Whoo Hooo.... Steve Jobs Resigns...

[commodorejohn]

I mean have you ever tried asking their own customer relations staff a question either via phone or their website about where to get something or how to do something on a Mac that isn't one of their latest models !!!

I dunno. Far be it from me to speak up in defense of Apple corporate, but their legacy support is actually better than a lot of companies I've encountered. Probably not with the actual support personnel, but they have software going all the way back to the 68k days free for download, and as much as they've tried to deprecate OS9 and older versions of OSX, the update service is still up and running just fine...

[commodorejohn]

You try asking to buy from them the OS install disks (OSX 10.2) for an old iMAC G4 and you'll get told the same BS that I was told... "Sorry but we don't sell or supply that any more, try eBay" and to top it off it was then commented "ahh, so you bought the white elephant"...

Yeah, that is one obvious, obvious crucial failure on their part - for all the other stuff they put up for download, if you want any OS later than 8.1 you're pretty much left with a "screw you" as far as they're concerned. But hey, that's why there's BitTorrent and DVD-Rs.

"Piracy: providing everything that software companies don't want you to have anymore."

(Also, I dunno what model of iMac G4 you have, but I've got a 1.25GHz 1GB model that runs 10.4 with all the updates just peachy, not sure why you'd bother with 10.2.)

[commodorejohn]

Eugh, yeah. Just another proof: never take it to a "certified" repairman, all that means is he's got a license to bend you over a barrel :/ (Extra-tragic if it's for hardware troubles, because the iMac G4 is one of the few compact Macs you don't need to go through a whole lot of rigamarole to get into - as long as you've got your standard hardware-store $15 utility-bit set, you're good to go.)

[commodorejohn]

Probably fewer steps involved, I expect, but spring-clips have always been my worst enemy when it comes to getting something open without tearing gashes in the plastic :/ Neither of them are really that upgradable, in any case - stick a bigger hard drive in, max out the RAM, that's pretty much it. Still, they're pretty okay machines if you want cheap PPC hardware.