For ages, Mac users have been second-class citizens when it comes to getting the latest and greatest graphics hardware. The ATI chipsets that always ship standard in Macs have never been the top of the heap, but neither are they poor enough that lots of other manufacturers have clamored for the attention of the Mac market. Things have been slowly improving, though, with 3dfx's growing commitment to support the platform, and tentative moves by NVIDIA to test the waters. Still another positive sign is that speculation on an imminent shakeup in the realm of Mac graphics has just entered the mainstream: when CNET starts talking about it, it's gone beyond the confines of the Mac community and out into the industry at large.

So why is this a good thing? Because you can't foster competition in a vacuum; if people don't know there are alternatives, there are no alternatives. Word's getting out that the Mac is a growing untapped market for third-party graphics cards. Soon we'll have more companies fighting for our money, and ATI might actually get nervous enough to start paying us some serious attention. Those guys really dropped the ball on the whole Rage 128 driver thing-- remember how crash-prone the first blue-and-white G3s were? Some people found that replacing the ATI card with a 3dfx one fixed all their crashing problems overnight. We have to assume that Apple wasn't too happy about that whole scenario, either, and with 3dfx now pushing to have its cards included as a build-to-order option at the Apple Store and NVIDIA courting Apple's OEM business, well, it's almost an embarrassment of riches. Relatively speaking, of course.

Another verrrry interesting thing about this CNET article-- it quotes ATI's Mac product manager, Deanna Perkins, thusly: "Although it may seem this way, we don't have any exclusive deals [with Apple]. We won all of our contracts on an individual basis." Well, yeah... has anyone been trying to compete with ATI for Apple's a-chip-in-every-Mac business over the past several years? It's not hard to win when you're the only major player. But now that NVIDIA may be looking to take ATI's place, the fact that ATI has no exclusive contract with Apple is pretty exciting. Competition: it's a beautiful, beautiful thing. (Unless you live in Redmond, of course, in which case it's a four-letter word.)