macOS Tahoe Beta Drops FireWire Support

[KENESS]

Weird to drop it...I'm guessing it's an oversight or a bug, but who knows. Funny that macOS still supports floppy drives and zip disks, but would drop this.

I never used Firewire. I had a 4th gen iPod, but it had USB and I always used that.

It's a little bit different, you're comparing two different things. One is the physical connection, the other is a media type. You can have a floppy that connects through USB, still a fully supported physical connection. Same with a ZIP disk.

If they remove the support for physical FireWire connections, that doesn't change anything for anyone using adapters to connect their FireWire devices to a Mac. And since no Mac has had a physical FireWire port in almost 15 years, that would be pretty much everyone.

Think about it... No Mac with a FireWire port comes even close to running Tahoe. So if you are using a new Mac, and you're using an adapter, by the time Tahoe "sees" the device, it is seeing a USB or Thunderbolt device because of the adapter, it isn't seeing a FireWire device.

And if you've hung onto an old Mac to use a FireWire device, well, you won't be installing Tahoe on that ancient computer ANYway.

So everyone going crazy about Apple removing FireWire support for no reason really needs to just calm down. Find a cause more worthwhile for your outrage.

 

[Shirasaki]

It may not be outright forced, but if you don't keep your system updated, you'll eventually struggle with compatibility and security—it just becomes unsustainable.

But that’s the balance to strike: want to keep using legacy stuff? You can’t update. Want to keep yourself updated? Get ready to ditch old stuff and move on. There will always be sacrifices on each choice.

 

[MrRom92]

While I agree with you on principle, it’s also very true that legacy drivers still take up system resources and time.
The “Snow Leopard” update people wax poetic about in every other comment section, the one that was famous for shrinking the storage size of Mac OS X… was pretty much only possible because Apple spent that entire update cycle dumping old legacy drivers and bundles from the power PC and classic Mac OS 9 days.

You can’t really have it both ways.
If you just keep supporting every legacy device, you end up with a mess like Windows, where compatibility is great, but actually using the operating system you’ll quickly run into bits that feel like they’ve barely been touched since Windows 95.
Meanwhile macOS is basically the opposite, and within the next two years, them leaving both Intel and Rosetta in the past is both going to be very sad and annoying for consumers, but also very great for the operating system.

Well, there’s one reason why I will continue to use Windows PCs. I was able to install a FireWire card in a $4000+ build and it works. Now FireWire devices won’t work on Mac no matter how many dollars you throw at their system (and their professional PCs can cost well above this amount multiple times over)

I really don’t think they were rewriting the FireWire code with every OS update. Maintaining and periodically testing its functionality is one thing (more than Apple does for some of their other software; see “Apple Devices”) but this seems like the deliberate removal of a protocol they really didn’t have to touch.

 

[ClevelandGuy]

I still have a disk enclosure that has regular SATA spinning rust in it. It's connected today to an M4 Studio via an adapter. Will this still work even if they remove the support? I'm guessing it's fine, since even now on Sequoia the Firewire section of the System Report is empty.

Yes I realize that this is old. It is holding 60TB of archive drives. Working data (this year and last year) is on a different box with SSDs, connected via Thunderbolt/USB-C.

Can’t you migrate the SATA drive to a USB or Thunderbolt enclosure? You said your working data is on Thunderbolt/USB boxes.

 

[picpicmac]

It costs really pennies to keep support for these standards

Oh, really?

 

[typecase]

Lots of music gear still use this and I have external hard drives that are still firewire. Damn. That would suck.

 

[Shirasaki]

If they remove the support for physical FireWire connections, that doesn't change anything for anyone using adapters to connect their FireWire devices to a Mac. And since no Mac has had a physical FireWire port in almost 15 years, that would be pretty much everyone.

Honestly I don’t believe Apple silicon even had sections that recognise FireWire or had channels reserved for such a legacy port. But besides that, unless the adaptor translates signal in a way that Mac would see the device as a USB one, then it should be ok. Otherwise, if macOS is still needed to recognise that device as a “FireWire” device, things can get tricky. Think of it as VGA to HDMI adapter: analog signal translated to digital one.

With all that being said, I’m just brainstorming and I’m not well versed into this field. So I’m happy to be corrected if what I think is totally wrong and void of reality.

 

[xiJulian_]

Nobody is FORCING you to upgrade to the latest version of MacOS, nor should upgrading be done blindly and without due diligence. With each new version take an objective look at what features you get and what you lose and decide if upgrading will fit your workflow. If connecting to a FireWire device is essential to your business then don't upgrade. Or keep a different Mac around just to keep it connected. Or find a replacement device that connects via a supported interface. It's not the end of the world, there's always a reasonable solution.

Or just, don’t remove support in the first place? You can’t expect people not to upgrade when those upgrades are important for security.

 

[Circa1984]

Some legacy audio interfaces (used for home recording & in studio) relied on FireWire, back when 400 & 800Mbs was much faster than the USB 1&2 gen speeds. Once USB3.0 was introduced in 2008 with speeds of 5GBs (and much faster later versions), those interfaces moved to USB 3.x
Time to upgrade the old equipment… It’s funny audio people will spend thousands on instruments, accessories, software licensing, etc. But will hold onto old Mac’s and interfaces forever. The forums are loaded with people complaining they need to upgrade their 15 year old Mac… when they can pickup an M4 mini for $599 that runs 10x faster (not an exaggeration).

 

[Sowelu]

God I miss that iconic Apple font (and that era). 'Apple Garamond' I believe is the name of it. And that image, the retail packaging. Wow. Such a throwback. I remember a woman tapping my shoulder while commuting into the city one morning and asked what I was holding and navigating. She was so curious she just had to ask. It was, of course, iPod 1. Even the white earbuds were unusual (and cool) at the time.

 

[1applerules1]

How old are you?

 

[Andy_2341]

Couldn't one run a VM of Sonoma or Ventura or Sequoia and keep the functionality? Just out of curiosity because I like having the latest update but also have a 1st gen iPod mini I'd like to repair and use again.

 

[KENESS]

Honestly I don’t believe Apple silicon even had sections that recognise FireWire or had channels reserved for such a legacy port. But besides that, unless the adaptor translates signal in a way that Mac would see the device as a USB one, then it should be ok. Otherwise, if macOS is still needed to recognise that device as a “FireWire” device, things can get tricky. Think of it as VGA to HDMI adapter: analog signal translated to digital one.

With all that being said, I’m just brainstorming and I’m not well versed into this field. So I’m happy to be corrected if what I think is totally wrong and void of reality.

Edit: I stand corrected.

 

[carestudio]

I miss my old FireWire 400 drive, 1394a!

 

[Will Co]

It costs really pennies to keep support for these standards, especially since they’re not being actively developed. Yes, it’s niche, but it’s an important niche.

I dunno. Maybe not such an easy thing. A lot of these kinds of things require certification, which means even small changes can add up to a whole lot more work, and cost, than just a few hours of programming. It should also be remembered that every driver added to the OS is just another vector for attack and a security problem waiting to bite. So someone at Apple needs to close that door too. Even where it's the same-old-code that's been certificate and proven many times over, I've been in plenty of situations where a customer asked me to "just upgrade" something to the latest SDK or whatever, and a few hours work turned into weeks because of breaking changes and other unforeseen stuff.

But then again - this is Apple - they've got the means to do this where smaller companies might justifiable baulk and I think this is an important driver. They should get it included. There are indeed a great many creatives out there who have relied on FW in the past and will be very pissed if Apple drops it. Let's hope that this is just a beta oversight or it's not quite ready yet, and the final release will include it.

 

[MrRom92]

FireWire adapters are "converters". They're a little spendy because they aren't just changing the shape of the plug, by design they are converting a FireWire device into either a USB or a Thunderbolt device.

The music industry already adapted to this a long long time ago. Since Mac's haven't had FireWire ports for well over a decade, if they wanted a new Mac, at any point in the last decade, they already bought an adapter YEARS ago. And if they're still using an old Mac to use old software and their old devices directly, they can continue to do so as Tahoe is completely irrelevant to them.

This is a completely and total non-issue.

A fundamental misunderstanding of how any of this works. There are NO converters that can allow you to use a FireWire device over USB. They are wholly incompatible communications protocols. Full stop.
Thunderbolt was built off of old FireWire principals so it is similarly incompatible with USB - it is essentially the “next version” of FireWire. Thunderbolt ports see FireWire devices as FireWire devices because they are going through dumb adaptors, not converting the signal or communication protocols to anything. The hardware protocol is backward compatible by nature. However now the host OS is deprecating that, because reasons.

 

[KENESS]

A fundamental misunderstanding of how any of this works. There are NO converters that can allow you to use a FireWire device over USB. They are wholly incompatible communications protocols. Full stop.
Thunderbolt was built off of old FireWire principals so it is similarly incompatible with USB - it is essentially the “next version” of FireWire. Thunderbolt ports see FireWire devices as FireWire devices because they are going through dumb adaptors, not converting the signal or communication protocols to anything. The hardware protocol is backward compatible by nature. However now the host OS is deprecating that, because reasons.

Thank you for the correction. I've removed my post.

However, I am aware of FireWire to USB converters for hard drives, like what I originally described, as I used them myself during the transition phase and before Thunderbolt was commonplace. I remember it was like $100 at the time which I thought was outrageous, but the FireWire external drive connected through it popped up on my desktop as a USB drive.

 

[MrRom92]

Thank you for the correction. I've removed my post.

However, I am aware of FireWire to USB converters for hard drives, like what I originally described, as I used them myself during the transition phase and before Thunderbolt was commonplace. I remember it was like $100 at the time which I thought was outrageous, but the FireWire external drive connected through it popped up on my desktop as a USB drive.

I’m unaware of anything of the sort as I’ve never had to use it, however I have to imagine that such a device would have some sort of RAM buffer and digital smarts to translate between communication protocols only for storage I/O and would only present itself as a USB storage device to the host OS, all the while being incompatible with any other FireWire devices such as audio cards or cameras. Pure conjecture here but it is an educated guess.

 

[zorinlynx]

So now I'm curious, what are ya'll using for a Firewire interface on modern Macs? They don't have PCI slots to put an old Firewire card in. Is there a MacOS compatible USB to Firewire adapter?

Either way if this winds up being true, it's the end of an era. I used to champion Firewire back in the day because it was so much better than USB. Unfortunately companies wanting extra licensing per port meant it had to chance to compete with USB. Thankfully USB pulled ahead and the shortcomings it had over Firewire are long gone.

 

[Siliconguy]

I wonder how many people this will really affect as anyone who's been around Macs long enough and still regularly uses Firewire devices likely has an old Mac more than capable of doing what they need with that device (or is using odd workarounds with the Firewire device more as a satisfying challenge than out of necessity).

I'm in that group. Taking a mental inventory I have two devices that are firewire 400 only, and have several more that have dual firewire/USB interfaces. The beige G3 has a firewire card, and the G4 and the 2012 mini have firewire ports. So using firewire devices is no problem.

I'm more worried about Apple dropping support for the iPods using USB. Do I upgrade the stereo cabinet mini? Using an M4 to play music is such overkill. M1 mini prices have come down, but is Tahoe the last version for them? I was thinking of a 2018 mini, but they get no more updates so no point there, and the price for them still hasn't come down since they can run Linux and Windows.

 

[WarmWinterHat]

Think about it... No Mac with a FireWire port comes even close to running Tahoe. So if you are using a new Mac, and you're using an adapter, by the time Tahoe "sees" the device, it is seeing a USB or Thunderbolt device because of the adapter, it isn't seeing a FireWire device.

And if you've hung onto an old Mac to use a FireWire device, well, you won't be installing Tahoe on that ancient computer ANYway.

So everyone going crazy about Apple removing FireWire support for no reason really needs to just calm down. Find a cause more worthwhile for your outrage.

You can install a PCIe firewire card in a Apple Silicon Mac Pro.

 

[q64ceo]

Just please undo the fully transparent menubar

 

[bluecoast]

The last FireWire iPad was discontinued in...2004.

Great tech.

I had the 2003 iPod with a dock connector that hadFireWire charging which also supported usb data transfer via an adapter (I had a windows pc back then).

My charging and syncing setup was not very portable !

 

[threesixty360]

If you want forever compatibility with any standard ever made, don’t buy Mac. That’s a windows thing. You have to keep it moving with Apple, it’s just the ethos.

It’s not that it’s incredibly hard to keep these things it just that it removes focus. And focus is the mind set here, the whole “it’s what you say no to” vibe.

I don’t think we would be where we are with apple silicon etc if they didn’t retire things when most people aren’t using them.

 

[johnrlaporta]

I guess this was inevitable, but what about my FW800 BluRay drive? I guess I could enclose it in a Thunderbolt enclosure…but the FW to TB adapter works perfectly fine. Why not just leave the software support in?