While we're on the subject of upgrade cards, it's probably a good time to mention what you've likely already heard from other sources, but it bears repeating: we heard from several Apple representatives at last week's Expo that Mac OS X, next year's breakthrough operating system, will not run on any hardware other than Apple-branded G3 systems and higher. Power Mac G3's, PowerBook G3's, and iMacs will all be supported, but that's all as of right now.

We can certainly see the benefits in Apple restricting support of Mac OS X to its current hardware lineup; development and testing will be much simpler and much less expensive. Unfortunately, the decision (assuming it's final, which it may not be) leaves a lot of us out in the cold. We don't have any numbers handy, but we're willing to suspect that the number of G3 systems owners is a relatively tiny percentage of the overall Mac user base. The ones who get particularly screwed by the G3-only decision are those professionals who needed G3 speed but also needed six PCI slots, which Apple didn't offer; we're guessing that a fairly significant number of them bought expensive upgrade cards for their six-slot 9500's and clones. And there's also the issue that several people recently bought six-slot Umax G3 clones, which apparently won't run Mac OS X, either.

Of course, it's easy enough to suspect that the whole "G3-only" strategy is only a ploy by Apple to generate more sales for its hardware line. After all, if you're a professional and you're about to spend $1000 on a fast G3 upgrade card, hearing that you won't be able to run Mac OS X in a year might be enough of a reason to consider getting a whole new Power Mac instead. At the same time, the news may reduce the demand for third-party upgrade cards, which means Apple is able to secure a larger supply of G3 processors for use in its own computers. If you're a true conspiracy theorist, you can see that this is a pretty sound strategy; if, upon Mac OS X's release, Apple suddenly announces that it'll work on a much wider range of hardware than they previously thought, it's a big PR win. Pretty sneaky, hmmm? However the whole mess turns out, those of us who can't run Mac OS X will still have Sonata, so we're not overly concerned. Yet.