(Important retraction: As faithful viewer Y. Anrew Naka points out, the Apple Insider article referenced later in this scene does not say that Sawtooth G4s are not upgradeable, as we originally stated at broadcast time. Instead, it says that "Shark" G4s might have that limitation-- Shark being the successor to Sawtooth, which we're guessing will ship next spring. Our mistake. We've edited the following scene to include the correction. That said, we are hearing from several other sources that even Sawtooth might be non-upgradeable due to the ROM being on the processor card, but we won't know for sure until they ship. Isn't this fun?)

Remember the good ol' days of Mac cloning? Ahhh, that halcyon time when a handful of companies could slap together cheap boxes that ran circles around Apple-branded Macs while boasting a lower sticker price. And it's not too hard to see how they did it; they had significantly lower research and development expenses than Apple, who actually had to develop the operating system, too. The result? No, not increased market share for the Mac OS-- since cloners pretty much only sold to people who would otherwise have bought an Apple Mac. Instead we saw an already-hurting Apple watch its potential sales get cannibalized by its very own licensees. Apple just couldn't compete with, say, Power Computing on a price-performance basis. But whether or not you believe he saved Apple by doing it, Steve Jobs killed cloning and ended that weird chapter in Apple's history.

There's just that little thing about history repeating. See, back then, Apple saw cloning as an industry that stood in the way of Macintosh sales-- and eliminated it. But once again, Steve and friends seem to be locking their sights on the companies that represent the current biggest obstacle to Power Mac sales: the upgrade makers. For several years now, one of the cool things about owning a Mac is that it's relatively simple to buy a third-party processor upgrade card, pop it in, and suddenly you've got a Mac that may be even faster than anything Apple's got to offer. Unfortunately, each five-year-old 6100 with a G3 card or 466 MHz G3-upgraded 7500 represents little more to Apple now than a lost Power Mac sale. Think of it as after-market cloning, at least from Apple's perspective.

Apple's solution to this "problem," however, isn't all that pretty. You already know about the Blue Blocker scandal; Apple issued a firmware update for the blue and white G3s that apparently renders them incapable of using a G4 upgrade. While we still hope that Apple's planning on reversing that hardware lockout once a certain number of honest-to-goodness Power Mac G4s get sold, the next step in the company's campaign against upgrades is perhaps less egregiously slimy, though far more insidious-- and effective. You know how the iMacs aren't processor-upgradeable? That's because the Mac hardware ROM is right on the processor card-- and only Apple can make the ROMs. Well, guess what? Next year's high-end Power Mac G4s will apparently be the same way, according to Apple Insider. That would mean that unless the upgrade companies get Apple's permission, they won't be able to create upgrade cards for the "Shark" Power Mac G4. (We're hoping "Yosemite" and "Sawtooth" G4s will be upgradeable, unless Apple issues another firmware "fix.") Is anyone else getting one of those "uh-oh" feelings?