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Apple to completely do away with firewire?

JamesGorman

JamesGorman

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Dec 31, 2008
1,123
1
Winnipeg
A teacher at my school was saying that the next imacs and minis will not have firewire and when the macbook pro lines undergoes it changes in a few years once again they too will lack firewire. this make sense somewhat because with usb 3.0 being released soon what is the point of having firewire anymore? as everything will be switching to usb more and more in the coming years. Im still not sure what to think although i believe this is plausible. what do you guys and gals have to say?
 
lol everyone seems to that lots around here..really i dont see why it matters lol...if theres more forums on the same thing that really means its easier to find what your looking for lol..btw i didnt really see anything on this and i didnt feel like searching for an hour.:eek:
 
There are literally hundreds of pages already discussing this.

And it is incredibly ignorant of you to think that USB 3.0 can replace any firewire.

It's not the speed it's the burst rate and sustained speeds that are the issue.

USB 3.0 can't even compare to FireWire 400 when it comes to sustained transfer speeds.
 
JamesGorman said:
its not ignorant to me. Intel has tested it, and it is faster than firewire 800. The article says it will likely make esata and firewire obsolete. http://tech.yahoo.com/news/cnet/20090113/tc_cnet/83011138631014181076
Click to expand...

While FireWire is definitely a thing of the past, I doubt very seriously that the new iMacs will not have FireWire. I think maybe the Mac Mini will be missing it, but I am not sure. Definitely, Apple was trying to fit everything in the unibody brick MBs. That had a lot to do with why it's missing from the MBs. There is limited space when Apple is trying to make the thinnest, lightest, coolest Mac Notebooks.

I believe the technology is old, and I do agree with USB 3.0, FireWire will have met its match. But, for awhile, Apple will include it on MBPs, MPs, and iMacs.

I hope Apple includes USB 3.0 on its next updates to all Macs! That would be great.
 
Im sure once it is released the sustained transfer speeds will be fine, i dont know why you find it ignorant, im merely posting something to get answers. There is no need to jump on anyone here lol. i just wanted to know what everyone thought about this. Thats all lol
 
Why can't we just all go with FW3200 .... :D

Will USB 3.0 have its own controller like FW?
 
JamesGorman said:
Im sure once it is released the sustained transfer speeds will be fine, i dont know why you find it ignorant, im merely posting something to get answers. There is no need to jump on anyone here lol. i just wanted to know what everyone thought about this. Thats all lol
Click to expand...

Listen to these people, they know what they're talking about. FW has always been better then USB at sustained transfers, and probably always will be.
 
im not denying that right now FW is far superior to usb, but with the new release im sure they will have worked those things out. And there is no denying that if the sustained transfer speeds were good that usb 3.0 would blow FW out of the water
 
JamesGorman said:
im not denying that right now FW is far superior to usb, but with the new release im sure they will have worked those things out. And there is no denying that if the sustained transfer speeds were good that usb 3.0 would blow FW out of the water
Click to expand...

That's what people said about USB 2.0

Didn't that come out four years after firewire 400? Yet it still wasn't as good.
 
i suppose we will just have to wait and see, as no one really knows how usb will perform under real world tasks. I guess we can all just hope for the best. Btw, how important is FW to you guys? is it a necessity in what you do?
 
JamesGorman said:
i suppose we will just have to wait and see, as no one really knows how usb will perform under real world tasks. I guess we can all just hope for the best. Btw, how important is FW to you guys? is it a necessity in what you do?
Click to expand...

Hellz yeah. If I want to do any DV capture it's necessary. And it's necessary for all my firewire drives. I'd have to get all new enclosures if I want to use it with USB 3.0 (especially since using usb 2.0 is out of the question as it's too slow)
 
true enough. Well for that sake hopefully for people who need it, if apple does do away with it in the future, that possibly there will be BTO option. I do lots of audio work on my macbook, and almost all my perhipials are usb and for me i have no problem with them as they all seem to work fine and do the job for me. But for people like yourself who need them, hopefully your still be able to get it.
 
Cassie said:


Most of it is file transferring. I do a lot of 20 GB+ file transfer's, and USB would be painfully slow for doing this.
Click to expand...

that makes sense, And i can see why FW is the best choice for you, but who knows well just have to see how usb 3.0 is when it is finally released. Maybe it will be better, or worse, or it could possibly be almost equal..Theres no telling yet.
 
Firewire may be old, but it's still in wide use.

I mean, how old is the BNC connector?
 
JamesGorman said:
that makes sense, And i can see why FW is the best choice for you, but who knows well just have to see how usb 3.0 is when it is finally released. Maybe it will be better, or worse, or it could possibly be almost equal..Theres no telling yet.
Click to expand...

The current issue is:
Apple took FireWire out of the Macbook. This would not have been a big issue had it been replaced with USB 3.0. Since USB 3.0 does not exist, and USB 2.0 is not a replacement for anyone who needs FireWire, then the macbook is worse than the old when it comes to I/O. It really sucks that the Macbook has lower specs (other than the graphics card) than its previous iteration.
 
TuffLuffJimmy said:
The current issue is:
Apple took FireWire out of the Macbook. This would not have been a big issue had it been replaced with USB 3.0. Since USB 3.0 does not exist, and USB 2.0 is not a replacement for anyone who needs FireWire, then the macbook is worse than the old when it comes to I/O. It really sucks that the Macbook has lower specs (other than the graphics card) than its previous iteration.
Click to expand...

not trying to be ignorant here lol, so dont jump all over me, but the ram is superior to the previous generation, and i believe the L2 Cache is higher in the new macbook also.
 
Until USB 3.0 can match the features of Firewire, I don't think we'll see Firewire disappear.

Additionally, theoretical speeds are not the same as actual speeds. USB 2.0 is a prime example of this.

USB 3.0 is touting 5Gbps transfer speed. In real world use, it may only reach half of this which is 2.5Gbps.

FW3200 will be much closer to its 3.2Gbps transfer speed.

My guess is that for sustained large file transfers, FW3200 will be faster than USB 3.0. We'll have to wait and see.
 
i always figured FW 3200 would be faster than usb 3.0, but i also thought that usb 3.0 would be faster than at least FW 800
 
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