i doubt many would consider it "superior", that wasn't apple's intent, their intent was to make it proprietary so they could sell more monitors, it had nothing to do with making things better for anyone outside of apple corporate and the stock holders. there are adapters available of course, fortunately mac's are a big enough market share that adapters are available. frankly, apple's constant attempts to control the peripheral market is really annoying to many of us loyal mac users. many of apple's custom ideas are a giant step backwards, take for instance the hdi45 connector on some of the early power macs. it's great to have everything available on one connector, but for anyone who didn't buy a brand new monitor it just forced them to buy a rather expensive adapter, and the connector apple chose isn't really even appropriate for video in several ways.
constantly changing things for no reason other than to make things proprietary is obnoxious. as another example, take the "airport" modem slot in the g4 series, it's almost a pcmcia connector, apple changed it just enough to make it not pcmcia in an attempt to force people to buy their cards (which are other than pinout, identical to wireless modem cards others make for pcmcia slots), and they've stonewalled creative hardware developers that would love to have the pinout information to make adapters for standard pcmcia cards or to make other functionality available from the connector. as it is, the g4 i use has a slot in it i'll never use, and i'm a hardware kind of guy, i'd love to be able to make a card for that slot. this silly proprietary pinout also makes it impossible for a user to upgrade to other wireless lan standards when they become available. and since the security features on the apple airport card can't be changed, only apple can provide new cards when security enhancements are available. this prevents competition for airport cards, which are other wise compliant with industry standards and forces customers to deal with apple exclusively for thier wireless needs. it's bad business, and it's one of several mistakes apple has made in thier marketing. mac's are great, but apple has made some serious mistakes in both marketing and design, and in failing to support developers. apple also refuses to provide any information about the internal modem slot, though several companies have reverse engineered it any way. i'd like to be able to use that interface creatively as well, but no one is sharing thier documentation on it. from the apple developer note for the g4 "Note This developer note does not provide electrical or mechanical specifications for the modem slot." there is no good reason for this, by comparison developer notes for earlier apples detailed all of the slots, even the ones they didn't want outside developers to use, and this made possible many upgrade cards not available from apple. i truly love using a mac, but i'd really, really like more hardware information and it would be really, really nice if apple tried harder to support the many, many fine standards for things like lan card pinout like the pc industry does. [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Dear Colleagues, ------ > Is there any advantage to using Apple brand FPB's > over other manufacturers products. What has been your experience? Which of > the FPM's work best with Yosemite G3's. Apple has its own monitor connector > system. It is superior. ----------- -- "Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing." - Helen Keller, American Blind/Deaf Author & Lecturer... -- G-List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- We have Apple Refurbished Monitors in stock! | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> G-List list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml> Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/g-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Macintosh? Get free email and more at Applelinks! <http://www.applelinks.com>
