Re: PowerMac G4 and pcmcia flash cards

[Dan Bethe <dan_bethe@yahoo.com>]

	Hi there Tim.  I'm not sure I entirely follow you on the marketing
issue of these cards or ports.  Are you saying that Apple wants to
fracture the PCMCIA standard in general because they're able to make
the Airport cards far cheaper than the typical IEEE 802.11 vendor, and
so people would overwhelmingly purchase Apple's cards for general
wireless purposes rather than from the typical vendor?
	I guess I didn't quite get the meaning of "gray market"  :)  Is that
it?
	But other than that, Airport is equal to IEEE 802.11, right?  Can we
just buy a IEEE 802.11 card and have it work with Airport cards and
bases?
	Thanks for the info.

> It smells tantalizingly like PCMCIA because it's very close, but it
> is deliberately broken so that it's not compatible with the regular
> PCMCIA pinout.  This allows Apple to sell AirPort cards for $100 USD
> without creating a gray market supply of cheap IEEE 802.11 cards,
> which would undercut everyone else in the world who is selling the
> same thing for $150-200.  When big companies cut special high volume
> deals, ugly things happen.  :)


=====
"Don't expect your own messiah; this neverworld which you desire is
only in your mind." -- http://www.dreamtheater.net/songb4.htm#IV5

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