Apple on Tuesday refused to directly address claims that the company disabled its popular line of blue and white Power Mac G3s to keep consumers from adding the latest G4 chip.
Declining to discuss the controversial accusations in detail, Apple spokeswoman Nathalie Welch merely said the machines were never designed to be upgraded, and users who want G4 performance should buy one of Apple's newest models.
"We don't have any plans to provide a processor upgrade," Welch said. "The Power Mac G3 was never intended or designed to run the G4 chip."
However, Welch declined to say why earlier versions of the blue and white G3s allegedly support G4 chip upgrades, or answer accusations that Apple tricked users into upgrading to new firmware that could not be upgraded.
Welch said that while she didn't have detailed technical knowledge, the new firmware was likely released to tackle engineering issues.
And if CPU card suppliers want to provide a workaround, "it's up to them," Welch said.
"If there's a way a smart third party can do it, it's an opportunity for them," she said, adding, "We think the Power Mac G4 is a much better opportunity to run the G4 chip. It was designed from the ground up to do that."
As previously reported, Apple crippled the blue and white G3s to prevent owners from replacing its original G3 chip with a newer G4 processor, according to CPU card manufacturers.
Moreover, many posters to Mac-related discussion boards said they felt they had been tricked into installing the new firmware update in the belief that it improved performance. But it actually prevented the machine from being updated.
Apple released a firmware update for the blue and white G3s in April -- four months after the machine's debut in January -- advertising better performace of the machine's PCI bus.
"Apple got a lot of the early buyers (like me) to install a ROM update that was advertised as improving PCI performance (and probably did) that disabled G4 support," wrote one poster. "Apple did not tell us this and still has not admitted it."
Mike Breeden, editor of the AccelerateYourMac site said that although Apple never advertised the system as upgradable, many G3 owners felt the ability to upgrade their machines was unfairly taken away from them.
"There's a feeling this was a Trojan Horse," he said. "There was something else sneaked in with it."
In numerous bitter posts to his discussion boards, readers posted links to a Federal Trade Commission online complaint form and called for a class action lawsuit, Breeden said.
A couple of lawyers have contacted him to tell him the issue is actionable, he added. "But you know how it is. You get a hot cup of coffee from McDonalds and someone will sue over it."
Instead, Breeden said he'd rather see an explanation from Apple.
"There's a lot of bad feeling about this," he said. "I'd just like to see it cleared up."
Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, a market research firm, defended Apple by saying there may be legitimate engineering issues for the inability to upgrade the machine.
"You have to be careful saying there's anything sinister here," he said. "They may simply have been maximizing the G3 processor's speed. I'd be careful reading into it much more than that."
