Forums | MacLife

yelowpunk wrote:

I remember the days of explaining the difference between big-endian and little-endian systems, and why are are mostly incompatible, although sometimes perfectly compatible with nothing but a firmware/rom/whatever flash.

But now that all Macs are running on Intel hardware, what's the issue? Is the open firmware bs keeping the cards at bay this time? Is there some kind of conspiracy against Mac game players, who are obviously more leet, to keep their framerates - and kill-to-death ratio - artificially low?

-Tim

The biggest issue now seems to be the lack of upgradeable Macs. Basically they're all AIOs with their video soldered in except for the MPs, so there's very little market for upgrade cards. One might guess the likely upgrade market isn't enough to justify tooling, marketing etc. esp. in light of the likely wrath of Steve, who almost certainly wouldn't like retail upgrade cards better than what you can buy from Apple; and as you know Macs tend to have a small range of models and options over time. He does love his Stevenotes. Helps marketing too; e.g. the MP entry still advertises

Graphics. The next generation.
Introducing all-new, high-end, blow-you-away graphics.

http://www.apple.com/macpro/

There's been a long-running debate in here about Apple offering an affordable, upgradable mid-tower.

NV and ATi won't anger Steve offering better-than-Apple cards when most of the money is in OEM design wins. I would guess that it also, at times, gets Steve a bargain on vidchips/cards and gives NV/ATi somewhere to sell obsolescent chips (e.g. the 3870 Mac & PC model came out just before the 4870 for PC).