I believe Core Duo and Core 2 Duo use the same socket and everything?
So all Apple had to do was simply change what chip they plug into the board. No motherboard changes/upgrades or anything.
It makes me wonder why they took so damn long to do this. Were they waiting until Core 2 Duo prices dropped enough to keep their profit margin on the Mini? It's annoying.
-Z
Do you REALLY have to wonder? Come on. Apple is all about milking its core users for all they're worth. It's the Steve Jobs 'road to recovery' methodology. If you make more money on iMac than MacMini, artificially make MacMini crappy so those that can POSSIBLY afford to go to iMac will do so because MacMini's graphics are so terrible. Likewise, force gamers to buy a MacPro by giving iMac really AWFUL graphics cards? I mean all of us waiting for a hardware refresh on the iMac, HOPING that we could get a new graphics card in the thing that might last a couple of years before being hopelessly outdated for gaming got what? A new case and a WORSE graphics card than the one they were selling a year ago?!?!? WTF is up with that? They make me wish I'd gone ahead and got one with the superior NVidia card while I had the chance!
Ok, so say I CAN afford a MacPro, but didn't REALLY want to spend that much. It has a graphics slot so I can just get the latest and greatest gaming card and cruise on into gaming heaven with all that new EA stuff coming out, etc. (or at least crank it up under XP when I want to play games), right? BZZZTT! WRONG! No, Apple has rigged the game. Short of hacking your way into a card's bios and remaking the wheel, you can't run any card in a MacPro that Apple doesn't support! And IF and WHEN they do offer something that's not 2 years old, you can be sure it will cost you at least $150 more than it does at Best Buy for the Windows platform because Apple has to recoup all that time it's put into writing customized drivers to make that card work on Apple's hardware, which despite being identical to PC hardware in almost every other way, PURPOSELY uses a different system than Windows for graphics card relating to bios so you CANNOT just pop in a high-end graphics card off-the-shelf and make the Mac blaze away even IF there were a Mac driver for it.
It's not impossible for someone like ATI to release their own retail card for the Mac (unlikely given only ONE high-end model supports replaceable cards at this point), but even then without the proper Boot Camp drivers, you can't just use that card in both Mac and Windows because cards that are set up to boot for the Mac must have boot camp support to boot Windows because the Bios rom is being used to handle the Mac at that point, not Windows.
You COULD buy a 2nd video card to run games in XP or Vista, but it's getting so convoluted at that point, you could just get an iMac for Mac stuff an buy a 2nd PC for games and STILL probably come out ahead.
I like the MacOS, but I do NOT like how we are virtual slaves to Apple hardware. They decide FOR us what we can have and therefore what we can ultimately do. If they were fair about it and offered something for everyone and didn't milk us for all we're worth with underpowered machines (graphics wise) that are obsolete brand new (so much for the theory that Macs have a LONG shelf life...well unless you don't care AT ALL about gaming... and believe me I'm not hard core gamer, but I do like to play games sometimes and I don't want 20-30 fps averages when a higher graphics card would get me over 100 and therefore a nice safety margin for a couple of years).
What good does it do to bring back new release gaming for the Mac if NONE of the machines save the MacPro are capable of playing them smoothly at native resolutions and even there, it's half what a PC using SLI can do? From what I've read, the MacPro can't do SLI period even with drivers as only one slot has the proper specs. So how is the MacPro a "Pro" machine, then? Or does that mean 'pro' as in professional Mac users are USED to having machines that can't run games? All this despite the fact Apple touts the MacPro as their top gaming hardware....
We all know Apple COULD release a mid-range mini-tower with the specs gamers need/want and the ability to replace the graphics card over time, but that would deprive Apple of milking the same customers for 2 iMacs over the same period of time (assuming they're die-hard Mac users that would never consider anything but a Mac) and so they choose milk the current customer base over attracting more switchers. I personally think this is VERY short-sighted on Apple's part. More switchers = more market share which = more sales long-term and happier customers that will keep coming back, even if not quite as often.
I really like this dual-G4 I picked up used and find myself using it a LOT more than my Windows machine for day-to-day stuff like browsing, downloading, burning audio CDs, etc., but most games (save emulating old ones or playing old Mac games) are out of the question, even though my Win98 machine from 1999 with a mere 1GHz PIII and ATI Radeon 7500 can run new games from just a few years ago (just finished Tron 2.0 awhile back and it ran great at 800x600 in 32-bit color with all effects enabled on this multi-sync CRT). That game is 4-5 years after I got the PC and it still runs smooth. People complain about short shelf lives of PCs, but I got a lot of work out of that Windows machine. I only had to reload Windows twice in 8 years too and never had a single virus on it (guess I don't visit bad sites). It did crash itself silly, though and that's one area where this G4 with Tiger seems to shine by comparison. The Mac's interface is mostly better (few quirks I don't like compared to Windows like the close button not quitting the program because it means extra bother to either CMD-Q or move the mouse to the menu bar and click on the menu and then select QUIT instead of just an easy single click. If MacOS had a simple preference panel option to select the default behavior, it wouldn't be an issue... most things on the Mac that are done differently wouldn't be issues for switchers if Apple had more selectable options in their preference panels for that matter.... Linux has TONS of behavioral choices in KDE and Gnome. Why does Mac = Steve Job's way or the highway? Not everyone likes doing things the same way as everyone else.
