how to get os x rebate for g3's?
there was a class action lawsuit that the people won, where apple will allow owners of some (all?) g3 macs to return their copy of os x for a full refund. i think i qualify with my pismo. but i have been unable to find how to claim this refund. does anyone know anything about this? can i just bring it to the store?
Comments
Looks like it's getting at slightly older machines, probably Lombards which have 8 MB Rage Pro graphics. Lombard PowerBooks are especially affected because some have an onboard DVD decoder that Apple doesn't support for DVD playback under OS X. However, the presence of a DVD decoder prevents OS X's software decoder from kicking in. The fact that they haven't remedied this is just laughable. Also, the Rage Pro graphics on Lombards isn't hardware accelerated even though it could be with a simple driver, so movie playback is horrible.
This affects basically all Macs with less than Rage 128 graphics. I'm pretty sure OS X is hardware accelerated for Rage 128s (different from Quartz Extreme). That means that Lombards, rev. A-B iBooks, and rev. A-D iMacs are going to suffer a major performance hit. Those are the only models with less than Rage 128 graphics supported under 10.3. But anything older that's still a G3 is also affected. I think the lawsuit must cover other things as well, but I can see why it's happening - unlike simple things, like certain animations where a non-QE enabled graphics card just can't handle it, there are some things that have been deliberately left out of OS X even though they would be very easy to support.
It's one thing for Apple to promote sales of new machines by putting a premium on expandability or by cutting off support for some older models... that's just their marketing strategy. But they are deliberately breaking support for a number of features they included on their computers, features the buyer paid for. If I bought a PowerBook in 1999 and I knew that I wouldn't be able to play DVDs in two years, would I have laid down the extra money for a DVD-ROM drive? Maybe not.