Loose Lips Sink Developer & Apple Reveals Dark Secret Unintentionally

July 24th, 2000 at 3:00 PM - News by Wes George

Ouch, thatis gotta hurt! Someone at ATI technologies (ATYT) is being hung out to dry after the company announced that its Radeon processor would be part of the fanfare on three of Appleis new Macintoshes...two days BEFORE Mr. Jobsi keynote address! Ensuring, at least in Steve Jobsi mind, that the surprise announcement of the new Power Mac products was spoilt.

The offending press release from ATI revealed that Apple would introduce three new PC systems with ATI graphics hardware on board, a new iMac model and two new unspecified Power Mac systems. That was enough to get the ATI presentation summarily booted from Mr. Jobsi keynote address and all of ATIis Radeon boards yanked from the Macs in Appleis MACWORLD booth.

According to ZD Net, who broke this story:

In addition, a Pricing and Configuration Reference Card being used by Apple-badge employees in the companyis booth shows that while Apple was originally planning on offering the ATI Radeon graphics card as an "Option available at the Online Apple Store", its mention has been hand-scratched out. When asked why the ATI product reference was deleted, one Apple employee said, "Why do you think?"

ATI posted a press release July 19th stating that the Radeon wonit ready for shipping till September.

All this must come as a terrible shock to ATI technologies who thought they had a stable professional relationship with Apple. ATI Macintosh product manager Deanna Perkins told CNET News before MACWORLD, "We work with Apple years out to ensure that what theyire thinking about we incorporate onto our chips. I think there is a lot of stuff weill be doing with Apple going forward."

One idiot savant poster impersonating Steve Jobs on the ZD Net sound off board articulates what many in the industry now believe will surely come to pass, "ATI will no longer be the exclusive supplier for Apple graphic cards."

Nvidia (NVDA) is preparing their own Mac graphic cards to be released before Christmas. CNET news claims, "Nvidia is starting to promote its latest chip, the GeForce2 MX, for use in Macintoshes. Although it can be used in PCs, the chip is compatible with Macs, a first for Nvidia."

Meanwhile, 3DFX (TDFX) already offers the Voodoo5 5500 graphics accelerator PCI card for the Mac and is positioning itself to fill the slot, so to speak, that ATI is being pulled from. 3dfx also has an AGP version of the 5500 ready to go, but has not released it because every single Mac AGP slot already comes filled with an ATI card. ATI claims their Radeon graphics processor smokes the Voodoo5 5000.