I don't understand why this would lead Apple not to implement OpenGL though. It seems the only "problem" is that in some rare cases developers would have to make specific optimizations/changes to support that graphic chipset.
and I say to that, so what. if they have done it in the past why can't apple just implement the driver for basic things to work like they did in the past. we all know new games simply are to demanding for them so why should we expect new OpenGL features and everything to work on it? We are asking for basic hardware acceleration and there is no reason basic acceleration can not be implemented.
you're reasons also don't provide an xcuse as to why Apple won't write a Quicktime acceleration driver for these chipsets either. QT acceleration in the rage pro is identical to the rage 128. the radeon is the only one that is slightly different</strong><hr></blockquote>
How much do you really know about graphics, dude? Or system software? It seems awfully clear to me that you don't know much. Have you ever actually tried to code anything that uses a Rage2/Pro? Limited (and weird) blend modes, odd bugs, limited VRAM, no stencil buffer, limited frame buffer depths, odd texture restrictions, crappy performance, and probably a few other things I forget or never stumbled across.
The bottom line is that nobody is supporting these chipsets anymore. ATI doesn't, Microsoft doesn't, no PC vendor does (even ones that built it into their motherboards and did so fairly recently). Why should Apple be any different? If Apple does spend the effort and compromise their OpenGL implementation, and all the 3rd parties make sure that they work with it, then Apple will just fall behind the WIntel world (again) and that won't lead anywhere good, will it? Tranditionally they have bent over backward for older hardware, and that has cost them greatly. So get over it and move on. Move up to a machine with newer and far more capable graphics hardware -- it will last considerably longer than the Rage2/Pro. Those were early graphics chips that failed to provide basic functionality, which is why they've been abandoned. The geForce2 and later chips will have a much longer life. If you don't need these capabilities then your machine will run MacOSX just fine, if you do then you'll be infinitely happier with a more powerful machine.
Yes, Bitch to ATI, they are the root cause of the problem. Keep sending Apple email too, but don't hold your breath. And, yes I get my OS9 ATI card driver updates straight off the ATI site. They come earlier than the Apple rehash, when Apple releases an update at all (they are under no obligation to if it is not for a bug that shows up running on Apple hardware). So not all feature updates make it into the Apple releases anyway, only what Apple want's to spend time QA'ing.
You need to learn how the software world works. Both where to get stuff to make your machine work the way you want it to (which is different than just works) and political/business wise.</strong><hr></blockquote>
perhaps you should read the ATI update site. their driver updates are specifically for retail cards. of course they work on the bundled cards but they are written for and supported for the retail cards.
[quote]How much do you really know about graphics, dude? Or system software? It seems awfully clear to me that you don't know much. Have you ever actually tried to code anything that uses a Rage2/Pro? Limited (and weird) blend modes, odd bugs, limited VRAM, no stencil buffer, limited frame buffer depths, odd texture restrictions, crappy performance, and probably a few other things I forget or never stumbled across.<hr></blockquote>
No, I'm not a programmer. I don't know the technical reasons for these things. I never said I did. You don't have to fling an insult simply because you have not proven your point well.
[quote]
The bottom line is that nobody is supporting these chipsets anymore. ATI doesn't, Microsoft doesn't, no PC vendor does (even ones that built it into their motherboards and did so fairly recently). Why should Apple be any different?<hr></blockquote>
that's not true. there are STILL systems that ship with those chipsets. games still work on them, etc.
Apple should be different because they were selling a machine with a rage pro even AFTER OS X was released.
[quote]If Apple does spend the effort and compromise their OpenGL implementation, and all the 3rd parties make sure that they work with it, then Apple will just fall behind the WIntel world (again) and that won't lead anywhere good, will it? <hr></blockquote>
1.) Why would they have to compromise anything? and if they did compromise OpenGl on THOSE machines why would that affect the rest?
2.) who said all third parties had to make sure they work with it? no one is expecting new games or even current games to support this.
3.) I don't see how OpenGL or QT hardware acceleration for the rage pro is going to magically cause Apple to fall behind again (like they were ever even or ahead to beginwith )
[quote]Tranditionally they have bent over backward for older hardware, and that has cost them greatly.<hr></blockquote>
traditionally? care to provide some examples?
[quote]So get over it and move on. Move up to a machine with newer and far more capable graphics hardware -- it will last considerably longer than the Rage2/Pro.<hr></blockquote>
uh.. easy for you to say but someone who bought an iBook 466 in 2001 would likely think otherwise. nice to see you have deeppockets to replace machines every 10 months.
[quote]Those were early graphics chips that failed to provide basic functionality, which is why they've been abandoned. The geForce2 and later chips will have a much longer life.<hr></blockquote>
why? the geforce 2 doesn't have the advanced features of the Geforce 3. does that mean next year Apple is going to abondone Geforce 2s because supporting them would slow "enhancements" and make Apple 'fall behind" again?
[quote]If you don't need these capabilities then your machine will run MacOSX just fine, if you do then you'll be infinitely happier with a more powerful machine.<hr></blockquote>
OS X does not run just fine on these supported machines. it seems no optimizations have been made at all and even a basic thing like QT acceleration is not implemented
<strong>You don't have to fling an insult simply because you have not proven your point well.</strong><hr></blockquote>
How can I prove the point if you don't understand the proof?
[quote]
that's not true. there are STILL systems that ship with those chipsets. games still work on them, etc.
Apple should be different because they were selling a machine with a rage pro even AFTER OS X was released.
<hr></blockquote>
You can still find PC's with those chipsets as well (they go for a dime a dozen these days), but that doesn't mean they are supported in the latest system software and games.
[quote]
Why would they have to compromise anything? and if they did compromise OpenGl on THOSE machines why would that affect the rest?
<hr></blockquote>
OSX is one operating system. If the design of its OpenGL implementation has to be hacked to support the old chipsets, then its hacked on all machines. Software is not a perfect world -- design decisions and requirements have widespread and insidious effects.
[quote]
who said all third parties had to make sure they work with it? no one is expecting new games or even current games to support this.
<hr></blockquote>
If 3rd parties aren't going to support it then why should Apple? What's the point if no software will run on it anyhow? Little enough software is developed for Macs already, why make it harder? One of the great things about OSX is its promise to make development of software easier -- supporting backwards hardware makes it more difficult again.
[quote]
I don't see how OpenGL or QT hardware acceleration for the rage pro is going to magically cause Apple to fall behind again (like they were ever even or ahead to beginwith )
<hr></blockquote>
Apple had the most advanced GUI graphics engine on the desktop back before Win95 showed up. Support for old hardware back to the Mac128K was killing them until they finally starting cutting off machines. Supporting old apps prevented them from introducing decent 2D hardware acceleration. They had one of the first 3D accelerators in the desktop market, but lost any chance of a lead because they were non-standard. If they can have a standard OpenGL implementation that is fully compliant this will make writing 3D software for the Mac a much more simple and straightforward affair... as long as developers don't have to hack their code to support the old chipsets. And with a clean OpenGL implementation Apple doesn't have to worry about supporting all the hacks in place to make the old hardware work. Hacked code is hard to support, and harder to modify without breaking things.
[quote]
uh.. easy for you to say but someone who bought an iBook 466 in 2001 would likely think otherwise. nice to see you have deeppockets to replace machines every 10 months.
<hr></blockquote>
This is OpenGL we're talking about... 3D software. Even if it did work it wouldn't be usable for anything more than a slideshow. And movies only play if you drop your screen resolution, hardly the end of the world. If all of this really causes you grief, MacOS9 still works great. Probably a lot faster than MacOSX on that hardware too. My machine is 7 years old, I only replace machines about ever 6-8 years and I recognize that some new software isn't going to work on older hardware. And those graphics chips are old, regardless of when the machines holding them were built.
[quote]
why? the geforce 2 doesn't have the advanced features of the Geforce 3. does that mean next year Apple is going to abondone Geforce 2s because supporting them would slow "enhancements" and make Apple 'fall behind" again?
<hr></blockquote>
Because the geForce chipsets are OpenGL compliant.
[quote]
OS X does not run just fine on these supported machines. it seems no optimizations have been made at all and even a basic thing like QT acceleration is not implemented
<hr></blockquote>
The OSX graphics optimizations (even the simple 2D ones) require VRAM or the ability for the graphics chip to read data across the AGP bus from main memory. Those older chipsets cannot do this and thus cannot be accelerated under OSX. Yes they could probably hack up their OSX architecture to make it work, but then we'd have a hacked up OSX... and Apple needs to move forward, not be supporting yet another hacked up OS.
The geforce card are openGL compliant and they have the same driver : the detonator.
This is an important strategic point of the success of nvidia, nvidia don't loose is time and a precious amount of R&D investissement to program different driver for different card. All the geforce card share the same driver the detonator. So if there is an update for the geforce 3 or geforce 4 later, it will imply that there is an update for the geforce 2 mx either (even if the geforce 2 mx will not benefit all the new features of the next generation).
This is not the case of ATI which develop specific driver for his cards.
[quote]This is funny. Apple puts in a graphics card that's 3-4x better then the old one & 15" LCD, G4 700, for $1299 and people still complain. <hr></blockquote>
The old video chipset was such a pathetic joke it made Apple the laughing stock of the industry. Rage 128? It was slow in 1999, but they were too lazy and cheap to offer anything else for 3 years. Saying something is an improvement is not saying much.
Don't give me that "well, I saw these CompUSA computers for the same price with a crappy video chipset". We all know what CompUSA is like. Saying something is better than one of their junk machines isn't terribly difficult.
If someone goes to a PC vendor and asks for a nice chipset they can get one for very little.
If you go to Apple, they say "But you want to burn DVDs!"
"Ummmm, no, I don't actually."
Apple: "Yes, you do."
"No, seriously, I don't"
Apple: "We say you want to burn DVDs"
"Fine, but I relly don't want to burn DVDs, I can't even afford a digicam right now, to be honest."
Apple: "Then you shouldn't be one of our customers"
[quote]Apple had the most advanced GUI graphics engine on the desktop back before Win95 showed up. Support for old hardware back to the Mac128K was killing them until they finally starting cutting off machines. <hr></blockquote>
Supporting something that came out last year, or within 3 years is not ridiculous. Supporting something that came out during that time period after you promised to, is expected.
Apple has screwed another legion of users who spent their good money on a Mac.
I really hate to think what their track record will be with all these new iAppliances. People are gonna be pissed once they find their new Mac won't work with the appliance they spent all that extra money on just a few short years before.
Hell, I would have more faith in Microsoft supporting customers, and that's pretty sad. At least they don't arbitrarily cut support left and right.
[quote]They had one of the first 3D accelerators in the desktop market, but lost any chance of a lead because they were non-standard. <hr></blockquote>
Supporting something that came out last year, or within 3 years is not ridiculous. Supporting something that came out during that time period after you promised to, is expected.
Apple has screwed another legion of users who spent their good money on a Mac.
I really hate to think what their track record will be with all these new iAppliances. People are gonna be pissed once they find their new Mac won't work with the appliance they spent all that extra money on just a few short years before.
Hell, I would have more faith in Microsoft supporting customers, and that's pretty sad. At least they don't arbitrarily cut support left and right.
They lost the lead after they stopped caring.
3 years of the Rage 128? Please.
<hr></blockquote>
I won't argue about what they should have done -- I told them that when they first shipped the Rage2/Pro. That (and being stuck with the Rage128 for so long) was when they made their first mistake (er, on this topic anyhow). The second mistake was that they didn't tell the users up front that OpenGL wouldn't function under the new OS, which they would have known a long time ago if they'd cared. And now they seem to be just letting this issue fester -- but my point all along has been that they really don't have another choice as far as technical support for the old chipsets goes. Hack it off like a festering wound. They suddenly seem to be caring more about 3D and so they have a lot of catching up to do. Better late than never, I suppose.
If you bought a PC with a Rage2/Pro today you're not going to get any support for MS or ATI. That doesn't mean these are useless graphics chips either -- it just means you can't run 3D and movies on them. Believe it or not there are plenty of other uses for computers than that.
BTW: Apple lost the 3D market after they never followed up on their custom designed "Apple 3D accelerator". It was one of the very first desktop 3D chips on the market, and they just put it out there and watched it flop. I guess it got swept up in the fight to be profitable and only now is coming to the attention of Apple's upper management (well, last year anyhow when they announced the geForce3 ... but that didn't go anywhere).
If you bought a PC with a Rage2/Pro today you're not going to get any support for MS or ATI. That doesn't mean these are useless graphics chips either -- it just means you can't run 3D and movies on them. Believe it or not there are plenty of other uses for computers than that.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes and sometimes the lack of video 3 D acceleration is good argument to sell the machine.
When you see the busisness line of many great PC company you will see only crappy chipset. The major reason is not the prize, as you can supposed (basic 3 D chipset are not so expansive) , but it's the fact that your employees won't be able to spend their times playing games.
What i say seems strange, but see the busisness line : it's seems politicaly correct to have a very basic video chipset.
<strong>Ok folks I think there is a legitimate gripe here. This is one thing I hate with Apples consumer level machines. I don't think people realize how many more new mac users would pop up if the graphics cards were user upgradable. This is a major problem, even the towers had few choices untill recently. And don't give me the story that this card is good enough and most consumers dont play games thing, thats bull. Check out Wolfenstein, Quake3...and alot of games that are on the way soon. We can play them, but at reduced res and with all the candy off. The fastest thing to become outdated on my machine is the video card. This geforce2 card is already old. I own four macs right now, and one Athlon for gaming. Its too bad because I would love to play on my mac. I will be buying a new mac tower, wish they were upped at macworld, but thats because I know I will need to upgrade in the future ,...and the future comes fast nowadays. We need to look at this with an open mind. The iMac is great, even though it cant be upgraded, I still love it. But why cant something like the graphics card be upgraded. Its stupid.</strong><hr></blockquote>
i run a g3 450 with radeon pci 32mb ddr ... i think the pci version has ddr... i run rtcw@1024 with all candy on and get 30-40 fps... with it all off and low i get small bump... 45-55... g4 800 4x agp and 32ddr should handle it just fine- the current crop of games anyways with candy on and a med. resolution
<strong>Why are people discussing why apple will not support crappy outdated graphics cards instead of the graphics card of the new iMac?</strong><hr></blockquote>
good question , because i think many people where angry about the support of rage pro chips. So when they see this thread they remember it.
<strong>Why are people discussing why apple will not support crappy outdated graphics cards instead of the graphics card of the new iMac?</strong><hr></blockquote>
[quote]How can I prove the point if you don't understand the proof?<hr></blockquote>
I understand every word you type thank you and it certainly is not convincing of you just keep saying the same two things
1.) it would hold back the mac platform
2.) rage pros can't support a compliant open gl driver
[quote]You can still find PC's with those chipsets as well (they go for a dime a dozen these days), but that doesn't mean they are supported in the latest system software and games.<hr></blockquote>
sure they are.
[quote]OSX is one operating system. If the design of its OpenGL implementation has to be hacked to support the old chipsets, then its hacked on all machines. Software is not a perfect world -- design decisions and requirements have widespread and insidious effects.<hr></blockquote>
OpenGl is half of the puzzle. you have never came up with a reason for the lack of QT acceleration. apple doens't want to do either and combine both in their reasoning and answers. why?
I still don't see how a rage pro specific driver affects the rest of the supported mac lines and to say they haven't "hacked" other areas of the OS to support features is naive. they have done it elsewhere.
[quote]If 3rd parties aren't going to support it then why should Apple? What's the point if no software will run on it anyhow? Little enough software is developed for Macs already, why make it harder? One of the great things about OSX is its promise to make development of software easier -- supporting backwards hardware makes it more difficult again.<hr></blockquote>
difficult for what reason? why can't apple support something to play its own screensavers smoothly? or play a QT movie at full frame rate or play a basic game which only doesn't work because apple doesn't have the opengl driver for an iBook
[quote]Apple had the most advanced GUI graphics engine on the desktop back before Win95 showed up. Support for old hardware back to the Mac128K was killing them until they finally starting cutting off machines.<hr></blockquote>
support for the mac 128K ended with 7.0.1 and the 512K with 6.
life of FULL support for those machines was quite long. 10 years no? we're talking 1 year hardware that is available from the apple store when OS X is released not being fully supported.
it's a little different and your analogy is dumb
[quote]This is OpenGL we're talking about... 3D software. Even if it did work it wouldn't be usable for anything more than a slideshow. And movies only play if you drop your screen resolution, hardly the end of the world. If all of this really causes you grief, MacOS9 still works great. Probably a lot faster than MacOSX on that hardware too. My machine is 7 years old, I only replace machines about ever 6-8 years and I recognize that some new software isn't going to work on older hardware. And those graphics chips are old, regardless of when the machines holding them were built.<hr></blockquote>
Why would OpenGL in OS X not be able to handle that? It handles that and more just fine in OS 9. OS X is suppose to be 30percent faster in OpenGL. If anything we would see better performance
[quote]Because the geForce chipsets are OpenGL compliant.<hr></blockquote>
so? so, what happens if Apple only wants to support cards with features present on the geforce 3 and radeon 8500 in a few years or the open gl spec changes?
[quote]The OSX graphics optimizations (even the simple 2D ones) require VRAM or the ability for the graphics chip to read data across the AGP bus from main memory. Those older chipsets cannot do this and thus cannot be accelerated under OSX. Yes they could probably hack up their OSX architecture to make it work, but then we'd have a hacked up OSX... and Apple needs to move forward, not be supporting yet another hacked up OS.<hr></blockquote>
nothing to hack. Apple has already implemented window compression to free up RAM especially for these machines. 6 MB of VRAM should be enough for an OS, no? MS Train Simulator a 3d game heavy on polygons only requires 4MB of VRAM to work.
[quote]Actually, there are only two on this thread who seem angry about it, any guesses? Looks like a very vocal micro-minority on this issue to me. <hr></blockquote>
perhaps you should take a look at Apple's support servers where there were threads with 500+ people responding against this lack of support. Apple thought it was "neccessary" to delete the threads because there was such an overwhelming negative response and now bans or warns people who post anything about it.
This is only speculation. But perhaps the reasoning of the person(s) who made the decision regarding the Rage Pro; was that the Mac OS X capable machines that shipped with the Rage Pro aren't that fast (ie: you wouldn't want to run Mac OS X on them). The majority of people with the first gen iMacs, and iBooks, and Beige G3s aren't running Mac OS X.
Granted, yourself, and many others on these boards are technically astute and put up with Mac OS X's current deficiencies. But the majority of the Mac buying public with older machines will not be running Mac OS X. Most people use the OS that comes with their machine and never upgrade.
So when time came to decide what would Engineering spend their time on for the next release of Mac OS X, Rage Pro support may not have been very high on the list.
This is NOT an official statement from Apple (I don't want to see it on MacNN tomorrow ). Consider it a statement of a fellow Mac user, who just happens to work there and has access to a bit more information. And my sincere apologies if I have offended anyone here with a Rage Pro machine. <hr></blockquote>
seems more like apple being stingy on resource allocation than not wanting to "hack" OpenGL.
2.) rage pros can't support a compliant open gl driver
<hr></blockquote>
Yes, due to a bunch of missing hardware features.
The Rage/Rage2/Pro aren't supported by DirectX8.
[quote]OpenGl is half of the puzzle. you have never came up with a reason for the lack of QT acceleration. apple doens't want to do either and combine both in their reasoning and answers. why?
<hr></blockquote>
The YUV overlay support in the Rage series has to come out of VRAM (it doesn't support AGP reads). On low VRAM machines there isn't space for both the frame buffer and the overlay. In addition there can be only one overlay at a time. At lower resolutions it works, right? There are also some overlay size and shape constraints that I can't remember the details of.
[quote]I still don't see how a rage pro specific driver affects the rest of the supported mac lines and to say they haven't "hacked" other areas of the OS to support features is naive. they have done it elsewhere.
<hr></blockquote>
I didn't say they hadn't hacked other areas, but the more they do it the bigger the mess. The OpenGL architecture will be fixed regardless of the driver in use. If the driver interface has to be changed for the older chips to make it work, then all drivers have to support the change. If the change has bad implications then the bad implications will affect all drivers.
[quote]
difficult for what reason? why can't apple support something to play its own screensavers smoothly? or play a QT movie at full frame rate or play a basic game which only doesn't work because apple doesn't have the opengl driver for an iBook
<hr></blockquote>
I've already said several times that the hardware is missing certain features and other features behave strangely.
[quote]
it's a little different and your analogy is dumb
<hr></blockquote>
Its not dumb, it was chosen because it was deliberately extreme. How long after the Mac128K support was killed was the MacClassic support killed? Its supported lifespan was a lot shorter because Apple realized it just couldn't afford to keep bending over backwards for so long.
[quote]
Why would OpenGL in OS X not be able to handle that? It handles that and more just fine in OS 9. OS X is suppose to be 30percent faster in OpenGL. If anything we would see better performance
<hr></blockquote>
Well the fundamental reason is because OSX insulates applications from the hardware (that's where the stability and robustness come from), and shares the hardware resources between applications (that's where the multi-tasking comes from). There is a cost to doing this. I also expect they want to guarantee to OSX developers that the OSX OpenGL implementation is 100% compliant so that they don't have to worry about it.
[quote]
so? so, what happens if Apple only wants to support cards with features present on the geforce 3 and radeon 8500 in a few years or the open gl spec changes?
<hr></blockquote>
OpenGL compliance is well defined and has been for most of the last decade. Going forward the ARB will maintain backward compatibility for the benefit of both hardware and software. The problem with the old chips is that they don't even make the minimum bar -- Apple wasn't even using OpenGL when they adopted the Rage chips. Why they didn't switch to at least the Rage128 as soon ATI could build it in sufficient numbers, I'll never understand... but then my view of the world is pretty 3D-centric. I'm sure there were cost & contract reasons that make sense to the bean counters.
[quote]nothing to hack. Apple has already implemented window compression to free up RAM especially for these machines. 6 MB of VRAM should be enough for an OS, no? MS Train Simulator a 3d game heavy on polygons only requires 4MB of VRAM to work.
<hr></blockquote>
I don't know what this "window compression" is, but these hardware chips don't have any sort of decompression capabilities so whatever they are doing is on the CPU and doesn't affect VRAM (except in what they choose to put in VRAM). I'm not privvy to the details of how Apple's OpenGL manages VRAM (nor anything else, for that matter) so I can't answer that directly. There are numerous things that could be a source of problems for them though -- e.g. I seem to recall that the hardware is unable to render into a 32-bit buffer (16-bit only). Lack of a stencil buffer, texture formats, limited Z-buffer precision, non-perspective correct texturing, limited alpha blending capability, etc.
Also realize that if OSX uses some VRAM for its own purposes then no app can use that VRAM. If the OSX display architecture used 4 megs, for example, then your game which needs 4 megs might have a problem running on a machine with only 6 megs of VRAM.
If Apple did turn around an implement a driver for these chips, and it ran 25% of the software at 25% of the (already slow) speed... what good would it do you? It would be a wasted effort on their part, and would perpetuate the support problems for these chips into the new OS. And these chips are a support problem -- either they have to be coded for specifically, or the customer support line has to deal with irate customers calling to complain about why product XYZ doesn't run on their machine. Rather than forcing that on all the 3rd parties, Apple is taking the brunt of it directly.
You also seem to think it would be trivial to write a driver for these chips. Its not. If it were then there wouldn't be continuous serious complaints about the drivers for all graphics chip vendors (PC & Mac). They do have smart, capable engineers working for them -- writing a 3D driver for a graphics chip is not a trivial problem, it is quite complex. Making one that works acceptably with any application on old, slow hardware that is missing required capabilities can be impossible. At the very least it is not worth the effort, especially since the results would generate just as many complaints as not doing anything! And Apple isn't going to trot out the source code and NDA-protected documentation to prove to you why its a problem.
[quote]
perhaps you should take a look at Apple's support servers where there were threads with 500+ people responding against this lack of support. Apple thought it was "neccessary" to delete the threads because there was such an overwhelming negative response and now bans or warns people who post anything about it.
<hr></blockquote>
Technical issues aside, Apple's handling of it has been poor. There have been issues like it before, and there will be issues like it in the future. It not even something that only Apple does... not even close! Many technology companies abandon their customers far sooner than those customers would like. They haven't taken any functionality away from you that you were already using, however, and promises (especially implied ones) of future functionality should always be taken with a grain of salt. A big grain.
Hmmm, something over 500 total posts out of an installed base well over 6 million units (iMac + WallStreet + iBook). That's on the order of .0083% Yes, the decimal place is in the right spot. You described the situation perfectly in your last sentence. I guess I am an ass for not bowing to lack of reason from someone who is complaining about their perfectly good machine. At least I don't resort to 12 year old behavior over it. Grow up.</strong><hr></blockquote>
500 posts out of how many that participate or even know about an apple support discussion server. 500 including many that represent dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of computers like some of the educational tech coordinators posted about lack of support for the macs they have district wide (amounfting to thousands). you really are close minded sir.
[quote]Yes, due to a bunch of missing hardware features.
The Rage/Rage2/Pro aren't supported by DirectX8.<hr></blockquote>
thank you, that's the info I have been asking for.
[quote]The YUV overlay support in the Rage series has to come out of VRAM (it doesn't support AGP reads). On low VRAM machines there isn't space for both the frame buffer and the overlay. In addition there can be only one overlay at a time. At lower resolutions it works, right? There are also some overlay size and shape constraints that I can't remember the details of.<hr></blockquote>
low resolutions are no different. there is no driver. performance is poor at all resolutions. a bit better at 640 x 480 I guess.
6 MB isn't enough for this? then wouldn't 8 MBs fill up quickly with a DVD?
[quote]Well the fundamental reason is because OSX insulates applications from the hardware (that's where the stability and robustness come from), and shares the hardware resources between applications (that's where the multi-tasking comes from). There is a cost to doing this. I also expect they want to guarantee to OSX developers that the OSX OpenGL implementation is 100% compliant so that they don't have to worry about it.<hr></blockquote>
that could be but I don't understand why a specific "hack" could not be made for the older machines without affecting new machines? why can't the two be completely seperate and then it would be up to developers to support those machines like it is now in OS 9?
Thank you for "putting up" with me. I know it can be a task
Comments
<strong>
I don't understand why this would lead Apple not to implement OpenGL though. It seems the only "problem" is that in some rare cases developers would have to make specific optimizations/changes to support that graphic chipset.
and I say to that, so what. if they have done it in the past why can't apple just implement the driver for basic things to work like they did in the past. we all know new games simply are to demanding for them so why should we expect new OpenGL features and everything to work on it? We are asking for basic hardware acceleration and there is no reason basic acceleration can not be implemented.
you're reasons also don't provide an xcuse as to why Apple won't write a Quicktime acceleration driver for these chipsets either. QT acceleration in the rage pro is identical to the rage 128. the radeon is the only one that is slightly different</strong><hr></blockquote>
How much do you really know about graphics, dude? Or system software? It seems awfully clear to me that you don't know much. Have you ever actually tried to code anything that uses a Rage2/Pro? Limited (and weird) blend modes, odd bugs, limited VRAM, no stencil buffer, limited frame buffer depths, odd texture restrictions, crappy performance, and probably a few other things I forget or never stumbled across.
The bottom line is that nobody is supporting these chipsets anymore. ATI doesn't, Microsoft doesn't, no PC vendor does (even ones that built it into their motherboards and did so fairly recently). Why should Apple be any different? If Apple does spend the effort and compromise their OpenGL implementation, and all the 3rd parties make sure that they work with it, then Apple will just fall behind the WIntel world (again) and that won't lead anywhere good, will it? Tranditionally they have bent over backward for older hardware, and that has cost them greatly. So get over it and move on. Move up to a machine with newer and far more capable graphics hardware -- it will last considerably longer than the Rage2/Pro. Those were early graphics chips that failed to provide basic functionality, which is why they've been abandoned. The geForce2 and later chips will have a much longer life. If you don't need these capabilities then your machine will run MacOSX just fine, if you do then you'll be infinitely happier with a more powerful machine.
<strong>
Yes, Bitch to ATI, they are the root cause of the problem. Keep sending Apple email too, but don't hold your breath. And, yes I get my OS9 ATI card driver updates straight off the ATI site. They come earlier than the Apple rehash, when Apple releases an update at all (they are under no obligation to if it is not for a bug that shows up running on Apple hardware). So not all feature updates make it into the Apple releases anyway, only what Apple want's to spend time QA'ing.
You need to learn how the software world works. Both where to get stuff to make your machine work the way you want it to (which is different than just works) and political/business wise.</strong><hr></blockquote>
perhaps you should read the ATI update site. their driver updates are specifically for retail cards. of course they work on the bundled cards but they are written for and supported for the retail cards.
[quote]How much do you really know about graphics, dude? Or system software? It seems awfully clear to me that you don't know much. Have you ever actually tried to code anything that uses a Rage2/Pro? Limited (and weird) blend modes, odd bugs, limited VRAM, no stencil buffer, limited frame buffer depths, odd texture restrictions, crappy performance, and probably a few other things I forget or never stumbled across.<hr></blockquote>
No, I'm not a programmer. I don't know the technical reasons for these things. I never said I did. You don't have to fling an insult simply because you have not proven your point well.
[quote]
The bottom line is that nobody is supporting these chipsets anymore. ATI doesn't, Microsoft doesn't, no PC vendor does (even ones that built it into their motherboards and did so fairly recently). Why should Apple be any different?<hr></blockquote>
that's not true. there are STILL systems that ship with those chipsets. games still work on them, etc.
Apple should be different because they were selling a machine with a rage pro even AFTER OS X was released.
[quote]If Apple does spend the effort and compromise their OpenGL implementation, and all the 3rd parties make sure that they work with it, then Apple will just fall behind the WIntel world (again) and that won't lead anywhere good, will it? <hr></blockquote>
1.) Why would they have to compromise anything? and if they did compromise OpenGl on THOSE machines why would that affect the rest?
2.) who said all third parties had to make sure they work with it? no one is expecting new games or even current games to support this.
3.) I don't see how OpenGL or QT hardware acceleration for the rage pro is going to magically cause Apple to fall behind again (like they were ever even or ahead to beginwith
[quote]Tranditionally they have bent over backward for older hardware, and that has cost them greatly.<hr></blockquote>
traditionally? care to provide some examples?
[quote]So get over it and move on. Move up to a machine with newer and far more capable graphics hardware -- it will last considerably longer than the Rage2/Pro.<hr></blockquote>
uh.. easy for you to say but someone who bought an iBook 466 in 2001 would likely think otherwise. nice to see you have deeppockets to replace machines every 10 months.
[quote]Those were early graphics chips that failed to provide basic functionality, which is why they've been abandoned. The geForce2 and later chips will have a much longer life.<hr></blockquote>
why? the geforce 2 doesn't have the advanced features of the Geforce 3. does that mean next year Apple is going to abondone Geforce 2s because supporting them would slow "enhancements" and make Apple 'fall behind" again?
[quote]If you don't need these capabilities then your machine will run MacOSX just fine, if you do then you'll be infinitely happier with a more powerful machine.<hr></blockquote>
OS X does not run just fine on these supported machines. it seems no optimizations have been made at all and even a basic thing like QT acceleration is not implemented
<strong>You don't have to fling an insult simply because you have not proven your point well.</strong><hr></blockquote>
How can I prove the point if you don't understand the proof?
[quote]
that's not true. there are STILL systems that ship with those chipsets. games still work on them, etc.
Apple should be different because they were selling a machine with a rage pro even AFTER OS X was released.
<hr></blockquote>
You can still find PC's with those chipsets as well (they go for a dime a dozen these days), but that doesn't mean they are supported in the latest system software and games.
[quote]
Why would they have to compromise anything? and if they did compromise OpenGl on THOSE machines why would that affect the rest?
<hr></blockquote>
OSX is one operating system. If the design of its OpenGL implementation has to be hacked to support the old chipsets, then its hacked on all machines. Software is not a perfect world -- design decisions and requirements have widespread and insidious effects.
[quote]
who said all third parties had to make sure they work with it? no one is expecting new games or even current games to support this.
<hr></blockquote>
If 3rd parties aren't going to support it then why should Apple? What's the point if no software will run on it anyhow? Little enough software is developed for Macs already, why make it harder? One of the great things about OSX is its promise to make development of software easier -- supporting backwards hardware makes it more difficult again.
[quote]
I don't see how OpenGL or QT hardware acceleration for the rage pro is going to magically cause Apple to fall behind again (like they were ever even or ahead to beginwith )
<hr></blockquote>
Apple had the most advanced GUI graphics engine on the desktop back before Win95 showed up. Support for old hardware back to the Mac128K was killing them until they finally starting cutting off machines. Supporting old apps prevented them from introducing decent 2D hardware acceleration. They had one of the first 3D accelerators in the desktop market, but lost any chance of a lead because they were non-standard. If they can have a standard OpenGL implementation that is fully compliant this will make writing 3D software for the Mac a much more simple and straightforward affair... as long as developers don't have to hack their code to support the old chipsets. And with a clean OpenGL implementation Apple doesn't have to worry about supporting all the hacks in place to make the old hardware work. Hacked code is hard to support, and harder to modify without breaking things.
[quote]
uh.. easy for you to say but someone who bought an iBook 466 in 2001 would likely think otherwise. nice to see you have deeppockets to replace machines every 10 months.
<hr></blockquote>
This is OpenGL we're talking about... 3D software. Even if it did work it wouldn't be usable for anything more than a slideshow. And movies only play if you drop your screen resolution, hardly the end of the world. If all of this really causes you grief, MacOS9 still works great. Probably a lot faster than MacOSX on that hardware too. My machine is 7 years old, I only replace machines about ever 6-8 years and I recognize that some new software isn't going to work on older hardware. And those graphics chips are old, regardless of when the machines holding them were built.
[quote]
why? the geforce 2 doesn't have the advanced features of the Geforce 3. does that mean next year Apple is going to abondone Geforce 2s because supporting them would slow "enhancements" and make Apple 'fall behind" again?
<hr></blockquote>
Because the geForce chipsets are OpenGL compliant.
[quote]
OS X does not run just fine on these supported machines. it seems no optimizations have been made at all and even a basic thing like QT acceleration is not implemented
<hr></blockquote>
The OSX graphics optimizations (even the simple 2D ones) require VRAM or the ability for the graphics chip to read data across the AGP bus from main memory. Those older chipsets cannot do this and thus cannot be accelerated under OSX. Yes they could probably hack up their OSX architecture to make it work, but then we'd have a hacked up OSX... and Apple needs to move forward, not be supporting yet another hacked up OS.
This is an important strategic point of the success of nvidia, nvidia don't loose is time and a precious amount of R&D investissement to program different driver for different card. All the geforce card share the same driver the detonator. So if there is an update for the geforce 3 or geforce 4 later, it will imply that there is an update for the geforce 2 mx either (even if the geforce 2 mx will not benefit all the new features of the next generation).
This is not the case of ATI which develop specific driver for his cards.
The old video chipset was such a pathetic joke it made Apple the laughing stock of the industry. Rage 128? It was slow in 1999, but they were too lazy and cheap to offer anything else for 3 years. Saying something is an improvement is not saying much.
Don't give me that "well, I saw these CompUSA computers for the same price with a crappy video chipset". We all know what CompUSA is like. Saying something is better than one of their junk machines isn't terribly difficult.
If someone goes to a PC vendor and asks for a nice chipset they can get one for very little.
If you go to Apple, they say "But you want to burn DVDs!"
"Ummmm, no, I don't actually."
Apple: "Yes, you do."
"No, seriously, I don't"
Apple: "We say you want to burn DVDs"
"Fine, but I relly don't want to burn DVDs, I can't even afford a digicam right now, to be honest."
Apple: "Then you shouldn't be one of our customers"
[quote]Apple had the most advanced GUI graphics engine on the desktop back before Win95 showed up. Support for old hardware back to the Mac128K was killing them until they finally starting cutting off machines. <hr></blockquote>
Supporting something that came out last year, or within 3 years is not ridiculous. Supporting something that came out during that time period after you promised to, is expected.
Apple has screwed another legion of users who spent their good money on a Mac.
I really hate to think what their track record will be with all these new iAppliances. People are gonna be pissed once they find their new Mac won't work with the appliance they spent all that extra money on just a few short years before.
Hell, I would have more faith in Microsoft supporting customers, and that's pretty sad. At least they don't arbitrarily cut support left and right.
[quote]They had one of the first 3D accelerators in the desktop market, but lost any chance of a lead because they were non-standard. <hr></blockquote>
They lost the lead after they stopped caring.
3 years of the Rage 128? Please.
[ 01-16-2002: Message edited by: DoctorGonzo ]</p>
[QB]
Supporting something that came out last year, or within 3 years is not ridiculous. Supporting something that came out during that time period after you promised to, is expected.
Apple has screwed another legion of users who spent their good money on a Mac.
I really hate to think what their track record will be with all these new iAppliances. People are gonna be pissed once they find their new Mac won't work with the appliance they spent all that extra money on just a few short years before.
Hell, I would have more faith in Microsoft supporting customers, and that's pretty sad. At least they don't arbitrarily cut support left and right.
They lost the lead after they stopped caring.
3 years of the Rage 128? Please.
<hr></blockquote>
I won't argue about what they should have done -- I told them that when they first shipped the Rage2/Pro. That (and being stuck with the Rage128 for so long) was when they made their first mistake (er, on this topic anyhow). The second mistake was that they didn't tell the users up front that OpenGL wouldn't function under the new OS, which they would have known a long time ago if they'd cared. And now they seem to be just letting this issue fester -- but my point all along has been that they really don't have another choice as far as technical support for the old chipsets goes. Hack it off like a festering wound. They suddenly seem to be caring more about 3D and so they have a lot of catching up to do. Better late than never, I suppose.
If you bought a PC with a Rage2/Pro today you're not going to get any support for MS or ATI. That doesn't mean these are useless graphics chips either -- it just means you can't run 3D and movies on them. Believe it or not there are plenty of other uses for computers than that.
BTW: Apple lost the 3D market after they never followed up on their custom designed "Apple 3D accelerator". It was one of the very first desktop 3D chips on the market, and they just put it out there and watched it flop. I guess it got swept up in the fight to be profitable and only now is coming to the attention of Apple's upper management (well, last year anyhow when they announced the geForce3 ... but that didn't go anywhere).
<strong>
If you bought a PC with a Rage2/Pro today you're not going to get any support for MS or ATI. That doesn't mean these are useless graphics chips either -- it just means you can't run 3D and movies on them. Believe it or not there are plenty of other uses for computers than that.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
Yes and sometimes the lack of video 3 D acceleration is good argument to sell the machine.
When you see the busisness line of many great PC company you will see only crappy chipset. The major reason is not the prize, as you can supposed (basic 3 D chipset are not so expansive) , but it's the fact that your employees won't be able to spend their times playing games.
What i say seems strange, but see the busisness line : it's seems politicaly correct to have a very basic video chipset.
<strong>Ok folks I think there is a legitimate gripe here. This is one thing I hate with Apples consumer level machines. I don't think people realize how many more new mac users would pop up if the graphics cards were user upgradable. This is a major problem, even the towers had few choices untill recently. And don't give me the story that this card is good enough and most consumers dont play games thing, thats bull. Check out Wolfenstein, Quake3...and alot of games that are on the way soon. We can play them, but at reduced res and with all the candy off. The fastest thing to become outdated on my machine is the video card. This geforce2 card is already old. I own four macs right now, and one Athlon for gaming. Its too bad because I would love to play on my mac. I will be buying a new mac tower, wish they were upped at macworld, but thats because I know I will need to upgrade in the future ,...and the future comes fast nowadays. We need to look at this with an open mind. The iMac is great, even though it cant be upgraded, I still love it. But why cant something like the graphics card be upgraded. Its stupid.</strong><hr></blockquote>
i run a g3 450 with radeon pci 32mb ddr ... i think the pci version has ddr... i run rtcw@1024 with all candy on and get 30-40 fps... with it all off and low i get small bump... 45-55... g4 800 4x agp and 32ddr should handle it just fine- the current crop of games anyways with candy on and a med. resolution
<strong>Why are people discussing why apple will not support crappy outdated graphics cards instead of the graphics card of the new iMac?</strong><hr></blockquote>
good question , because i think many people where angry about the support of rage pro chips. So when they see this thread they remember it.
<strong>Why are people discussing why apple will not support crappy outdated graphics cards instead of the graphics card of the new iMac?</strong><hr></blockquote>
Because that's just how some people are.
I understand every word you type thank you and it certainly is not convincing of you just keep saying the same two things
1.) it would hold back the mac platform
2.) rage pros can't support a compliant open gl driver
[quote]You can still find PC's with those chipsets as well (they go for a dime a dozen these days), but that doesn't mean they are supported in the latest system software and games.<hr></blockquote>
sure they are.
[quote]OSX is one operating system. If the design of its OpenGL implementation has to be hacked to support the old chipsets, then its hacked on all machines. Software is not a perfect world -- design decisions and requirements have widespread and insidious effects.<hr></blockquote>
OpenGl is half of the puzzle. you have never came up with a reason for the lack of QT acceleration. apple doens't want to do either and combine both in their reasoning and answers. why?
I still don't see how a rage pro specific driver affects the rest of the supported mac lines and to say they haven't "hacked" other areas of the OS to support features is naive. they have done it elsewhere.
[quote]If 3rd parties aren't going to support it then why should Apple? What's the point if no software will run on it anyhow? Little enough software is developed for Macs already, why make it harder? One of the great things about OSX is its promise to make development of software easier -- supporting backwards hardware makes it more difficult again.<hr></blockquote>
difficult for what reason? why can't apple support something to play its own screensavers smoothly? or play a QT movie at full frame rate or play a basic game which only doesn't work because apple doesn't have the opengl driver for an iBook
[quote]Apple had the most advanced GUI graphics engine on the desktop back before Win95 showed up. Support for old hardware back to the Mac128K was killing them until they finally starting cutting off machines.<hr></blockquote>
support for the mac 128K ended with 7.0.1 and the 512K with 6.
life of FULL support for those machines was quite long. 10 years no? we're talking 1 year hardware that is available from the apple store when OS X is released not being fully supported.
it's a little different and your analogy is dumb
[quote]This is OpenGL we're talking about... 3D software. Even if it did work it wouldn't be usable for anything more than a slideshow. And movies only play if you drop your screen resolution, hardly the end of the world. If all of this really causes you grief, MacOS9 still works great. Probably a lot faster than MacOSX on that hardware too. My machine is 7 years old, I only replace machines about ever 6-8 years and I recognize that some new software isn't going to work on older hardware. And those graphics chips are old, regardless of when the machines holding them were built.<hr></blockquote>
Why would OpenGL in OS X not be able to handle that? It handles that and more just fine in OS 9. OS X is suppose to be 30percent faster in OpenGL. If anything we would see better performance
[quote]Because the geForce chipsets are OpenGL compliant.<hr></blockquote>
so? so, what happens if Apple only wants to support cards with features present on the geforce 3 and radeon 8500 in a few years or the open gl spec changes?
[quote]The OSX graphics optimizations (even the simple 2D ones) require VRAM or the ability for the graphics chip to read data across the AGP bus from main memory. Those older chipsets cannot do this and thus cannot be accelerated under OSX. Yes they could probably hack up their OSX architecture to make it work, but then we'd have a hacked up OSX... and Apple needs to move forward, not be supporting yet another hacked up OS.<hr></blockquote>
nothing to hack. Apple has already implemented window compression to free up RAM especially for these machines. 6 MB of VRAM should be enough for an OS, no? MS Train Simulator a 3d game heavy on polygons only requires 4MB of VRAM to work.
[quote]Actually, there are only two on this thread who seem angry about it, any guesses? Looks like a very vocal micro-minority on this issue to me. <hr></blockquote>
perhaps you should take a look at Apple's support servers where there were threads with 500+ people responding against this lack of support. Apple thought it was "neccessary" to delete the threads because there was such an overwhelming negative response and now bans or warns people who post anything about it.
but its just a vocal minority ass
This is only speculation. But perhaps the reasoning of the person(s) who made the decision regarding the Rage Pro; was that the Mac OS X capable machines that shipped with the Rage Pro aren't that fast (ie: you wouldn't want to run Mac OS X on them). The majority of people with the first gen iMacs, and iBooks, and Beige G3s aren't running Mac OS X.
Granted, yourself, and many others on these boards are technically astute and put up with Mac OS X's current deficiencies. But the majority of the Mac buying public with older machines will not be running Mac OS X. Most people use the OS that comes with their machine and never upgrade.
So when time came to decide what would Engineering spend their time on for the next release of Mac OS X, Rage Pro support may not have been very high on the list.
This is NOT an official statement from Apple (I don't want to see it on MacNN tomorrow ). Consider it a statement of a fellow Mac user, who just happens to work there and has access to a bit more information. And my sincere apologies if I have offended anyone here with a Rage Pro machine. <hr></blockquote>
seems more like apple being stingy on resource allocation than not wanting to "hack" OpenGL.
2.) rage pros can't support a compliant open gl driver
<hr></blockquote>
Yes, due to a bunch of missing hardware features.
The Rage/Rage2/Pro aren't supported by DirectX8.
[quote]OpenGl is half of the puzzle. you have never came up with a reason for the lack of QT acceleration. apple doens't want to do either and combine both in their reasoning and answers. why?
<hr></blockquote>
The YUV overlay support in the Rage series has to come out of VRAM (it doesn't support AGP reads). On low VRAM machines there isn't space for both the frame buffer and the overlay. In addition there can be only one overlay at a time. At lower resolutions it works, right? There are also some overlay size and shape constraints that I can't remember the details of.
[quote]I still don't see how a rage pro specific driver affects the rest of the supported mac lines and to say they haven't "hacked" other areas of the OS to support features is naive. they have done it elsewhere.
<hr></blockquote>
I didn't say they hadn't hacked other areas, but the more they do it the bigger the mess. The OpenGL architecture will be fixed regardless of the driver in use. If the driver interface has to be changed for the older chips to make it work, then all drivers have to support the change. If the change has bad implications then the bad implications will affect all drivers.
[quote]
difficult for what reason? why can't apple support something to play its own screensavers smoothly? or play a QT movie at full frame rate or play a basic game which only doesn't work because apple doesn't have the opengl driver for an iBook
<hr></blockquote>
I've already said several times that the hardware is missing certain features and other features behave strangely.
[quote]
it's a little different and your analogy is dumb
<hr></blockquote>
Its not dumb, it was chosen because it was deliberately extreme. How long after the Mac128K support was killed was the MacClassic support killed? Its supported lifespan was a lot shorter because Apple realized it just couldn't afford to keep bending over backwards for so long.
[quote]
Why would OpenGL in OS X not be able to handle that? It handles that and more just fine in OS 9. OS X is suppose to be 30percent faster in OpenGL. If anything we would see better performance
<hr></blockquote>
Well the fundamental reason is because OSX insulates applications from the hardware (that's where the stability and robustness come from), and shares the hardware resources between applications (that's where the multi-tasking comes from). There is a cost to doing this. I also expect they want to guarantee to OSX developers that the OSX OpenGL implementation is 100% compliant so that they don't have to worry about it.
[quote]
so? so, what happens if Apple only wants to support cards with features present on the geforce 3 and radeon 8500 in a few years or the open gl spec changes?
<hr></blockquote>
OpenGL compliance is well defined and has been for most of the last decade. Going forward the ARB will maintain backward compatibility for the benefit of both hardware and software. The problem with the old chips is that they don't even make the minimum bar -- Apple wasn't even using OpenGL when they adopted the Rage chips. Why they didn't switch to at least the Rage128 as soon ATI could build it in sufficient numbers, I'll never understand... but then my view of the world is pretty 3D-centric. I'm sure there were cost & contract reasons that make sense to the bean counters.
[quote]nothing to hack. Apple has already implemented window compression to free up RAM especially for these machines. 6 MB of VRAM should be enough for an OS, no? MS Train Simulator a 3d game heavy on polygons only requires 4MB of VRAM to work.
<hr></blockquote>
I don't know what this "window compression" is, but these hardware chips don't have any sort of decompression capabilities so whatever they are doing is on the CPU and doesn't affect VRAM (except in what they choose to put in VRAM). I'm not privvy to the details of how Apple's OpenGL manages VRAM (nor anything else, for that matter) so I can't answer that directly. There are numerous things that could be a source of problems for them though -- e.g. I seem to recall that the hardware is unable to render into a 32-bit buffer (16-bit only). Lack of a stencil buffer, texture formats, limited Z-buffer precision, non-perspective correct texturing, limited alpha blending capability, etc.
Also realize that if OSX uses some VRAM for its own purposes then no app can use that VRAM. If the OSX display architecture used 4 megs, for example, then your game which needs 4 megs might have a problem running on a machine with only 6 megs of VRAM.
If Apple did turn around an implement a driver for these chips, and it ran 25% of the software at 25% of the (already slow) speed... what good would it do you? It would be a wasted effort on their part, and would perpetuate the support problems for these chips into the new OS. And these chips are a support problem -- either they have to be coded for specifically, or the customer support line has to deal with irate customers calling to complain about why product XYZ doesn't run on their machine. Rather than forcing that on all the 3rd parties, Apple is taking the brunt of it directly.
You also seem to think it would be trivial to write a driver for these chips. Its not. If it were then there wouldn't be continuous serious complaints about the drivers for all graphics chip vendors (PC & Mac). They do have smart, capable engineers working for them -- writing a 3D driver for a graphics chip is not a trivial problem, it is quite complex. Making one that works acceptably with any application on old, slow hardware that is missing required capabilities can be impossible. At the very least it is not worth the effort, especially since the results would generate just as many complaints as not doing anything! And Apple isn't going to trot out the source code and NDA-protected documentation to prove to you why its a problem.
[quote]
perhaps you should take a look at Apple's support servers where there were threads with 500+ people responding against this lack of support. Apple thought it was "neccessary" to delete the threads because there was such an overwhelming negative response and now bans or warns people who post anything about it.
<hr></blockquote>
Technical issues aside, Apple's handling of it has been poor. There have been issues like it before, and there will be issues like it in the future. It not even something that only Apple does... not even close! Many technology companies abandon their customers far sooner than those customers would like. They haven't taken any functionality away from you that you were already using, however, and promises (especially implied ones) of future functionality should always be taken with a grain of salt. A big grain.
<strong>
Hmmm, something over 500 total posts out of an installed base well over 6 million units (iMac + WallStreet + iBook). That's on the order of .0083% Yes, the decimal place is in the right spot. You described the situation perfectly in your last sentence. I guess I am an ass for not bowing to lack of reason from someone who is complaining about their perfectly good machine. At least I don't resort to 12 year old behavior over it. Grow up.</strong><hr></blockquote>
500 posts out of how many that participate or even know about an apple support discussion server. 500 including many that represent dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of computers like some of the educational tech coordinators posted about lack of support for the macs they have district wide (amounfting to thousands). you really are close minded sir.
The Rage/Rage2/Pro aren't supported by DirectX8.<hr></blockquote>
thank you, that's the info I have been asking for.
[quote]The YUV overlay support in the Rage series has to come out of VRAM (it doesn't support AGP reads). On low VRAM machines there isn't space for both the frame buffer and the overlay. In addition there can be only one overlay at a time. At lower resolutions it works, right? There are also some overlay size and shape constraints that I can't remember the details of.<hr></blockquote>
low resolutions are no different. there is no driver. performance is poor at all resolutions. a bit better at 640 x 480 I guess.
6 MB isn't enough for this? then wouldn't 8 MBs fill up quickly with a DVD?
[quote]Well the fundamental reason is because OSX insulates applications from the hardware (that's where the stability and robustness come from), and shares the hardware resources between applications (that's where the multi-tasking comes from). There is a cost to doing this. I also expect they want to guarantee to OSX developers that the OSX OpenGL implementation is 100% compliant so that they don't have to worry about it.<hr></blockquote>
that could be but I don't understand why a specific "hack" could not be made for the older machines without affecting new machines? why can't the two be completely seperate and then it would be up to developers to support those machines like it is now in OS 9?
Thank you for "putting up" with me. I know it can be a task
You're last post was very helpful.