
Of course, from the morale point of view, somebody *should* provide those drivers, but we're talking about businesses here, and morale is rarely the top priority in that field.
Bye,
RazzFazz</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes but making the customers happy is a important part of the field. And when you don't have many people in the field in the first place.. ****ing over the customers isn't going to gain you squat.
Now look at your own statement, and consider the fact that Apple is a business too, and as such their primary concern is making money too, as it is for all businesses. Customer satisfaction and reputation are essential and all, but still the main point in any business is to make money, and if the guys at Apple decide that having those drivers written will, summarized up, not be the economical way to go, well, then they probably won't spend their money on it, even though they might have the cash.
Bye,
RazzFazz</strong><hr></blockquote>
WEll that would be all fine and good if they didn't comment on the machines ability to be OS X ready. Apple has a reason to support these machines. And pretty soon Apple may have legal reasons they will have to support these machines. Either way It's a bad decision for Apple. It's wrong on their part and they will get run over the coals for it. Companies will see it and think "Do we really want to buy new Macs next time around?"
This is *your* interpretation of the situation. You can call them Apologists as much as you want, but there are people who consider "is XY ready" to be synonymous with "can run XY".<hr></blockquote></strong>
Again I said either Apple was A. Lying or B. purposably trying to trick the consumers. Either way they are wrong.
[quote]<strong>
Thousands of computers have been branded "designed for Windows NT 4.0" or "ready for NT", yet NT4 never supported their power management facilities nor their USB ports (bith of which worked just fine in Win98).<hr></blockquote></strong>
And this justifies Apple doing it how?
[quote]<strong>And who is that guy to be able to tell you that?
<hr></blockquote></strong>
He would rather remain anonymous
[quote]<strong>
A *few*? Come on...
<hr></blockquote></strong>
A few on the Mac compared to what Windows has to support
[quote]<strong>
Sure, OpenGL is, and guess what, OpenGL is already in OS X. THe difficult part, the one we're talking about here, is not buzilding an OpenGL implementation, but about having that OpenGL implementation talk to and use a certain piece of hardware (i.e. the RagePro). This is what drivers are all about, and unfortunately, this is not openly standardized at all (in fact, it's not even standardized across one manufacturer's line of products).
<hr></blockquote></strong>
And again I have posted remedies for that. So that point is moot.
[quote]<strong>
Which would even be all but useless in source form, since OS 9 had a completely different driver model and OpenGL implementation from OS X.
<hr></blockquote></strong>
No it's not completely different. After all it's still Open GL.
[quote]<strong>
Well, depends on your definition of "unreasonable". In this thread, you have basically made clear that you feel Apple should be willing to pay as much as it takes to get those drivers written. Apple, on the other hadn, has to take economics into accoutn, so from a business point of view, there might be limits as to what is reasonable and what not.
<hr></blockquote></strong>
And the fault still lies with Apple. Apple should have looked into this before making the claims no? Yes I believe Apple should do whatever it takes to back up it's promises. Again. .are we not to be held responsible for our actions? It's going to cost more for lawyers than it probably would to get the drivers made.
[quote]<strong>
As stated before, this is just a business decision. If Apple feels like it's more economical for them to "screw" some of their customers than to spend money on having those RagePro drivers written, then, as a business, they will probably do just that. Customer satisfaction and reputation are important, but in the end, running a business is all about making money.
<hr></blockquote></strong>
And when you lose customer satisfaction and reputation there goes the business and there goes the money. Now which one is more important?
Yeah the iBook was not even a year old when OS X came out.
A compute company not even support their own computer that isn't even one years old.
I'd be ashamed.
Apple ****ed up BIG TIME. ANd now they think all their MW hype is going to save them from people getting mad. That only works on the zealots.. and they don't get mad no matter how bad Apple screws them. They just ask for more.
You know what's sad? That a bunch of Linux hackers can write drivers for the Rage Pro with little (or no) help from ATi or Apple and the ****ing company that soldered the GPU in the the freaking motherboard can't.
<strong>You know what's sad? That a bunch of Linux hackers can write drivers for the Rage Pro with little (or no) help from ATi or Apple and the ****ing company that soldered the GPU in the the freaking motherboard can't.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes but making the customers happy is a important part of the field. And when you don't have many people in the field in the first place.. ****ing over the customers isn't going to gain you squat.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, sure, but I guess the guys at Apple will problably know that too. And since they still decided act like they do, I suppose they have some kind of a reason for doing so (other than just screwing customers for the sake of it).
So, what do you think, why did Apple decide like they did, knowing they'd make some customers pretty unhappy to say the least?
<strong>Companies will see it and think "Do we really want to buy new Macs next time around?"</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, especially for companies, the whole affair isn't really that much of a deal - in regards to office work, the iMac in question *is* (given enough RAM) "OS X ready".
Again I said either Apple was A. Lying or B. purposably trying to trick the consumers. Either way they are wrong.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes, *you* said so. As I said above, this is *your* opinion, you're free to have it, just don't expect everyone else to share it.
[quote]<strong>
And this justifies Apple doing it how?
</strong><hr></blockquote>
This was only intended to show that "XY ready" in the computer business does not always mean what you want it to mean.
[quote]<strong>
And again I have posted remedies for that. So that point is moot.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Oh, you did? Or are you just referring to "they could pay ATI"?
[quote]<strong>
No it's not completely different. After all it's still Open GL.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Still it's written for a different implementation. The driver would definitely not help much, since IOKit (OS X' driver model) is just *completely* different from any the ones found in OS 9, Linux, BSD, Windows, etc.
Go subscribe to the darwin development mailing list, and ask them how easy it would be to take the OS 9 driver and port it to OS X.
[quote]<strong>
It's going to cost more for lawyers than it probably would to get the drivers made.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, we'll see if anyone actually consoders this issue important enough to take it to court. I don't think the "but they said OS X ready" approach alone would be sufficient to really get you far in a lawsuit (remember this is advertising we're talking about - how much of a chance would you give anyone trying to sue Apple because they called the G4 "the most powerful desktop computer in the world"?).
[quote]<strong>
And when you lose customer satisfaction and reputation there goes the business and there goes the money. Now which one is more important?</strong><hr></blockquote>
When it's only a small percentage of the customers, I don't see the business going down because of it. (And despite your claims of "millions of machines", there only seem to be a couple of hundred people at most who feel cheated by Apple and sign petitions.)
<strong>You know what's sad? That a bunch of Linux hackers can write drivers for the Rage Pro with little (or no) help from ATi</strong><hr></blockquote>
Thanks again for something else to consider. So, I guess this answers my question to Road Warrior, since we have open source examples.
I don't have a Rage Pro and apparently don't do things that need the support you guys are talking about. I've read "the Rage Pro drivers are there" and "yeah, but they don't do anything". So, in your experience, these drivers do nothing at all? They are just placeholders for some project that (I think RoadWarrior speculated) fell off the to-do list?
And related to the first paragraph, is there a "degree of support"? Since, apparently, most people are satisfied with the OpenGL support in OS 9 (are they completely satisfied?), do you know how the Linux driver support compares? Better? The same? Not as good?
Thanks for your perspective. It is much appreciated.
The sides in this discussion may be black and white, but I think we can learn from the grey stuff, too.
Whether or not there is a successful lawsuit against Apple, that doesn't guarantee that the plaintiffs will be completely happy with the outcome, and maybe someone here will use the information to come up with a third-party solution.
Hmm....Well, if I remember correctly ( correct me if I'm wrong) the Rage IIs were out since 97, or maybe as far back as 96....
That's a good 5 maybe 6 years ago...
And for Apple to use an almost 1 year old maybe 2? year old chipset in their imac when it came out in 1998. tsk tsk tsk.....=P
And the people who purchased it w/out knowing what they were getting into.
I'm sorry to say, but you guys bought one old graphics chipset with that original imac.
But, I do have a revision A imac, with a 60gig harddrive and 192 megs of ram, and the extra 4 megs of vid ram. It runs OS X server very nicely. But of course, server tasks have nothing to do with the graphics subsystem. so...
I got curious when I hit this thread, so I took a bunch of apple movie trailers that I had downloaded and compared the playback quality to my powerbook g4s and at the smaller resolutions it plays back decently...
although OS 9, was a lot smoother...
I had a Diamond Monster Sound Card for my PC. It only worked in win 95 and 98. MS didn't make drivers for it, and under win98 diamond dropped their support for it...there were better sound chipsets out by that time. Doh!
Hmm...I had a Rage Pro...and that thing was so friggin slow doing anytihng 3d (this was in 1998) that it wasn't worth it. I got the TNT when it came out, for my windows machine.
I also had a decent Pentium 75.... but that thing runs Windows 95 still, anything more for it, and it would die...
-----------------------------------
So what am i getting at? When you purchase something, do some research. See what the techies say about certain specs. Read up on it. See what you're getting into for the long haul. Know which promises can and can't be lived up to. know I got screwed with the Monster Sound.... =P
I know Windows 98, and NT support my Pentium 75, but I mean it has it's limits. it sticks with Win 95... Mac os 9 does the job too ;-) do you use your comptuer just to run the latest stuff, or to get work done. If you're like me, I'm still using 8.6 on one imac, os x server on another imac, os 9 on a pismo, and os x on a powerbook g4. win95 on a Pentium 75, and Win2k on my 1.4gig Athlon.
So, hopefully Apple or ATI will try to get Rage drivers made. But next time, don't trust everthing that comes at ya. Cause when the Rage II first came out, people knew it sucked at 3d, and had decent 2d performance....
Maybe you guys should petition apple for some drivers with 2d acceleration...It's a lot more feasible than 3d....
All in all, I hope you guys can move on...Bite the bullet and realize you have a crappy GPU. Now if you had Rage 128s or Radeons, or something and Apple said they weren't going to support it... well, then that' s a totally different story.
"do you know *why* ati has revealed their sources? because even their winXX drivers were not as good as they should. so, ati won'"t stop developing drivers, but benefit from ideas and code by lots of volunteer open source programmers."
"Well, to ATI's drivers: why are ATI's drivers (even windows drivers) not-so-good? I don't think the reason for this is that ATI's driver developers are stupid people that cannot write drivers, but maybe the driver developers team is just too small? I have nothing against ATI releasing the specs, but IMO it would be better to hire more driver developers."
"ati: they didn't reduce their number of driver-developers, but increased it. they really *have* to write proper drivers, else they are lost. for example: ati's radeon 8500 has far higher polygon fillrates and bandwidth than geforce3. but ati drivers are far worse than nvidia drivers. why, would you ask. i don't know either, but i'd guess they are really more competent or do have more experience, though nvidia founders have been at sgi before (as far as i know)."
But strangely, these contributors also say ATi does release the chip specifications by NVIDIA does not. That's the opposite from what I thought I understood from the Apple and NVIDIA sites.
(Added another topic)
Uh Oh. This doesn't look very encouraging. Another contributor running Linux complained about very slow 3D game performance using a Rage Pro. Recommendation: Lower the color depth.
Hmm....Well, if I remember correctly ( correct me if I'm wrong) the Rage IIs were out since 97, or maybe as far back as 96....
That's a good 5 maybe 6 years ago...
And for Apple to use an almost 1 year old maybe 2? year old chipset in their imac when it came out in 1998. tsk tsk tsk.....=P
And the people who purchased it w/out knowing what they were getting into.
I'm sorry to say, but you guys bought one old graphics chipset with that original imac.
But, I do have a revision A imac, with a 60gig harddrive and 192 megs of ram, and the extra 4 megs of vid ram. It runs OS X server very nicely. But of course, server tasks have nothing to do with the graphics subsystem. so...
I got curious when I hit this thread, so I took a bunch of apple movie trailers that I had downloaded and compared the playback quality to my powerbook g4s and at the smaller resolutions it plays back decently...
although OS 9, was a lot smoother...
I had a Diamond Monster Sound Card for my PC. It only worked in win 95 and 98. MS didn't make drivers for it, and under win98 diamond dropped their support for it...there were better sound chipsets out by that time. Doh!
Hmm...I had a Rage Pro...and that thing was so friggin slow doing anytihng 3d (this was in 1998) that it wasn't worth it. I got the TNT when it came out, for my windows machine.
I also had a decent Pentium 75.... but that thing runs Windows 95 still, anything more for it, and it would die...
-----------------------------------
So what am i getting at? When you purchase something, do some research. See what the techies say about certain specs. Read up on it. See what you're getting into for the long haul. Know which promises can and can't be lived up to. know I got screwed with the Monster Sound.... =P
I know Windows 98, and NT support my Pentium 75, but I mean it has it's limits. it sticks with Win 95... Mac os 9 does the job too ;-) do you use your comptuer just to run the latest stuff, or to get work done. If you're like me, I'm still using 8.6 on one imac, os x server on another imac, os 9 on a pismo, and os x on a powerbook g4. win95 on a Pentium 75, and Win2k on my 1.4gig Athlon.
So, hopefully Apple or ATI will try to get Rage drivers made. But next time, don't trust everthing that comes at ya. Cause when the Rage II first came out, people knew it sucked at 3d, and had decent 2d performance....
Maybe you guys should petition apple for some drivers with 2d acceleration...It's a lot more feasible than 3d....
All in all, I hope you guys can move on...Bite the bullet and realize you have a crappy GPU. Now if you had Rage 128s or Radeons, or something and Apple said they weren't going to support it... well, then that' s a totally different story.</strong><hr></blockquote>
A fresh new Apple Apologist (TM) with the same old bull shit arguments. This one falls under the "blame the user" category.
Comments
<strong>
[QUOTE]Originally posted by TheRoadWarrior:
[QB]Ironically, ATI supports the same chipsets in XP that are not being further supported by Apple in OS X.
Thanks, but I guess your prior post made my question moot.
In case you are at all interested in what I was looking at, it is here
<a href="http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/ubb/Forum7/HTML/000207.html"; target="_blank">http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/ubb/Forum7/HTML/000207.html </a>
not that it matters anymore.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
It does, since the driver pointed to by TheRoadWarrior does *not* support OpenGL.
[quote]<strong>
So, Wintel uses DirectX or OpenGL. Of OS X only has to support OpenGL, it would seem that, on the surface, Apple should have an easier time in that, as suppliers of hardware and software, in ensuring proper support for their graphics. Is that the obvious conclusion, or am I missing something?</strong><hr></blockquote>
No, basically that's true, but I'm still sceptical if "supports DirectX 8.1" in that webpage actually includes proper HW-accelerated Direct3D support, or whether it merely means "works with DirectX 8.1" (Direct3D has a software emulation layer too, you know) - especially given the fact that two of the chips this specific driver is supposed to support (the Mach64 ones) don't even have any 3D hardware at all.
Bye,
RazzFazz
<strong>The reason for DirectX's superiority over OpenGL is that DirectX encompasses more than just 3d...it includes 2D and sound/music/audio as well.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Networking too. But at least the sound part is handled pretty gracefully in OS X - CoreAudio is in many ways superior to DirectSound.
[quote]<strong>This is a major reason why DVD playback on a PC is far superior to DVD playback on a Mac as it latches into the hardware abstraction layer created by DirectX.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Is that true? ATi chips have pretty good video/DVD acceleration features (motion compensation, iDCT, ...) - are they just left unused in OS X?
[quote]<strong>
In fact, typically, DVD playback on a Mac takes twice the processing time as it does on a PC, regardless of CPU speed.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Sure sounds like they are
[quote]<strong>
How does this relate? Apple needs to work on something similar to DirectX for the Mac. That one set of APIs has done wonders for game development, in addition to giving video card manufacturers some other option besides Open GL.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, there are other, more platform-independent such APIs (OpenML, e.g.), but IIRC most of them are still in the developmental stage.
[quote]<strong>
And, DirectX is backwards compatible, which is why "ancient" chipsets are easy to support in a new OS like XP.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
This doesn't have much to do with DirectX being backwards-compatible - you still have to write the drivers according to the target OS' driver architecture (which is different between Win9x and WinNT/2k/XP).
Bye,
RazzFazz
<strong>BTW, that's an interesting debate, but, Open GL is supported in XP, otherwise, I couldn't play Quake III, RTCW, or Medal of Honor: Allied Assault in XP.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
On a RagePro?
Or do you mean generally? In that case, I don't think anyone would disagree with that.
[quote]<strong>
Likely the complainers' problems are that they are using generic Microsoft provided drivers for their video cards.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, WinXP still only supports OpenGL on cards that support it. Besides, as stated on the web-page you linked to, there are no other ones for the RagePro except for those provided on the WinXP CD.
[quote]<strong>They would see if that they installed proper drivers for their video card, the proper OpenGL driver would be installed, as does the "nvOpenGL.dll" file when installing the XP drivers for any Nvidia card.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Sure, but that required that such drivers for a given card exist in the first place, which does not seem to be the case with te RagePro.
Bye,
RazzFazz
<strong>
If you have OpenGL in XP you did not get it from Microsoft. Windows XP does not have OpenGL. You got it from a third party.</strong><hr></blockquote>
As far as I can tell, they do (\\windows\\system32\\opengl32.dll), but like in the previous versions of Windows, it's only the software renderer. Hardware renderers are provided by the video chip manufacturers.
Bye,
RazzFazz
<strong>
Well, you'll have to understand that Apple is primarily a *company*, and as such wants to (and actually is obliged to try to) make *money*. So, from an economical point of view, it might not be sensible to pay ATi enough money so they devote some of their crew to writing RagePro drivers (instead of any next-generation stuff that ATi is currently working on, which is of course much more profitable for ATi) just for idealistic reasons, "doesn't matter what little it may help."
Of course, from the morale point of view, somebody *should* provide those drivers, but we're talking about businesses here, and morale is rarely the top priority in that field.
Bye,
RazzFazz</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes but making the customers happy is a important part of the field. And when you don't have many people in the field in the first place.. ****ing over the customers isn't going to gain you squat.
<strong>
Now look at your own statement, and consider the fact that Apple is a business too, and as such their primary concern is making money too, as it is for all businesses. Customer satisfaction and reputation are essential and all, but still the main point in any business is to make money, and if the guys at Apple decide that having those drivers written will, summarized up, not be the economical way to go, well, then they probably won't spend their money on it, even though they might have the cash.
Bye,
RazzFazz</strong><hr></blockquote>
WEll that would be all fine and good if they didn't comment on the machines ability to be OS X ready. Apple has a reason to support these machines. And pretty soon Apple may have legal reasons they will have to support these machines. Either way It's a bad decision for Apple. It's wrong on their part and they will get run over the coals for it. Companies will see it and think "Do we really want to buy new Macs next time around?"
<strong>
This is *your* interpretation of the situation. You can call them Apologists as much as you want, but there are people who consider "is XY ready" to be synonymous with "can run XY".<hr></blockquote></strong>
Again I said either Apple was A. Lying or B. purposably trying to trick the consumers. Either way they are wrong.
[quote]<strong>
Thousands of computers have been branded "designed for Windows NT 4.0" or "ready for NT", yet NT4 never supported their power management facilities nor their USB ports (bith of which worked just fine in Win98).<hr></blockquote></strong>
And this justifies Apple doing it how?
[quote]<strong>And who is that guy to be able to tell you that?
<hr></blockquote></strong>
He would rather remain anonymous
[quote]<strong>
A *few*? Come on...
<hr></blockquote></strong>
A few on the Mac compared to what Windows has to support
[quote]<strong>
Sure, OpenGL is, and guess what, OpenGL is already in OS X. THe difficult part, the one we're talking about here, is not buzilding an OpenGL implementation, but about having that OpenGL implementation talk to and use a certain piece of hardware (i.e. the RagePro). This is what drivers are all about, and unfortunately, this is not openly standardized at all (in fact, it's not even standardized across one manufacturer's line of products).
<hr></blockquote></strong>
And again I have posted remedies for that. So that point is moot.
[quote]<strong>
Which would even be all but useless in source form, since OS 9 had a completely different driver model and OpenGL implementation from OS X.
<hr></blockquote></strong>
No it's not completely different. After all it's still Open GL.
[quote]<strong>
Well, depends on your definition of "unreasonable". In this thread, you have basically made clear that you feel Apple should be willing to pay as much as it takes to get those drivers written. Apple, on the other hadn, has to take economics into accoutn, so from a business point of view, there might be limits as to what is reasonable and what not.
<hr></blockquote></strong>
And the fault still lies with Apple. Apple should have looked into this before making the claims no? Yes I believe Apple should do whatever it takes to back up it's promises. Again. .are we not to be held responsible for our actions? It's going to cost more for lawyers than it probably would to get the drivers made.
[quote]<strong>
As stated before, this is just a business decision. If Apple feels like it's more economical for them to "screw" some of their customers than to spend money on having those RagePro drivers written, then, as a business, they will probably do just that. Customer satisfaction and reputation are important, but in the end, running a business is all about making money.
<hr></blockquote></strong>
And when you lose customer satisfaction and reputation there goes the business and there goes the money. Now which one is more important?
<strong>
So you don't agree 3 years is longer than 1 year?
Bye,
RazzFazz</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yeah the iBook was not even a year old when OS X came out.
A compute company not even support their own computer that isn't even one years old.
I'd be ashamed.
Apple ****ed up BIG TIME. ANd now they think all their MW hype is going to save them from people getting mad. That only works on the zealots.. and they don't get mad no matter how bad Apple screws them. They just ask for more.
<strong>You know what's sad? That a bunch of Linux hackers can write drivers for the Rage Pro with little (or no) help from ATi or Apple and the ****ing company that soldered the GPU in the the freaking motherboard can't.</strong><hr></blockquote>
<strong>
Yes but making the customers happy is a important part of the field. And when you don't have many people in the field in the first place.. ****ing over the customers isn't going to gain you squat.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, sure, but I guess the guys at Apple will problably know that too. And since they still decided act like they do, I suppose they have some kind of a reason for doing so (other than just screwing customers for the sake of it).
So, what do you think, why did Apple decide like they did, knowing they'd make some customers pretty unhappy to say the least?
Bye,
RazzFazz
<strong>Companies will see it and think "Do we really want to buy new Macs next time around?"</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, especially for companies, the whole affair isn't really that much of a deal - in regards to office work, the iMac in question *is* (given enough RAM) "OS X ready".
Bye,
RazzFazz
<strong>
Again I said either Apple was A. Lying or B. purposably trying to trick the consumers. Either way they are wrong.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes, *you* said so. As I said above, this is *your* opinion, you're free to have it, just don't expect everyone else to share it.
[quote]<strong>
And this justifies Apple doing it how?
</strong><hr></blockquote>
This was only intended to show that "XY ready" in the computer business does not always mean what you want it to mean.
[quote]<strong>
And again I have posted remedies for that. So that point is moot.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Oh, you did? Or are you just referring to "they could pay ATI"?
[quote]<strong>
No it's not completely different. After all it's still Open GL.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Still it's written for a different implementation. The driver would definitely not help much, since IOKit (OS X' driver model) is just *completely* different from any the ones found in OS 9, Linux, BSD, Windows, etc.
Go subscribe to the darwin development mailing list, and ask them how easy it would be to take the OS 9 driver and port it to OS X.
[quote]<strong>
It's going to cost more for lawyers than it probably would to get the drivers made.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well, we'll see if anyone actually consoders this issue important enough to take it to court. I don't think the "but they said OS X ready" approach alone would be sufficient to really get you far in a lawsuit (remember this is advertising we're talking about - how much of a chance would you give anyone trying to sue Apple because they called the G4 "the most powerful desktop computer in the world"?).
[quote]<strong>
And when you lose customer satisfaction and reputation there goes the business and there goes the money. Now which one is more important?</strong><hr></blockquote>
When it's only a small percentage of the customers, I don't see the business going down because of it. (And despite your claims of "millions of machines", there only seem to be a couple of hundred people at most who feel cheated by Apple and sign petitions.)
Bye,
RazzFazz
<strong>
Yeah the iBook was not even a year old when OS X came out.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
I don't think the public beta counts here, since it actually didn't work very decently (let alone supported everything) on *any* machine.
Bye,
RazzFazz
<strong>
<strong>You know what's sad? That a bunch of Linux hackers can write drivers for the Rage Pro with little (or no) help from ATi</strong><hr></blockquote>
Thanks again for something else to consider. So, I guess this answers my question to Road Warrior, since we have open source examples.
I don't have a Rage Pro and apparently don't do things that need the support you guys are talking about. I've read "the Rage Pro drivers are there" and "yeah, but they don't do anything". So, in your experience, these drivers do nothing at all? They are just placeholders for some project that (I think RoadWarrior speculated) fell off the to-do list?
And related to the first paragraph, is there a "degree of support"? Since, apparently, most people are satisfied with the OpenGL support in OS 9 (are they completely satisfied?), do you know how the Linux driver support compares? Better? The same? Not as good?
Thanks for your perspective. It is much appreciated.
The sides in this discussion may be black and white, but I think we can learn from the grey stuff, too.
Whether or not there is a successful lawsuit against Apple, that doesn't guarantee that the plaintiffs will be completely happy with the outcome, and maybe someone here will use the information to come up with a third-party solution.
Hmm....Well, if I remember correctly ( correct me if I'm wrong) the Rage IIs were out since 97, or maybe as far back as 96....
That's a good 5 maybe 6 years ago...
And for Apple to use an almost 1 year old maybe 2? year old chipset in their imac when it came out in 1998. tsk tsk tsk.....=P
And the people who purchased it w/out knowing what they were getting into.
I'm sorry to say, but you guys bought one old graphics chipset with that original imac.
But, I do have a revision A imac, with a 60gig harddrive and 192 megs of ram, and the extra 4 megs of vid ram. It runs OS X server very nicely. But of course, server tasks have nothing to do with the graphics subsystem. so...
I got curious when I hit this thread, so I took a bunch of apple movie trailers that I had downloaded and compared the playback quality to my powerbook g4s and at the smaller resolutions it plays back decently...
although OS 9, was a lot smoother...
I had a Diamond Monster Sound Card for my PC. It only worked in win 95 and 98. MS didn't make drivers for it, and under win98 diamond dropped their support for it...there were better sound chipsets out by that time. Doh!
Hmm...I had a Rage Pro...and that thing was so friggin slow doing anytihng 3d (this was in 1998) that it wasn't worth it. I got the TNT when it came out, for my windows machine.
I also had a decent Pentium 75.... but that thing runs Windows 95 still, anything more for it, and it would die...
-----------------------------------
So what am i getting at? When you purchase something, do some research. See what the techies say about certain specs. Read up on it. See what you're getting into for the long haul. Know which promises can and can't be lived up to. know I got screwed with the Monster Sound.... =P
I know Windows 98, and NT support my Pentium 75, but I mean it has it's limits. it sticks with Win 95... Mac os 9 does the job too ;-) do you use your comptuer just to run the latest stuff, or to get work done. If you're like me, I'm still using 8.6 on one imac, os x server on another imac, os 9 on a pismo, and os x on a powerbook g4. win95 on a Pentium 75, and Win2k on my 1.4gig Athlon.
So, hopefully Apple or ATI will try to get Rage drivers made. But next time, don't trust everthing that comes at ya. Cause when the Rage II first came out, people knew it sucked at 3d, and had decent 2d performance....
Maybe you guys should petition apple for some drivers with 2d acceleration...It's a lot more feasible than 3d....
All in all, I hope you guys can move on...Bite the bullet and realize you have a crappy GPU. Now if you had Rage 128s or Radeons, or something and Apple said they weren't going to support it... well, then that' s a totally different story.
(Eavesdropping on this forum:
<a href="http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/ubb/Forum4/HTML/000514.html)" target="_blank">http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/ubb/Forum4/HTML/000514.htm l)</a>
"do you know *why* ati has revealed their sources? because even their winXX drivers were not as good as they should. so, ati won'"t stop developing drivers, but benefit from ideas and code by lots of volunteer open source programmers."
"Well, to ATI's drivers: why are ATI's drivers (even windows drivers) not-so-good? I don't think the reason for this is that ATI's driver developers are stupid people that cannot write drivers, but maybe the driver developers team is just too small? I have nothing against ATI releasing the specs, but IMO it would be better to hire more driver developers."
"ati: they didn't reduce their number of driver-developers, but increased it. they really *have* to write proper drivers, else they are lost. for example: ati's radeon 8500 has far higher polygon fillrates and bandwidth than geforce3. but ati drivers are far worse than nvidia drivers. why, would you ask. i don't know either, but i'd guess they are really more competent or do have more experience, though nvidia founders have been at sgi before (as far as i know)."
But strangely, these contributors also say ATi does release the chip specifications by NVIDIA does not. That's the opposite from what I thought I understood from the Apple and NVIDIA sites.
(Added another topic)
Uh Oh. This doesn't look very encouraging. Another contributor running Linux complained about very slow 3D game performance using a Rage Pro. Recommendation: Lower the color depth.
<a href="http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/ubb/Forum4/HTML/000517.html"; target="_blank">http://www.opengl.org/discussion_boards/ubb/Forum4/HTML/000517.html </a>
[ 01-05-2002: Message edited by: Skipjack ]</p>
<strong>Phew...9 pages of this stuff...
Hmm....Well, if I remember correctly ( correct me if I'm wrong) the Rage IIs were out since 97, or maybe as far back as 96....
That's a good 5 maybe 6 years ago...
And for Apple to use an almost 1 year old maybe 2? year old chipset in their imac when it came out in 1998. tsk tsk tsk.....=P
And the people who purchased it w/out knowing what they were getting into.
I'm sorry to say, but you guys bought one old graphics chipset with that original imac.
But, I do have a revision A imac, with a 60gig harddrive and 192 megs of ram, and the extra 4 megs of vid ram. It runs OS X server very nicely. But of course, server tasks have nothing to do with the graphics subsystem. so...
I got curious when I hit this thread, so I took a bunch of apple movie trailers that I had downloaded and compared the playback quality to my powerbook g4s and at the smaller resolutions it plays back decently...
although OS 9, was a lot smoother...
I had a Diamond Monster Sound Card for my PC. It only worked in win 95 and 98. MS didn't make drivers for it, and under win98 diamond dropped their support for it...there were better sound chipsets out by that time. Doh!
Hmm...I had a Rage Pro...and that thing was so friggin slow doing anytihng 3d (this was in 1998) that it wasn't worth it. I got the TNT when it came out, for my windows machine.
I also had a decent Pentium 75.... but that thing runs Windows 95 still, anything more for it, and it would die...
-----------------------------------
So what am i getting at? When you purchase something, do some research. See what the techies say about certain specs. Read up on it. See what you're getting into for the long haul. Know which promises can and can't be lived up to. know I got screwed with the Monster Sound.... =P
I know Windows 98, and NT support my Pentium 75, but I mean it has it's limits. it sticks with Win 95... Mac os 9 does the job too ;-) do you use your comptuer just to run the latest stuff, or to get work done. If you're like me, I'm still using 8.6 on one imac, os x server on another imac, os 9 on a pismo, and os x on a powerbook g4. win95 on a Pentium 75, and Win2k on my 1.4gig Athlon.
So, hopefully Apple or ATI will try to get Rage drivers made. But next time, don't trust everthing that comes at ya. Cause when the Rage II first came out, people knew it sucked at 3d, and had decent 2d performance....
Maybe you guys should petition apple for some drivers with 2d acceleration...It's a lot more feasible than 3d....
All in all, I hope you guys can move on...Bite the bullet and realize you have a crappy GPU. Now if you had Rage 128s or Radeons, or something and Apple said they weren't going to support it... well, then that' s a totally different story.</strong><hr></blockquote>
A fresh new Apple Apologist (TM) with the same old bull shit arguments. This one falls under the "blame the user" category.