New Apple Thunderbolt to FireWire 800 adapter

[Greg M]

This is very odd indeed. When did you receive yours? Mine was shipped on June 27th and landed on July 2nd. The black fold-over "Designed by Apple in California" box with the decals and such is die cut to accommodate the Ethernet adapter and the black plastic tray the Mac sits in has been extruded with an opening deep enough to accommodate the thicker box.

I'd be curious to know if yours was shipped before or after mine.

I purchased it on June 21st at a Best Buy in Charlotte. Mine is the base model.

You know it is possible that you accidentally received a retina that had the adapter added as an option and included in the shipment of your Retina.

 

[wethackrey]

I purchased it on June 21st at a Best Buy in Charlotte. Mine is the base model.

You know it is possible that you accidentally received a retina that had the adapter added as an option and included in the shipment of your Retina.

Mine was a build to order. If you picked yours up on June 21st, it was manufactured at least two weeks before mine. So... it's either a BTO thing or they've decided to include it.

The Ethernet adapter isn't a build to order option. It shows up as an accessory item, like the external SuperDrive. Both the SuperDrive and the second Ethernet adapter I ordered on the same order as the computer, not knowing one would be included, were delivered nearly two weeks before my MBPr arrived.

Perhaps I'll start a thread on the subject and we'll see if an adapter is being shipped with new orders.

I do want to apologize for coming on a bit strong earlier. Not knowing you'd received a MBPr without an adapter, it seemed like you thought I was lying. My mistake.

Hey, here's a question... The black molded styrene tray that the MacBook sits on in the box... In your package is the cutout for the "Designed by Apple..." package deep enough to accommodate an adapter?

 

[Greg M]

Mine was a build to order. If you picked yours up on June 21st, it was manufactured at least two weeks before mine. So... it's either a BTO thing or they've decided to include it.

The Ethernet adapter isn't a build to order option. It shows up as an accessory item, like the external SuperDrive. Both the SuperDrive and the second Ethernet adapter I ordered on the same order as the computer, not knowing one would be included, were delivered nearly two weeks before my MBPr arrived.

Perhaps I'll start a thread on the subject and we'll see if an adapter is being shipped with new orders.

I do want to apologize for coming on a bit strong earlier. Not knowing you'd received a MBPr without an adapter, it seemed like you thought I was lying. My mistake.

Hey, here's a question... The black molded styrene tray that the MacBook sits on in the box... In your package is the cutout for the "Designed by Apple..." package deep enough to accommodate an adapter?

I don't think it is big enough.

 

[wethackrey]

I don't think it is big enough.

Here's the cutout in the box mine came in:

 

[oxfordguy]

My 2012 MBA. came with a thunderbolt to VGA adaptor in such a box, but I did it that to my BTO order...

 

[Greg M]

Here's the cutout in the box mine came in:
Image

Then it could fit in mine. I still think your's got added by mistake. I'd bet they have 2 different info packs available to put into a BTO box. One with an adapter for those that added it to there BTO and one standard pack. The packer just grabbed the wrong pack for your box. Great for you!

 

[christypmaui]

Ok, so... I just ordered a MacBook Pro Retina, very excited. Can't wait for it to get here.

And then I started thinking about the upgrade path. There is no thunderbolt on my older MacBook Pro. There is no Firewire on the new Retina. How am I going to transfer all my stuff to the new system? Am I just out of luck, no nice smooth upgrade using slave disk mode like in the old days...?

You could use this

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/756995-REG/Verbatim_53042_500GB_Store_N_Go.html

 

[Maxtoid]

Really?

I'm not really sure what the confusion is... The Retina MBP does NOT ship standard with the ethernet adapter.

If you select the option below, then it comes in the box like pictured above, it does Not ship separately... it comes In The Box. If you don't select this option, then it doesn't

 

[jowie]

My question is if this adapter can power Firewire800 Drives. Esp the RAID 0 2x 2.5" I use for video editing.

Yeah I'm keen to find this out too. I have a few FW devices that require power, and I like to be able to daisy-chain them as well. I sincerely hope the adapters do both of these things! *fingers crossed*

----------

I'm not really sure what the confusion is... The Retina MBP does NOT ship standard with the ethernet adapter.

I think you might want to re-read the question.

 

[jowie]

This adaptor is like a Chupacabra. We know it exists, but no one has seen it in the wild.

I do wonder why there is a delay in getting these ready. It makes me concerned that it's technically difficult and that they are going to sell it for some exorbitant price.

 

[NewbieCanada]

I'm not really sure what the confusion is... The Retina MBP does NOT ship standard with the ethernet adapter.

If you select the option below, then it comes in the box like pictured above, it does Not ship separately... it comes In The Box. If you don't select this option, then it doesn't
Image

In my case it did both...

When I ordered it as an accessory it showed both as a separate item and part of the configuration. I tried creating another order, and if I didn't order it separately, it didn't show up as part of the config. I kept my original order, and a couple of days later I received the adaptor. When my rMBP arrived a week after ordering (I was one of the first orders), it was there in the box as well.

So I have two and paid for one.

Not complaining.

 

[oxfordguy]

I wish that Apple would hurry up and release this thing - am hoping they're going to make it available at the same time as the Mountain Lion launch, but that may just be wishful thinking...

 

[ReddestDream]

I wish that Apple would hurry up and release this thing - am hoping they're going to make it available at the same time as the Mountain Lion launch, but that may just be wishful thinking...

A lot of us are waiting on this adapter too (myself included! ).

I'm thinking you may be right about it being released along with ML. That way, they can include the driver updates along with ML!

 

[krackers]

Ditto. I need this to import my video from my minidv camera to imovie. All this processing power and retina graphics is a waste without a firewire port. There are still 10 days left. Maybe?

 

[Kevinflo]

Was hoping the release of this would be announced alongside mountain lion :-/

I need this ASAP to start using my Firepod to record music again!

Sucks to have to keep my 6 year old clunker around for one port...

 

[NewbieCanada]

Was hoping the release of this would be announced alongside mountain lion :-/

I need this ASAP to start using my Firepod to record music again!

Sucks to have to keep my 6 year old clunker around for one port...

It's not nearly important enough to be announced at an earnings call... but I wouldn't be surprised to see it available in the store tomorrow

 

[ivnj]

Looks good I could totally use one of these. But would it be possible to get the thunderbolt to firewire cable. And then a firewire to usb2.0 or usb 3.0 adapter.

 

[jk73]

Well, Mountain Lion is out, but I don't see this adapter available anywhere.

 

[indefinitedrums]

Well, Mountain Lion is out, but I don't see this adapter available anywhere.

I knnooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow

 

[macmadness86]

OS X Mountain Lion

I third this! I figured it would be released with Mountain Lion, but it is nowhere to be found!!! I HAVE A MACBOOK AIR AND I NEED FIREWIRE!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[arnoz]

Same here, especially a few months after buying a huuuge LaCie backup disk specifically for FireWire 800. Meh.

 

[jk73]

I was expecting this to be released today along with Mountain Lion, and its absence has me fearing the "July" release date will slip into August (or later).

I have a new MBP with Retina display (which is amazing), but a lot of my data is on an old PowerBook that won't boot past the gray Apple screen. It will, however, boot into FireWire mode, so I'm counting the minutes until this adapter is released.

 

[ivnj]

I'll call tomorrow and ask.

 

[ivnj]

I called 800-myapple . And talked to sales. He said it is not released yet. Maybe this month but no official date is set yet.

 

[globalrave]

yup... end of july and still no firewire "adapter." I think apple has massively underestimated the amount of engineering that needs to go into something like this.

You cannot create a 'cable' that goes from thunderbolt to firewire in the way that you can do a straight pin-to-pin connection for FW800 to 400. Thuderbolt is based on PCI, which means you need chips, buffers, etc to do the translation.

There are, actually, a couple things out there that seem to do TB-FW, but are all to the tune of $300 or so and involve going TB-PCI-FW. You will notice that this is also a very bulky proposition, and not something apple would want to market.

The alternative is for apple to do a custom TB-FW *chip* and put it in some kind of active cabling. Custom chipping is very hard. I don't think apple really has the expertise to do something like that on their own - they may have to ask intel to help them out, meaning added delays and expense.

The product turnover for doing a custom chip like this is on the order of many, many (many) months and would have to sell tens of millions of units. Apple, however, is obviously pushing to deprecate firewire and I suspect did not realize just how much people might want an adapter until very late in the game.

My guess is that the wait will be many more months for such an adapter - if they don't simply drop it and leave it to 3rd party vendors. Of course, I hope I'm wrong, as I shan't be buying a shiny new apple laptop until this issue gets resolved, but again, this is a very expensive engineering proposition apple is making in designing this.