Firewire's future on the Mac

[Hexley]

Thunderbolt being the new darling of Apple & the exclusion of Firewire starting with the iPod, Macbook Air & Macbook worries me that Apple will soon abandon the standard.

I worry as I have external FW drives, FW card readers & FW cameras. What's more what about Target Disk Mode? Almost forgot about my iSight!

I guess this is inevitable as Apple's now patented dock connector only supports DisplayPort, USB 3.0, Thunderbolt.

 

[iStudentUK]

I do think we will see firewire disappearing, but not immediately. The mini, MBP and iMac will see it go first (1-2 years), then the MP later (2-3 years).

Firewire always causes arguments! I say it never caught on in the consumer market, but a little in the pro. Hence why I think the MP will keep it for a bit longer.

Thunderbolt seems much better then firewire anyway.

 

[firestarter]

The bad news is that yes, Apple doesn't have a long term commitment to supporting Firewire. They've already dropped it from the MacBook, and it's never been on the MacBook Air. Thunderbolt is 'the new shiny' and I can see Apple dropping Firewire from other computers as Thunderbolt peripherals become more common.

The good news is that Thunderbolt to Firewire adapters will be available (Sonnet have one they're about to release), so you won't have a problem interfacing to your Firewire peripherals, even if Apple drops the connector going forwards.

This is actually a better situation than at the moment. If you want to hook up a firewire drive to your MBA now, you're out of luck. In future you WILL be able to hook up a firewire drive to a MBA with Thunderbolt, using an adapter.

 

[Hexley]

Thanks for the lead on the Sonnet Allegro FireWire 800 adapter.