We may even see a new 15.4″ PowerBook G5. The other shoe is going to drop when Apple actually ships OS X Panther later this year – affordable G5 upgrades for legacy Macs from the Legacy Lab at Apple. You thought Apple didn’t like upgrades? That’s only because until now they haven’t tried to sell upgrades since the Power Mac 7200 era. Apple used to have a decent business selling overpriced motherboard upgrades for the Mac II, LC, IIcx, and several other computers – but this time the upgrades will be priced to compete with simpler processor upgrades. The fact that Apple will be selling some of these for less than they pay IBM for the PowerPC 970 processor shows how dedicated they are to leaving no Mac user behind. Rather than let Sonnet, Giga Designs, and others steal their thunder, Apple will be producing more than just processor upgrades for the various models in the upright Power Mac case with handles, the design used from the blue & white G3 through last week’s dual 1.42 GHz Power Mac G4.Īpple has designed completely new plug-and-play motherboards for these models to provide the correct number of PCI-X and AGP 8x slots for the different enclosures.ĭetails remain sketchy, but at this point it seems that Apple will only be offering G5 motherboards at the 1.6 GHz speed – and only with a single processor.
(Apple legal decided this was the best way out of a sticky situation, since there apparently is a market for clones after all.) These will be bundled with a copy of Panther and available through the Apple Store, local dealers, and CoreComputers. Specifics haven’t been finalized, but we expect all of the G5 motherboards to support a maximum 4-8 GB of RAM and duplicate the number of FireWire and USB (using USB 2.0!) ports on these models whose motherboards they replace. Rumors also include a PCI card supporting FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 as an option.
The anticipated price of the non-AGP motherboard is US $799 including a copy of OS X 10.3. These prices not include any memory or a video card. The new motherboard for the Beige G3 must deal with the limitation of three expansion slots, so Apple had to prioritize their options here. Instead of three PCI slots, their will be two versions of the “ Beige G5” motherboard.Īpple expects the lower cost motherboard with three PCI-X slots and onboard ATI Radeon 7500 video to be the most popular option for those who have held on to their beige G3s this long. But for power users, an alternate version of the motherboard will have two PCI-X slots and an AGP 8x socket.
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