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New Apple Portables To Drop FireWire Support?
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USB2 is actually supposed to be faster than FW400, but when timed FW400 is at least the same speed, but usually considerably faster than USB2. This depends on what you're doing though: since the two transfer data in different ways, FW400 can be the same in some tests and faster in others.
-Chase
-Chase
Mechcozmo said:I can. I don't like to carry anything more than necessary when I'm traveling with my PowerBook. This dongle thing would really suck; something else to be lost, stolen, damaged, etc. Laptops need to be mostly self-contained and having five different dongles won't really work too well.
I guess this may mean that the 12" PowerBook finally gets FW800 though, eh?
According to Think Secret, there isn't going to be a 12" PowerBook for much longer.
not sure if this has been mentioned, but,
maybe they are dropping FireWire 400, but keeping FireWire 800 (using a connector for backwards compatibility). That could make sense.
edit: after actually reading some.. yes it has been mentioned.
maybe they are dropping FireWire 400, but keeping FireWire 800 (using a connector for backwards compatibility). That could make sense.
edit: after actually reading some.. yes it has been mentioned.
ephix said:
Yes it has, which makes your post rather redundant...
Next time please read the thread first - you'll save yourself some time. 
Not anytime soon like you propose with firewire. You can't get the same security wirelessly. You can't guarantee no interference. I don't think wireless will destroy wired lan connections anytime soon.iMan said:
??? Why do you need to spend $100 to get online wirelessly?
So? I don't think you can turn firewire off, nor would I want to.
Or you can daisy chain them. Still requires their own wire, but they do not require a hub or something. That is one of the many brilliant features of firewire.
So you want be to buy a new camcorder, camera, and hard drive. You got to be out of your mind. I spent to much already, I'm not purchasing new wireless devices any time soon.
First two things to said that I like hearing, but what about all the devices I already have?
Never had that problem, and I never expect to. Again, that is the beauty of daisy chaining.
3rd thing you said that I liked, but still doesn't satisfy my older devices.
You have good points on why we should have wireless firewire. No one is arguing that though. None of this changes the fact that wired firewire is too important to throw away. Again, 802.11b/g is great. It pretty much replaces ethernet on laptops. It does not totally replace it. There are times that I can find a wired connection, but no wireless. There are people working with sensitive data and are not allowed to use wireless. Firewire is very similar in the fact that there are times when wired firewire would be better than wireless firewire (like if a device is wired). Yeah, wireless would be great, but it doesn't change the fact that too many people rely on wired firewire. It should be a compliment thing, not an either or.
Prefer FireWire over USB for high-speed I/O
I purposely purchase FireWire (400) devices (external FW400 HD, external FW800 HD, 2 iPods, video camera, iSight) when the option is available because I don't want my CPU to be constantly interrupted to keep the conversation going with the device. I've never looked into what the actual penalty for USB devices is in real life situations. The second reason is that I then need fewer wires connected to my PowerBook and daisy chain whatever I need to the end of my external HDs and forego any hub.
I purposely purchase FireWire (400) devices (external FW400 HD, external FW800 HD, 2 iPods, video camera, iSight) when the option is available because I don't want my CPU to be constantly interrupted to keep the conversation going with the device. I've never looked into what the actual penalty for USB devices is in real life situations. The second reason is that I then need fewer wires connected to my PowerBook and daisy chain whatever I need to the end of my external HDs and forego any hub.
What about The target disk mode
Hi all, i am not sure if this was discussed, but Will there he a target disk mode type of feature then. I know it only works on firewire ported macs. If they lost that feature then what is this world comming to that is one of the best saving features for getting back data that is important. Well is anyone knows dose usb2 work with the target disk mode or other cables????
joe
Hi all, i am not sure if this was discussed, but Will there he a target disk mode type of feature then. I know it only works on firewire ported macs. If they lost that feature then what is this world comming to that is one of the best saving features for getting back data that is important. Well is anyone knows dose usb2 work with the target disk mode or other cables????
joe
Firewire is the only way to do it. But it probably wouldn't be to hard for apple to implement it via USB. Don't worry though, firewire is not going anywhere for a long time.jocool5 said:
Even if the rumor was true, they wouldn't abandon target mode. They'd figure something out. Not only is it useful, but their Migration Assistant depends on it.jocool5 said:
Say good bye to FW 800 and Hello to external SATA
FW400 has made a significant inroads into the computer peripheral market where as FW800 has not. So why do we need FW800?
What we all need is a faster external bus. Something that will keep up to or surpass today's and tomorrow's hard drive performance. FW800 can not match the performance of the Apple's current line of SATA hard drives.
If there were a cheaper system that would keep up with the 1.5Mb/s and faster hard drives would it make sense to use it? External SATA costs less to implement than FW800 and has that needed performance.
If any FW port is being left out its the FW800 port. The latest versions on the iMac have already dropped the FW800 port.
As many have pointed out FW400 and USB2 are nearly equal in performance and both have significant market penetration. Neither can meet the performance needs of SATA hard drive. We need more performance than even FW800 can provide and Apple needs to lower its costs. SATA accomplishes both criteria.
Jim
FW400 has made a significant inroads into the computer peripheral market where as FW800 has not. So why do we need FW800?
What we all need is a faster external bus. Something that will keep up to or surpass today's and tomorrow's hard drive performance. FW800 can not match the performance of the Apple's current line of SATA hard drives.
If there were a cheaper system that would keep up with the 1.5Mb/s and faster hard drives would it make sense to use it? External SATA costs less to implement than FW800 and has that needed performance.
If any FW port is being left out its the FW800 port. The latest versions on the iMac have already dropped the FW800 port.
As many have pointed out FW400 and USB2 are nearly equal in performance and both have significant market penetration. Neither can meet the performance needs of SATA hard drive. We need more performance than even FW800 can provide and Apple needs to lower its costs. SATA accomplishes both criteria.
Jim
prewwii said:
Perhaps this is the answer :
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2147444/intel-calls-ieee-drop-uwb
i tend to agree if apple got rig of firewire how would they do the dv input for video editing, external hardrives, some ipod links. there would have to be a massive converter cable. then there also would have to be a power voltage of 9 volts coming from one of the pairs.
They better not drop firewire or all _____ will break loose
They better not drop firewire or all _____ will break loose
FireWire has a life span....what's next?
Thanks Peace for the information.
At this time wireless for this function seems to fall short of bandwidth. Current SATA tops out at 3Mb/s and the wireless in this article at 0.5Mb/s significantly less performance.
I think that the O'Grady article is half right, FireWire 800 was still born and will not be with us long. FW400 achieved significant market penetration but the promise of much higher performance from the FireWire approach is not looking good. Where as external SATA is looking better each day. So FW400 will be around for awhile and I think SATA will come roaring on the scene bring real life to external drives.
With all the conversation about digital centers there needs to be a massive amount of storage in the home to store video and audio. That storage needs to be accessed at much higher rates than can be done with FW800. I see some kind of storage farm in a closest of the ultra digital home in the next few years with a miniMac like box accessing it.
Jim
Peace said:
Thanks Peace for the information.
At this time wireless for this function seems to fall short of bandwidth. Current SATA tops out at 3Mb/s and the wireless in this article at 0.5Mb/s significantly less performance.
I think that the O'Grady article is half right, FireWire 800 was still born and will not be with us long. FW400 achieved significant market penetration but the promise of much higher performance from the FireWire approach is not looking good. Where as external SATA is looking better each day. So FW400 will be around for awhile and I think SATA will come roaring on the scene bring real life to external drives.
With all the conversation about digital centers there needs to be a massive amount of storage in the home to store video and audio. That storage needs to be accessed at much higher rates than can be done with FW800. I see some kind of storage farm in a closest of the ultra digital home in the next few years with a miniMac like box accessing it.
Jim
Yes, others have said this, but they are wrong. FW400 and USB2 are no where near equal.prewwii said:
Very true. But at the time, SATA is limited to hard drives and similar (as far as I know, someone tell me if I'm wrong). That doesn't count for the many other uses of FW./QUOTE]
grapes911 said:
According to several actual performance comparison reports that I have read FW400 turns out to be faster than USB2 in most applications although in theory the opposite is suppose to be true. The difference in actual performance seems to be handling of communication's overhead. That, to me, makes them nearly equal in performance.
I am not well versed in the various uses of FireWire. I had assumed that it performed a fast SCSI like function which is what SATA does. Cameras and such look like a subset of external storage in my way of thinking. I have some understanding of SCSI from designing devices using the SCSI interface in the late 1970's.
For more general communications there are several versions of ethernet available. All of which exceed the capabilities of either FW or SATA. The downside of more complex communication schemes is cost of implementation.
Jim
grapes911 said:
Not, soon - just eventually.. it's only been a few years since it took off - I hardly use my laptop wired anymore... it won't go back.
grapes911 said:
Well, I hear you say that. You might be right, but still it might be possible that the security is good enough for 99% of the time - especially if you are in the lowend laptop market... PBs still are going to be wired.
grapes911 said:
Well, you don't need to.. but usually you need that airport or similar device...
grapes911 said:
You would not turn it off, but maybe it will itself somehow... how often do you use your scanner... or printer... or all of your harddrives? My guess is that for most people these things just sits there most of the time - but this is a bit beside the point, just to illustrate the difference in always on network needs, and the on/off for periferals.
grapes911 said:
Point was that your existing equipment are still usabel - thorugh some sort of "wireless firwire hub" - so you basically plug your stack into this one, and they are all wireless all of a sudden.
Remember also that it is the consumer, entry level laptops that will miss the cabled FW. PBs would still have the option - as will all desktops for a while I suspect. So the professionals are covered either way and the consumers will make the transition to more convenient means of connecting periferals rather quickly. In my world this makes sense...
Remember also that this is just a rumor - might of course turn out that all laptops still would feature the regular FW
admittedly it would be easier to just keep one port on either system for a while... but I suspect Apple want these new line of laptops to be as thin as nano-players, and really rock the market... then something might just have to go...
Contrary to what Mr. O'Grady says in his article, I have seen the opposite in the PC world. More and more PC motherboards are supporting IEEE 1394 (a.k.a. FireWire 400) and support is increasing, not being dropped.Macrumors said:
Another thing behind Mr. O'Grady's reasoning is that FireWire has been moved out of the main page into obscurity. BFD...Guess what? USB has been relegated to the exact same area of the developer site!!
http://developer.apple.com/devicedrivers/usb/
http://developer.apple.com/devicedrivers/firewire/
USB and FireWire both used to have top-level "marketing" pages
(www.apple.com/xxx); now neither do.
Talk about blowing all kinds of holes into Mr. O'Grady's logic. Besides the fact that dropping FireWire 400 would never fly with the movie editors and camcorder users, of which there are quite a few. Bottom line is that this myth has been busted. Expect to see Firewire built into the next gen PowerBooks like we are all used to.
immaculate said:
Damn. I liked the shiny metal-ness and stuff... at the time, it was better than the iBooks. Now, pitiful. PowerBooks! I want GigE and FW800 in a small, easy to carry and long-battery-lifed package! I am demanding!
prewwii said:
Does External SATA provide the same amount of power as FW800? The 'no-power-adapter' thing is really nice on the go (see my earlier posts about carrying less dongles).
And the iMacs never had FW800... if they did, it might have helped to increase the number of people who used it.
Mechcozmo said:
Neither FW800 or external SATA have power. F800 does not have power hence the different connector, less pins, compared to the FW400 connector. I think only FW400 (12v) and USB (5v) have power. From what I have read the amount of power available is between 5...15 watts depending on the implementation.
Jim
Mechcozmo said:
Thanks for straightening me out. I read a white paper on firewire a few weeks ago and got the two reversed. All I had to do was pull out a FW400 cable to see my error.
Here is some information on the external SATA which makes no mention of power. However it does provide some comparisons between the two firewires available and the two external SATA schemes available.
http://www.sata-io.org/docs/External SATA WP 11-09.pdf
I think I mentioned SATA at 1.5 & 3.0mb/s the correct frequency is 1.5 & 3.0Gb/s
Thanks for getting me back on track.
Jim
lol that is just wrong. the ibooks are losing firewire to hlp distinguish them as a lower class portable compaired to the powerbook. A line that has become increaslingly hazy in recent months.Tupring said:
Take a look at newegg.com and you'll see that 99% of the motherboards offered have FireWire 400 and external SATA connectivity. The future is now.