> > Motorola chose to use a third party CD Drive. Wait a minute, John. The OEM Apple drives are all third party drives. Apple buys them just like you and I might from the same manufacturer. Different makers at different times depending on pricing contracts, but still all are out-sourced. The difference perhaps likely is something in the firmware that enables the new Apple OS's to recognize them and then ignore those others if they haven't been Apple sanctified.
Everything in the hardware is usually the same. If I read the spec sheets of every drive ever put originally in an Mac, it will probably be the same as those used on other machines and platforms. There are some proprietary differences in the IBM world sometimes, but Mac held very closely to established standards. It was always smart of them to do that. ____________________ > For most of the cloning > period the cloners used a third party CD ROM driver, not the Apple > driver. It is up to Motorola, Umax, and the third party drive software > manufacturer to satisfy you, not Apple (unless you have Power Computing). My clones had to license their OS's from Apple. The drivers were Apple drivers as confirmed when I look in the Find Info window at those files. I swapped my daughter's CD drive from a UMax for a faster one and her old one worked in every Mac I tried--unless I had the OS up to "we find this drive repugnant" era of the Apple marketing suits. ___________________ > > > Apple only put out the universal driver for a brief period of time. > Only one OS revision contained it. It was not as good as subsequent > drivers. In my experience, while you can hack the Apple driver to get a > minimum software connection, it does not work as well as the unhacked > driver with a supported drive. Why should Apple provide crippled > functionality to their customers so that clone customers could get > access to their drives when that access was originally provided by a > third party? I'm sorry, I can't agree. "...crippled functionality to their customers" has been the watchword for their marketing strategies for a long time. Remember the system enablers that used exactly the same systems versions, but required you to have a recognizable identity in that system for the specific model of machine before it would work? I couldn't run a vx with an si system or vice versa. I solved this irritation by simply loading a bundle of them all into each system disk. What rational functionality did that serve? None. It was done because they didn't trust us. And they didn't want a new version of a system to run other machines. We were supposed to buy the disks that fit only our engine, not share them or save ourselves money with a universal system. That's on the software side from 8 or 10 years ago. Today, it's the CD drives and hard disks. Same issues, same tiny minds. In the hardware department, "...crippled functionality to their customers" includes artificial limits on RAM to force the purchase of the next level model. NuBus and PCI slots restricted in number to prevent someone from upgrading their machines to a comfortable or useful level--a satisfied owner of a Mac doesn't buy another for some time. The crippling of the standard IDE capacity for two IDE devices per slot by only allowing one in the Tanzania models. What does that protect an owner against? Is there a flaw in that standard that they've saved us from? Yup, Apple's fear that someone with 3 drives and a CD won't become a new customer soon. _________________ > Why > should Apple write specialized drivers for all that clone hardware when > it was always up to the cloners to support specialized hardware? They shouldn't, and to my knowledge, they haven't ever. They've had to correct things they've screwed up, but they're supposed to stand behind their product; hard and soft. > > > BTW, if you have a clone you can pick up a real Mac internal drive that > is as fast or faster for tres cheap now. > > It would be nice if Apple supported more drives. But they are not > obligated to support them. They were not like Microsoft. They were not > trying to satisfy a large and varied hardware market. They were just > being the OEM for the core OS while others tacked on what they wanted in > order to differentiate. If one of those tacked on things was a cheaper > CDROM drive or a unique video card Apple is under no obligation to > support it (and neither would MS in most cases for that matter). It isn't a matter of supporting more drives. It's the hypocrisy of frustrating and screwing up their customers for venturing outside the envelope of an Apple captive audience. That's the philosophy brought out carried in a sedan chair by androgynous little Harvard MBA's that says do whatever you can to a customer to get their money. No thanks. I prefer the basic honesty of being held up by a mugger at my ATM station. At least I can look him in the eye and negotiate for bus fare home. I'm still loyal to my Mac(s), I just don't suffer the fools gladly that rode in on its coattails and decide how I should spend my money and time. Bob Wulkowicz BTW, If they're so smart, why is that little 4 function calculator still in the menu? -- Mac Canada is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... 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