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New Apple Portables To Drop FireWire Support?

I highly doubt it

I'm not sure if anyone else has thought of this, but you can't boot your computer from a USB hard drive if anything happened to your main hard drive, making the only option booting from a DVD drive. Also, what if you want to boot from Windows? I know it's possible with only one hard drive, but complex and limiting in space as well as making that one hard drive susceptible to viruses and spyware, slowing the entire computer down.
You'd also be compromising speed to switch soley to USB, Firewire has a higher sustainable speed than USB does.
 
hmm. if this is true then i dont like it. if FW800 is backwards compatible then woo! I wouldn't mind FW800.
 
You can use an adapter to plug a FW400 device into a FW800 port. I have one on my G5 because I ran out of FW400 ports and didn't need a hub.
 
First of all, ibook is targeted towards home users, and last time i checked professionals werent the only people to do videos on their computer.
There is no reason apple would remove firewire to cut the costs.
Come on, how much would they save if they removed firewire from the ibook?
And if that was the case, they might as well remove external video out, ethernet, the superdrive, and bluetooth as they might be only needed for *Professionals* only. Also I guess we can all say goodbye to imovie and idvd. Because *Professionals* use Final Cut Studio.
 
Macs with out audio-in ports

Remember when they dropped the audio-in jack on the powerbooks (I think desktops as well... not as sure) and we all had to get the goofy iMic adabtor just to record into the powerbook. For mobile computing and putting projects together it was a pain in the a**. This could the our future in the old kester. I don't want to go out and but an adaptor just to plug in my hard drive... but then again, Steve did make the sound to Intel sound good... and now we are waiting intel chip in our Macs... who woulda thought!
 
What was that rule.... you can always add features later, but taking them away is forbidden ???

I like firewire, and it makes me feel better about shelling out the cash for a mac. It is one of the niceties that makes Apples products unique- and better. and worth the extra money!

I would miss FW if this be true.
 
No sense

That would never happen, we need firewire to connect our CamCoders, drop Firewire 400 is no sense, dont worry is absolutely fake.
 
generik said:
Apple is trying to cut costs, just look at the recent iPods.

In other news Apple is still charging the same for the same product.
Click to expand...

Great. It would be so much cheaper without a hard drive or a keyboard or speakers or a display. There is so much room for cutting costs.
 
rendezvouscp said:
If they do this, then they'll probably include a F800 —> F400 converter with the PBs. I hope that they don't do this though, and I don't see why they'd really need to unless they're that limited on space.
-Chase
Click to expand...

If the case is that Apple needs the space, they should axe the 56K modem. Especially since they made their own little USB based modem. Leave my firewire port alone.
 
I find it totally funny that everyone got into a fit about this rumor.

It's a rumor, and a very bad one at that. This isn't as bad as the Dharma rumor, which is one of the worst that I've seen. But we all know that Apple won't drop FireWire from their computers. They know that nearly everyone uses FireWire in some manner on their computer. It was only dropped from the iPod because the FireWire chip takes up a good amount of space inside of the iPod.

So if Apple were to drop FireWire from the portables, it would have to be to make a very slim portable. I don't see that happening.
 
thats stupid, firewire is just about every digital camera/videocamera. this rumor is complete bs.
 
It's been said before...

But IF (and that's a big if), they drop the 400 port in favor of an 800 port, they would likely include a 400->800 converter since so many consumer devices use it. In a sense it would be future protecting the ibook. That being said, it would be annoying because methinks those adapters (like the DVI->VGA, etc) would be lost easily and cost more $$$ than you'd like to replace. But relax, there STILL WILL BE FIREWIRE. Just 800 instead of 400. I still won't believe it till I see it, though.
 
For general users, one port is more than enough. It will be truely sad when there are none at all....which may be coming too. Just not yet.

I wonder how much Intel is paying Apple to get rid of Firewire. Or maybe it's a good will move on Apple's part. And now to end this post with a questionable comment in all caps for people who won't read this sentence. INTEL'S USB SHALL RULE ALL. HAH AH HA HAH HA HA HA HAH A.
 
Preacher85 said:
If the case is that Apple needs the space, they should axe the 56K modem. Especially since they made their own little USB based modem. Leave my firewire port alone.
Click to expand...

Exactly. That's how they got the iMac to be slimmer than it was before.

And anyway, if they were to drop FireWire, they most likely wouldn't totally drop it. They might include a simple 4-pin FireWire port that doesn't provide power instead of the 6-pin.
 
No no no...

I absolutely loathe USB and everything about its hideous design. Audio / video professionals simply rely on FW to get their job done, it's fast and reliable and that's what's required.

FW also has others uses (TCP over FW), I just can't see Apple dropping such a prominent connector on their laptops.

G.
 
Warbrain said:
Exactly. That's how they got the iMac to be slimmer than it was before.

And anyway, if they were to drop FireWire, they most likely wouldn't totally drop it. They might include a simple 4-pin FireWire port that doesn't provide power instead of the 6-pin.
Click to expand...

They wouldn't go backwards to 4-pin.
 
MrTrout said:
I absolutely loathe USB and everything about its hideous design.
Click to expand...
Then you obviously know nothing about USB. I'm not advocating dropping FW, but I'd wouldn't drop USB either. Both have advantages and disadvantages. They compliment each other very well. And there is nothing wrong with USB's design. From a pure development stand point, it does exactly what it is supposed to do.
 
grapes911 said:
Then you obviously know nothing about USB. I'm not advocating dropping FW, but I'd wouldn't drop USB either. Both have advantages and disadvantages. They compliment each other very well.
Click to expand...
except FireWire is better ;) :p
 
No freaking way. And I'll tell you why: Every single digital video camera uses Firewire. Every. Single. One. So Apple is suddenly going to decide not to be a "digital hub"? Drop digital video from its master plan? Hell no. They practically invented video editing for the average user by implementing Firewire and creating iMovie. This rumor has no legs to stand on. I don't believe it for a second.

--DT

edit: read the thread over and saw that I'm not nearly the first one with that thought. But the point stands.
 
i agree with all the other MR users claiming that this is BS.

As long as the Intel PB's have FW 400 or 800 i will be happy as all of my audio interfaces other than my mBox are FW, though there is no reason for the iBook to not include at least an 4-pin FW port similar to windoze laptops. Getting rid of FW to save space/make the laptop smaller makes no sense; the laptops are already portable enough for most people.
 
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