Hey, remember the rumors floating around a few months ago about how Apple had intentionally crippled its new blue and white G3 Power Macs so that they couldn't take a G4 upgrade? The conspiracy theory went a little something like this: companies testing prototype G4 upgrade cards had no trouble getting them to work in "icebox" Power Macs, until Apple released a particular firmware update. Once that update was applied, the G4 chips in the upgrade cards were no longer recognized and the system wouldn't boot. So the conclusion was that Apple did this on purpose, and was launching a pre-emptive strike on the upgrade card makers in hopes of boosting sales of actual Power Mac G4s to people who would otherwise have just bought G4 cards for their existing machines. Sneaky? Sure. Diabolical? Indubitably. Downright dirty pool? Heck yeah.

But true? Probably not. Yes, Apple's made unpopular choices in the past that have alienated its fiercely loyal user base, but actually to kill off the possibility of upgrading a Power Mac G3 to a G4 processor would be a plan whose endearingness to the customer base is on par with Monty Burns' scheme to block out the sun in hopes of driving up electricity usage. The last time we checked, Mr. Burns wasn't on Apple's board of directors, and Steve Jobs isn't quite megalomaniacal enough where he'd risk assassination. (Well, there were those death threats when he cancelled Mac cloning, but there weren't any actual attempts.) And now new evidence is seeping to the surface which strongly suggests that any G4-disabling in the firmware update was accidental, coincidental, and now history.

First, there's Robert Morgan's latest RFI Report, which covers all kinds of juicy topics, but the relevant bit of info is that apparently whatever broke the G4s in that infamous firmware update only affected Mac OS 8.6. Reportedly, folks testing G4 upgrades in firmware-updated Power Macs are able to run beta versions of Mac OS 9 with no trouble. (At least, no more trouble than running beta system software would normally bring you.) On top of that, Mac OS Rumors includes an eyewitness account of an early G4 upgrade working in a firmware-updated blue and white G3, running just as stably as it did in a beige G3. So unless Apple plans to break things again before the final version of Mac OS 9 ships, we can be pretty sure that the rumors of an intentional crippling are false. Unless Steve got cold feet after reading the ferocious responses to the rumor on the 'net and pulled the plug on the nefarious scheme...