macOS Tahoe Beta Drops FireWire Support

[AppleMega]

First they get rid of the floppy drive, now this. C'mon, Apple!

 

[Cameront9]

wtf is firewire?

If you're being serious, it was a competing data bus to USB. FireWire could do sustained 400 mbps data transfer. USB 2 was theoretically faster (480 mbps), but only in bursts, not sustained. Then FW800 doubled the speed.

FireWire was heavily used in video equipment as well as audio equipment at the time. First and Second gen iPads have a FW400 port on the top of them and it was used in iPods all the way up to the first iPod touch.

You can actually still connect Apple's original iSight camera with a FW400 to FW800 Adapter, FW to Thunderbolt adaptor, and Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adaptor. Fun times.

 

[aevan]

A lot of older audio gear uses firewire, there’s going be a lot of musicians and studios upset by this if it turns out to be how the final release goes

I do wonder if the settings tab shows up if you plug in a firewire device though, it may just hide it to declutter when there’s nothing detected, anyone running the beta who has a TB to firewire adapter want to test?

I mean, there will always be someone upset when something old gets deprecated. However, by that logic, every system would have everything until the end of time - which makes it bloated and harder to maintain. This is partly why Windows is a mess - Microsoft has to support ancient technologies and drag them across releases.

At some point, I guess, you gotta get new gear. Or not upgrade.

 

[Mainyehc]

you WHAT

It’s not that exotic… I have a flash-modded 3G, too, and I got this nice 32-pin-to-USB+FireWire splitter from an old brand I can’t recall right now, and later found the original box and the equivalent OEM split cable from Apple. It was a bit finicky to set up with Sonoma, especially that setting for downsampling songs to 128 kbps AAC that kept borking the sync process (I just did it myself and now have an entire duplicate library), but I now have it dual-booting into Apple’s old Pixo-based OS and Rockbox.

 

[Mainyehc]

If you're being serious, it was a competing data bus to USB. FireWire could do sustained 400 mbps data transfer. USB 2 was theoretically faster (480 mbps), but only in bursts, not sustained. Then FW800 doubled the speed.

FireWire was heavily used in video equipment as well as audio equipment at the time. First and Second gen iPads have a FW400 port on the top of them and it was used in iPods all the way up to the first iPod touch.

You can actually still connect Apple's original iSight camera with a FW400 to FW800 Adapter, FW to Thunderbolt adaptor, and Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adaptor. Fun times.

While you can and, IIRC, it works in Intel machines, it doesn’t seem to be recognized at all in Apple Silicon ones. It will make its usual autofocus sounds and turn on the green light, but you won’t be able to get any video feed from it on any app.

 

[eRondeau]

wtf is firewire?

It's how we made 8-Track Tapes for our 1980's Firebirds.

 

[mudflap]

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.

Do we know for sure it only costs pennies?

[Edit: LOL my perfectly reasonable, logical question made someone angry]

 

[Rydawg96]

A reminder everyone: if FireWire really matters too you, you gotta open the feedback app on the beta and request that FireWire support be kept. If we complain enough there, they may restore it in the final release.

 

[B4U]

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.

Apple recently enabled automatic update by default in the latest MacOS update. 😅

 

[HighwaySnowman]

While you can and, IIRC, it works in Intel machines, it doesn’t seem to be recognized at all in Apple Silicon ones. It will make its usual autofocus sounds and turn on the green light, but you won’t be able to get any video feed from it on any app.

It's sort of recognized. Shows up in System Profiler.

I just hooked one up to a M2 MBA today. It was disappointing.

 

[hoodafoo]

If you're being serious, it was a competing data bus to USB. FireWire could do sustained 400 mbps data transfer. USB 2 was theoretically faster (480 mbps), but only in bursts, not sustained. Then FW800 doubled the speed.

FireWire was heavily used in video equipment as well as audio equipment at the time. First and Second gen iPads have a FW400 port on the top of them and it was used in iPods all the way up to the first iPod touch.

You can actually still connect Apple's original iSight camera with a FW400 to FW800 Adapter, FW to Thunderbolt adaptor, and Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adaptor. Fun times.

I was being sarcastic, but seriously, what does it even mean that they dont support it anymore if the port hasn't been in existance on a Mac for over a decade and obviously those Macs aren't supported on Taho. So is this news supposed to be aimed only for the OCLP community?

 

[HighwaySnowman]

Do we know for sure it only costs pennies?

Pennies is a relative thing. To Apple, whatever it costs to keep FireWire working is less than the change in your couch is to you. It probably costs more to break it.

 

[HighwaySnowman]

I was being sarcastic, but seriously, what does it even mean that they dont support it anymore if the port hasn't been in existance on a Mac for over a decade and obviously those Macs aren't supported on Taho. So is this news supposed to be aimed only for the OCLP community?

There is such a thing as a Thunderbolt to FireWire adapter.

 

[poematik13]

This is a mass extinction event for anybody in the audio engineering/DJ/music production industry. So much of their hardware is firewire based.

 

[seek3r]

I was being sarcastic, but seriously, what does it even mean that they dont support it anymore if the port hasn't been in existance on a Mac for over a decade and obviously those Macs aren't supported on Taho. So is this news supposed to be aimed only for the OCLP community?

Apple sold a thunderbolt adapter for firewire up until rather recently…

 

[seek3r]

Wasn’t there also a hybrid cable where you can use USB instead?

Waiting for the other shoe to drop and Apple to drop USB A 1&2 and older iOS devices using 30 pin connector or iOS 11 and below.

I believe the USB standard mandates backwards compatibility, a lot of low bandwidth things, brand new today, like mice still only use usb 1.1 and *tons* of things across all product categories, brand new today, use USB2.0. The USBA port is vanishing, but all you’ll need is a simple adapter for a very, very, very long time for those older devices

 

[seek3r]

First they get rid of the floppy drive, now this. C'mon, Apple!

You can still use a floppy drive on MacOS, just plug in a USB one, works just fine

 

[seek3r]

Yeah I use this one

Hanprmeee Firewire 1394 6 Pin to USB Adapter Cable, Firewire IEEE 1394 6 Pin Male to USB 2.0 Type A Male Data Transfer Converter Cable for Printer, Digital Camera,Hard Disk 1.8M (1.8M)

www.amazon.co.uk

To my knowledge that wont work on any device that doesnt support USB as an alternative protocol over the same port, which arent that many devices. There’s no actual conversion across the very very different protocols in there

What are you using it with?

 

[JohnC1959]

While I don't and never had a firewire device, I looked up firewire to usbc adapters and found many for dirt cheap. So dropping support sounds like a non-issue even for the few still using such devices.

 

[Nihilvor]

Seems weird to gut the driver out now. I certainly rely on firewire for a number of drives that I have, and have been thankful that I've been able to use it on new model macs.

That said, my memory is that they removed the support once before, on a developer release, but that it was back in the OS by the time it was rolled out.

 

[FoxyKaye]

For those of us still using an iPod, I went ahead and tested every other generation model. The good news is, most of them will still communicate with Finder and music tracks can be synced through the Music app. The iPod Classic 4th generation (monochrome model) and iPod Mini 1st generation are detected by Finder but won't load correctly and music won't sync (both of these models share the same chipset).

2nd Generation iPod Mini's are still my favorite Apple hardware hack device. Happy to see them sticking around a little while longer.

 

[platinumaqua]

Wasn’t there also a hybrid cable where you can use USB instead?

Waiting for the other shoe to drop and Apple to drop USB A 1&2 and older iOS devices using 30 pin connector or iOS 11 and below.

Apple can't exactly drop USB 1.1/2.0 as the 1.1 (low speed 1.5 Mbps/full speed 12 Mbps) spec is rolled into 2.0 and 2.0 is required by the USB-C and Thunderbolt standard as a fallback.

 

[JohnC1959]

So I'm curious, if a Mac were to access a firewire device via thunderbolt or usb, would it need a firewire driver? I ask because I'm pretty sure that any Mac that actually had a native firewire port would be one not supported by the newer OS versions anyway.

 

[Makosuke]

Uh-oh.

I have a TB to FW adapter, and although support is a bit janky it can still be used to ingest video from an old MiniDV camera.

I have a box of family tapes in a closet I’ve long been procrastinating on getting copied to more accessible storage. Sounds like it may be soon or never.

 

[MrRom92]

Uh-oh.

I have a TB to FW adapter, and although support is a bit janky it can still be used to ingest video from an old MiniDV camera.

I have a box of family tapes in a closet I’ve long been procrastinating on getting copied to more accessible storage. Sounds like it may be soon or never.

You may also want to make sure the camera is functional too, they are failing at an alarming rate, some models more than others (Sony HDR-XXX models, particularly) and reliable repair people are for all intents and purposes nonexistent. Getting something that will actually play the tapes may be more of an impediment than having a thunderbolt capable machine. Soon or never is right.