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Intel Details Thunderbolt Spec: New Chips Coming Next Year, But What About Fiber Optic Cables?
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I understand your point, but the initial proliferation of fax machines was helped by businesses and governments buying a lot of them at one time for internal communications. Western Union even had a fax service that exposed the tech to the public. This planted a seed of usage that grew.
For Betamax, Sony also wouldn't license it for porn, which is considered one of the major killers of the format. There was also the fact that that Betamax cameras couldn't play back. It also couldn't record as long, not enough for a whole movie when rentals hit. Out of many different things important to the consumer, the only thing Betamax had going for it was picture quality.
For HD-DVD and Blu-ray, Blu-ray has a higher storage capacity, higher data transfer rates and required hardcoating of the disk. But the main reason for its success wasn't licensing or technical issues, but shifting business alliances plus Sony deciding to put Blu-ray into the PS3 game console.
While Thunderbolt does have equivalent uses with USB3, it can survive as a complementary standard since it can do things USB3 can't. I don't think Intel is charging much for TB licensing, but the hardware is pretty expensive for now (even controller chips in the cables). That will go down over time, and by then Intel can release optical TB.
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Many systems mount the USB port upside down.
The standard is to have a USB logo on the top of the cable and you see what while you're plugging in to know you have it right. But then some people put the ports in upside down, and it's hard to see most of the cable logos in average light without looking hard.
And all that doesn't answer the question of what you do when the plugs are sideways, as is common.
Well, there is the fact that the iMac was the best selling computer of 1998 in the US. I had early USB on a PC. It didn't work all that well. I couldn't use a USB keyboard exclusively since the BIOS wouldn't recognize it. It thought I was booting up without a keyboard and threw an error. Even as late as Windows 2000 you had to reboot the system to plug in a new USB hard drive for the first time.
It started shipping in August, and yet was the top seller for the whole year?
If true, it could only be done with SKU shenanigans - as in counting a 233 MHz Compaq separately from the identical model with a 266 MHz CPU because the SKUs are different.
A firmware problem that was fixed once USB became more popular. Also, there was no real advantage to using USB keyboards/mouses instead of PS/2 ones - so no profit in retro-fixing the firmware on existing machines.
I remember that issue, but I never had to reboot. For me, unplugging the drive and reconnecting it brought the drive online.
The first connection would setup and load the drivers, but not completely start it. The second connection would start it. An obvious bug, but very very minor - it only affected the first time you tried to use the drive, after that it would hot plug fine.
Bad wording, near the end of the year it was the best selling computer, and continued to sell well through 1999. It wasn't insignificant. Remember, this was at a time when a $1,200 price tag for a good home computer was normal.
Yes, more popular after Apple made it more popular. It wasn't some firmware glitch. They had USB controllers, but they simply didn't fully support USB devices. Why bother when there weren't many devices out there, and the OS usually used didn't fully support it either? Macs back then could even boot from USB, and I didn't see that feature on PCs until much later.
Advantage or not, profit or not, it didn't work. It did on the Mac. You just explained the reason why USB wasn't common until the iMac came along.
In other words, PCs wouldn't do what USB was supposed to do -- plug it in and have it just work.
On the other hand, Windows hasn't had the feature of reformatting any external hard drives that happened to be connected when you did an OS upgrade.
Win some, lose some.
You mean the problem that was due to bad firmware on the Firewire-IDE bridge for some external hard drives?
The equivalence you were trying to state just isn't there. PCs had problems with USB because the PCs themselves did not fully supporting standard USB devices. This was a problem with the device, not the computer. It just wasn't discovered until the computer did something to expose the fault.
And to the end user, what is the difference between
- a bug in the firmware on the motherboard that causes problems with a peripheral device
- a bug in the firmware on the peripheral device that causes problems with a peripheral device
The main difference, it seems, is that the USB firmware bugs were annoying, and the Panther-exposed bug caused the destruction of many people's files - some of them irreplaceable.
ps: Also note that the "USB bug" might not even be a bug. If the "system requirements" on the box in mid-1998 said "PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse", then not supporting a USB Keyboard/Mouse is not a bug".
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Not a bug
It wasn't a bug on the PCs. They simply didn't support it, and that's the issue here -- support.
Exactly as I've been saying. There wasn't much support for USB on PCs until after the iMac made USB popular, and PCs were still clinging to their legacy standards even years later.
Windows 95 OSR/2.1 (not retail version, no USB support there) had spotty support at best, Windows 98 got a bit better, 2000 was okay, and full support finally hit with Windows XP. Meanwhile, the motherboards slowly brought on better and better support from that end. iMacs hit in 1998 with full support.
It wasn't a bug on the PCs. They simply didn't support it, and that's the issue here -- support.
Exactly as I've been saying. There wasn't much support for USB on PCs until after the iMac made USB popular, and PCs were still clinging to their legacy standards even years later.
Windows 95 OSR/2.1 (not retail version, no USB support there) had spotty support at best, Windows 98 got a bit better, 2000 was okay, and full support finally hit with Windows XP. Meanwhile, the motherboards slowly brought on better and better support from that end. iMacs hit in 1998 with full support.
Apologies for bumping an old thread, but I just had a relevant experience.
I just bought a new Gateway on a Fry's special ($499 for Core i5, 6 GiB, 1.5 TB, 802.11n, ...) to replace my HTPC.
After checking out that it could do everything I needed with its Win7 x64 Home Premium OEM system, I repartioned so that I could boot camp with a clean Win7 x64 Pro system. Installed the OS into a new partition, updated, ...
When I finished the job, I realized that
- the system was in my home theatre cabinets
- the "display" was my 52" XBR TV connected to the HDMI port on the Intel HD integrated graphics system
- my keyboard and mouse weren't PS2, nor were they USB - they were Microsoft Wireless on the Microsoft Bluetooth hub that was part of the wireless keyboard/mouse bundle
So, you're right Trudy about firmware support for USB devices on Intel PCs in 1998. It was flaky at best.
And, of course, a 1998 Imac supported USB keyboard and mouse - since there was no alternative.
Today, though, it's irrelevant. Even the cheapest PCs today support the mainstream UI devices needed for booting/installing/runnng.
I wouldn't try to knock a 1998 Imac for not supporting a USB-based Bluetooth Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 keyboard/mouse - so why knock Windows desktops from the same era for not supporting USB devices that came out after the systems were designed and shipped?
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