Apple Pro USB Speakers on 12" 1.33 iBook

[finalcoolman]

A friend of mine is parting out the accessories for his old Power Mac G4, the motherboard on it died. Anyways I'm interested in his speakers. They are the Apple Pro speakers, the spherical shaped ones many are familiar with. Some of them had a special mini jack that had a power lead that only plugged into a special mini jack on the iMac G4 or cube, but this is not like that. This has a USB connector. Now apprantly this would go into a "special" USB port on the computer, special meaning it had power. Now there is no way I'd plug this directly into my iBook (current revision, 12"). What I was thinking was instead plugging them into my Belkin powered USB hub. Now its powered so it should be able to provide power to the speakers, right? Will it work? Do they need any special drivers being they are USB? Thanks,

 

[ITASOR]

You can try it and see, it won't mess anything up. The worst it will do is not work.

 

[Laser47]

the wont mess anthing up if you plug them into your ibook, those speakers are powered by usb but it requires a usb port with a higher output wattage. I dont know if it will work on your ibook but you can try. Also i read that the speakers dont work at all through a hub and must be plugged directly into the computer.

 

[Jigglelicious]

If the Apple Pro Speakers are USB based, that means they are meant for a G4 Cube. Although all USB ports have power, those speakers actually need special USB ports that deliver 20w which are found only on the cube.

As for them working, I have heard reports of them either not working at all, or working but only at very low volumes. It doesn't hurt to try, but more than likely you will not be happy with them.

 

[Steven1621]

belkin makes a connector that lets you connect pro speakers to normal macs. i believe it is called "ifire" or something like that. it has a FW connector for the power. take a look.

 

[reberto]

I have tried this. They will work if you have USB2.0 ONLY. USB 1.1 does not have enough power.