Apple's Thunderbolt to FireWire Adapter Rolling Out in Online Store

[lozion]

5.53GB in 65 seconds = 85'ish MB / sec. From G-Safe to rMBP 2.6 / 8 / 512SSD

Whats in the G-Safe? In any case, not bad at all...

 

[g8rjohns]

Whats in the G-Safe? In any case, not bad at all...

2x 2TB 7200rpm Hitachi's

 

[lozion]

2x 2TB 7200rpm Hitachi's

Raided?

 

[g8rjohns]

raided?

raid 1

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

People here seem to be forgetting the pro video and audio industries.

Apple sell computers that run Logic. Logic talks to audio interfaces. The industry standard for audio interfaces is Firewire. Thus the need to get firewire into their computers.

Apple sell computers that run Final Cut Pro. Final Cut Pro talks to video cameras and capture devices. A lot of these devices use Firewire as a transfer protocol.

Finally, someone on here that "gets" the need for Apple to continue to sell "Pro" features for a self-proclaimed "Pro" product.

If Apple wants to sell a "toy Mac" rather than a "Pro" labeled one, they should call it something else...say maybe an "iMac".

I use Logic Pro and both my FW400 and FW800 ports are in use with it on my mid-2008 Macbook PRO (back then "Pro" meant something).

 

[Cubytus]

Possibly, but if you tether from a device that can pull 20Mb/s, Comcast/Charter/Warner can eat a bag of Richards.

Let me rephrase that: 4G antennas and devices are still very few and far between.

This adapter would have been useless on previous Macs had they not thrown away the expresscard adapter on the 15" in 2009.

This adapter took quite a large real estate inside. Placing a GbE and a FW chip along with their corresponding ports still takes less room than the EC adapter.

Popout connector like the old 3COM/USR modems?

Image

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XJACK

They did it 20 years ago, I don't see why something like this couldn't be incorporated in the current gen MBAs.

+1

Well, before buying a rMBP that might be a good idea to know it first.

Haul in store all what Apple consider your "legacy" stuff you bought one-and-a-half year ago, perhaps?

If Firewire were only about drives, I'd agree with you. USB3 and TB are ultimately faster there and so one would be good to replace their aging drives with one of them instead.

FW is not "aging". It's current, not common, but still actively developed.

(...) I still maintain if OSX was available for other companies' hardware, this lack of choice/options from Apple wouldn't happen (or if it did, someone else would fill the gap including gaming Macs, which we just never see).

Apple tried that a decade-and-a-half ago. It was a catastrophe, mainly because each manufacturer did what he wanted with the OS, adding proprietary and sub-standards components upon a lower-end chassis, giving the original editor a bad reputation.

(...)If you attach it to only one device, you then have to have that device with you to retrieve the dongle if you need to use it for something else (e.g. Oops! I forgot my FW dongle on my backup drive at home! ARRGGH). And they still don't have a pass-through connector so you're using up a TB connector. Buy one FW adapter and one Ethernet adapter and you have zero TB connectors left.

Exactly the kinds of situations I had in mind. Having a cable is bad enough, but having a cable + an expensive adapter that can get lost, crushed in an overloaded college bag, or stay attached to the other end of the cable, is even worse.

I'm just saying it would have been better to simply leave the old thickness and keep true Ethernet ports, at the very least, if not FW as well like they used to. They already freed up a lot of space getting rid of the optical drive and so this is not an issue of they didn't have enough room to do it right. This is an issue of them being obsessed with making things as thin as possible and that's a downright STUPID obsession. The notebook isn't going to fit in your pocket so absolute thickness doesn't need to be a design priority. It makes things overheat faster as well (and driving that Retina display is going to tax the GPU to the edge).

I think lighter is better than thinner. The current MBP is quite thin already, and still has beautiful proportions. Even making the laptop thinner doesn't precludes keeping a "folding" ethernet port like they did for USB on the first MBA.

That device (=the tb-GbE or tb-fw800 adapter) you are talking about is very narrow. The only thing that device does is extend that very thick fw800 or ethernet cable for about 15 cm. What you are now saying is absolutely idiotic and contradictory because it means that wires also defeat the touted portability and thus your entire argument is completely moot. In your point of view we don't need an ethernet port because we can go wireless. Same for fw800. Et voila, that is exactly what the Air is

As I wrote before, when it comes to "non-portability", having one cable is better than cable + expensive and fragile adapters.

In that case, FW HDD + FW cable + MacBook Pro = quite neat (3 items).
In the other case, FW HDD + FW cable + FW-TB adapter + GbE adapter + MBPr = less neat (5 items).

You just stated you could

Huh, where?

On the ssd. You can opt for a 512GB one which is worth the money because the ssd can deliver the amount of iops virtualisation requires. It is why I'm using ssd's for more than 3 years now. My Air uses a 256GB ssd and the only big things are iso files for the vm's, the vm's themselves and my music library.

Evidently you don't use as many VMs as I do. Without them I'm already using 220GB worth of data, 140GB of them being non-music data.

That entirely depends on where you are. In Europe the 3G coverage is nearly 100%. Some countries are doing very well with the 4G coverage in the form of LTE. The biggest problem is that LTE in the USA uses different frequencies than the rest of the world (there are some exceptions it seems) so 4G on the iPad is only useful in the USA.

In Europe you commonly have the choice to pony up for your phone on a short-term contract, and replace it, renewing the contract, when a newer model comes out. In North America, we can get phones only through a carrier (although this tends to change) on a record-long 3-year contract, with upgrades usually not possible before 2 years in contract. And the 3G option often adds 40% on top of the regular voice + text rates. 3G is widespread here also, but with the slower handset renewal rates and many people sticking to 2G-only pay-as-you-go phones, in that context I can say that 3G coverage is not the same as 3G penetration rate.

Previous MBA's didn't have fw800 ports nor ethernet ports built-in. There only was a usb-ethernet adapter so no fw800 at all. There was also this famous MacBook with no fw800 on it. Current MBP models all have the ethernet and fw800 port like their previous models. This adapter is only useful on MBA and MBPr since those are the only 2 Mac models without ethernet/fw port built-in.

Previous MBA were not branded as "Pro".

Exactly why I wired my home with Cat6 jacks everywhere.

Transfer a 47 GB ISO image of a BD over WiFi - please, poke me in the eye with a sharp stick instead, it hurts less.

No need for such an elephant on the network. Just try with a regular, 4.7GB DVD image. When it is faster on "sneakernet" than on WiFi, you know it's time to wire up your place. I did just that in my previous apartment. And also did in my current appartment: I have long GbE-compatible cables behind the dresser ready to be pulled for faster connection.

True, but Apple fans are used to paying extra for using Apple proprietary¹ adapters to use their systems.


¹ where "Apple proprietary" includes "public standards which nobody but Apple supports to any significant degree".

It's not Apple's fault that other manufacturers just don't want to include high-end specifications in their designs, is it?

(...)
Since any of these things people want (gigabit ethernet, FireWire, USB 3.0), already require plugging into something external (which should be a temporary situation with a laptop - otherwise, you should be buying a desktop computer), having to stick an extra dongle onto the existing ethernet/FireWire cable hardly seems like a deal-killer.

If everything could fit inside a laptop, most of us would be happy with it. Unfortunately, requirements are growing faster than what is provided by laptops. Besides, in the chase for speed, storage size has taken a considerable hit on the same pricepoint. We don't like external solutions, really, but we have no choice since rare are the ones among us able to pony up $600 extra for sufficiently large and FAST internal storage while the same, external solution costs around $180.

And while some would argue that they'd happily trade off a millimeter in extra thickness of the Air in exchange for a built-in ethernet, others who only need seldom use of ethernet (if at all), would likely disagree. And let's not forget that removing seldom-used larger ports also can free up space which could be used for a larger battery. If I had the choice between having longer battery life and needing a dongle for ethernet and FireWire, or having a bit less battery life and having built-in ethernet, I'd take the former.

The problem is, Apple didn't take advantage of the massive volume freed up by removing the HDD. Battery life is still on par with previous gen. MBPs.

One thing I will say is that I think a case could be made for them needing to have a 2nd Thunderbolt port on the Air (which might require dropping the 2nd USB port, and that would not be worth the trade-off IMO), and/or get a low-cost Thunderbolt hub on the market.

USB hubs are easy and cheap to come by. Why wouldn't be worth the trade-off to remove one USB port in favor of a high-speed port that doesn't tax the CPU when used?

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

FW is not "aging". It's current, not common, but still actively developed.

Try READING first before firing off a wall of text. I said "aging DRIVES" not "aging interface".

 

[Fandongo]

Let me rephrase that: 4G antennas and devices are still very few and far between.

Nonsense, but I do pick up 4G in my room and nowhere else in my house .

As I wrote before, when it comes to "non-portability", having one cable is better than cable + expensive and fragile adapters.

Agreed, the firewire adapter is a bit rigid...I thought I was going to kink/destroy it the first day. I played around with the rMBP in stores quite a bit, but until I got mine I never fully experienced the insane thin/lightness. Very tempted to spin it on my finger. I thought the "smaller for the sake of smaller" Apple philosophy was stupid... These past few days have changed my mind. I'll sacrifice my FW hard drives eventually, especially if someone releases a USB3 hub that spans flush down the side of the rMBP. A boy can dream.

 

[repoman27]

As I wrote before, when it comes to "non-portability", having one cable is better than cable + expensive and fragile adapters.

Agreed, the firewire adapter is a bit rigid...I thought I was going to kink/destroy it the first day.

Having personally disassembled one of these adapters, fragile is not a term I would use to describe them. It's actually one of the few devices I've come across that provides any indication that Apple actually knows what proper strain relief is.

If anyone is curious as to what the internals of this adapter look like, I posted pics in this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1428004/

 

[Cubytus]

Try READING first before firing off a wall of text. I said "aging DRIVES" not "aging interface".

These drives aren't "aging", same.

Nonsense, but I do pick up 4G in my room and nowhere else in my house .

Replace "antennas" by "towers". You'll get the proper meaning of my sentence.

Agreed, the firewire adapter is a bit rigid...I thought I was going to kink/destroy it the first day. I played around with the rMBP in stores quite a bit, but until I got mine I never fully experienced the insane thin/lightness. Very tempted to spin it on my finger. I thought the "smaller for the sake of smaller" Apple philosophy was stupid... These past few days have changed my mind. I'll sacrifice my FW hard drives eventually, especially if someone releases a USB3 hub that spans flush down the side of the rMBP. A boy can dream.

I wasn't thinking about the cable itself. But having a 4-5cm long connector hanging on the side of the computer with only about 1cm inside the computer puts a major strain on the connector inside through lever effect. Breaking a motherboard connector is a risk, having all these adapters needing to hang outside. This is not TB-specific, but I do remember breaking a few USB keys that way.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

These drives aren't "aging", same.

Don't be ridiculous; of course they are. FW800 is no longer sufficient to handle modern "new" hard drives of any performance caliber. USB3 and Thunderbolt have far more data throughput. The fact you call FW "current" tells me you have no idea what you're talking about. FW800 is old and out-of-date and will not be upgraded to FW3200. Thunderbolt has replaced it as far as Apple/Intel is concerned. The adapters are for backwards compatibility only. There's a lot of audio hardware out there that still uses FW (typically FW400 mode), but there's no point in buying new hard drives with FW capability IF you have a machine with USB3 on it as you will only end up spending more money for less performance.

 

[Cubytus]

Sure USB 3 and TB are better. But when something is "aging", it typically goes down in price, and FW800 drive haven't.

TB HDD are very few and far between, and when present, cost an arm and leg (and a shoe, too). Enclosures aren't available either.

USB3 isn't available except on very recent Macs: my early 2012 MBP doesn't have it. Still, USB, even 3, takes a good chunk of CPU power just to drive the transfer. And USB3 HDD are still not competitively priced.

With TB still in infancy and USB3 less widespread than FW800 on Macs, I still consider FW800 not cutting edge anymore, but current, even as external HDD never reached a competitive pricing.