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No FireWire in MacBooks

I won't be buying a MacBook now. And I had planned on it. I have a flash based camcorder but sometimes when I am traveling in other countries I have to take footage from other camcorders. I wanted to buy a macbook to download the footage and then transfer it to my MBP when I get home to edit. Oh well. I guess I will just keep my Blackbook for now.
 
notjustjay said:
The problem is the puck is going to take a long time to get there.

One miniDV tape costs $3 and can store an hour of DV video. When you transfer that to your computer via Firewire, it takes up 13 gigs of disk space. 3.6 megs/second of video.

You can't buy 16 gig flash cards yet for remotely close to $3. The solution might be to record with higher compression settings, like many existing flash based cameras do, but you sacrifice the picture quality or editability of DV (e.g. difficult to do precise editing on MPEG2 compressed video). Or use the USB port on your camera and transfer video at a lower quality (in many cases at one QUARTER of the full resolution of DV video). That's a step backwards, not forwards!

Let's say it again: DV cameras require Firewire connections. You cannot transfer DV video over USB.

As to the person who asks why you're using a MacBook if you're editing lots of tape-based video: why not? I started editing DV video with a 400 Mhz Celeron PC, and it worked just fine back in 2001. Is it not reasonable to expect a new computer in 2008 to do the same? And isn't Apple's philosophy, isn't the whole point of iLife, is that everything is easy to do, you just turn it on and go, plug and play? No adaptors, upgrades, nothing missing, everything's supposed to be included.

Can you imagine if the iMacs of 10 years ago didn't include Ethernet ports for internet access? "Oh, that's a PRO feature... if you're using the internet a lot, you really should be buying a Power Mac"...
Click to expand...

Excellent summary of the issue.

SL
 
Shurran said:
... and I guess you also use netinstall to image those machines. Say goodbye to creating the netboot image over target disk mode. In fact - how will we create a netboot image?

I guess we will have to create the master image and booted image on a different partition on the same machine, and write the image to another partition on that machine.

Well done Apple, you've gone all Vista!
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Exactly...

I can't even begin to list all the ways in which not having FW on the Macbooks will affect the way I work. There's always going to be a "work around" for most of these things but why should I start having to find a way around perfectly good practices when they already had a solution !?

I'll just stick to my trusty Rev. A Blackbook for now but it's a real shame as I think the new design and technology is great otherwise.

As I said to a friend before, it's getting harder to be honest about Apple hardware every time they have one of these "special events"... Let's go back to the good old days when Apple gave more than they took away and cared less about taking over the iWorld..

Don't get me wrong, I'd never go back to Windows and the likes of Dell but ever since the iPhone lockdown saga Apple have gone downhill for me.
 
Kenal0 said:
Still trying to figure out how the migration assistant will work. I loved that feature. Made upgrading a no brainer.

Kenal0
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I actually did it over USB before. I tried it on a lark since I only had a USB drive connector, and it worked.

When it the Migration Assistant asks you to plug in a Firewire drive, that's when I plugged in a USB drive.
 
sangosimo said:
my mini dv cam can do usb tape transfers...it just doesn't do it at full res. How is imovie useless when most people are editing videos they record with their isight camera?

edit: if you shoot alot a video via a tape why is a macbook in your production chain?
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We're not talking about anyone who uses the term 'production chain'.

We're talking about people who own say a Canon HV30 to shoot vacation adn family clips, and have no way of importing video into a new MacBook.
 
apulk said:
No Firewire seals the deal for me. I do my home movies with my mini-dv camera which is firewire AND i have a firewire external drive. I will buy a laptop in the next few days but it won't be one of the new ones. I'll either buy an old Blackbook (for the larger drive and difference factor) or buy the old low-end Macbook pro. I don't see the $1299 or $1599 new Macbooks making any financial sense.
Click to expand...

There are great deals to be had for refurbished MBP's. Those would suit you much better than a new MacBook.
 
No new macbook for me. Period . Can't accept this kind of crap. ( User since 1985 ).

I hate apple policy now, I was an apple diehard some years ago, but this is it. Dropping the T-Shirt, and removing my Car sticker.

This is crap.
 
So to summarize:

Most of our FW drives might have a USB connection so we will survive, we can even do the migration assistant using USB or WiFi.

If we use FW camcorders (or Canopus ADVC-50 or any other AV device) and if we use any type of audio that utilizes the firewire, we are SOL with the new MacBooks.

I found a FW-2-USB cable, not Mac compatible and costs $129 or so. :rolleyes:
 
It is 100% crap. If I get a new Apple Macbook, I won't be able to use my Apple iPod (firewire only). I get that it's a few years old, but it's just not cool!
 
iShater said:
I bet you are doing a full 60 min non-compressed DV movies from your home camera.
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It's the standard 1920x1080 MPEGs from the camera, copied over via USB. It shows up as an external hard disk, I copy it over, edit, burn a DVD, and play it on my 52" plasma. Looks great. Generally I do the full 2 hours of a DVD, all in one shot.

The issue was whether or not we'll miss it or not, and I won't because I haven't used FW in ages. I hated DV tape-based cameras, because there's more crap to break. The hard disk based HD Sony has been an absolute blast to use, so much easier to deal with and back up.
 
I think the main reason Apple dropped FireWire is because consumer camcorders are shifting towards the likes of the Flip. Here in college, I've seen people using their cameras to record video or using Flips (and other equivalents). DV is slowly dying among one of Apple's main target demographics. Hell, I told my roommate (who also has a MacBook), "Dude, the new MacBooks don't have FireWire." His response? "What's FireWire?". A lot of people had the same response. Hell, when I worked at my school's bookstore's computer department and people were asking about the Air, we would tell them, "There's no FireWire." And most people either looked confused or also asked, "What's FireWire?" Same thing happens with external hard drives. "Why does that one cost more? It looks the same as that other one." "Well, the more expensive one has FireWire and E-SATA." "..... What're those?" A lot of you may moan and groan, but I think I can safely say that the masses won't even notice.
 
can't you use external hd to resolve firewire issue

I have a usb/firewire WD external hd - couldn't i connect this to my new macbook via usb and then if i need to use a camcorder connect it to the open firewire slot on my external hd? let me know if this would work, thanks.
 
iShater said:
If we use FW camcorders (or Canopus ADVC-50 or any other AV device) and if we use any type of audio that utilizes the firewire, we are SOL with the new MacBooks.
:
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Don't forget, if you have a pro audio interface that doesn't suck (like many USB audio interfaces) such as the MOTU Ultralite, you are also screwed.

I went through about three different USB audio interfaces until I gave up and tried the Ultralite. It's a win. But if you get a new Macbook, it will be an expensive paperweight.

Once AGAIN, my trusty 12" Powerbook finds another reason to keep living!
 
Wild-Bill said:
Don't forget, if you have a pro audio interface that doesn't suck (like many USB audio interfaces) such as the MOTU Ultralite, you are also screwed.

I went through about three different USB audio interfaces until I gave up and tried the Ultralite. It's a win. But if you get a new Macbook, it will be an expensive paperweight.

Once AGAIN, my trusty 12" Powerbook finds another reason to keep living!
Click to expand...

Just half a year ago I was agonizing over a USB versus FireWire for my audio interface. And I went FW.

.........but at the same time, I was planning on getting an MBP down the road, too.
 
butterfly0fdoom said:
Just half a year ago I was agonizing over a USB versus FireWire for my audio interface. And I went FW.

.........but at the same time, I was planning on getting an MBP down the road, too.
Click to expand...

I chose to get a firewire based interface [echo audiofire8] thinking I would be switching to a macbook months down the road when this refresh came out and knew that apple would support firewire much better than on the PC side because they played such a hand in making it standard.

Totally absurd of them to just remove it for the sake of sucking more money out of their customers.
 
I understand the argument about tape based cameras, but in reality I also wonder how much life is left in FW. ( as opposed to USB 3.0 etc.)

One can not really argue too far into the issue before we admit that the future is flash based cameras, and in the interim spinning hard disk cameras are becoming more widespread.

My low end HD camera ( an Aiptek ) is flash based and my hight end camera (a Canon HD model) has a hard disk.

I only use FW for connecting a hard drive to my iMac, my MBP's Fireware is virgin.
 
As a musician who takes recording/producing as a serious hobby, this is a horrible move!

My expensive audio interface is FW....and I'm not running a major studio. So basically, I have to jump up to the pro laptop (which costs pro $$) to do my basic multi-track work?

Sooooo disappointed. Finally have a mid-grade solution to run Logic on, but I can't hook-up my audio interface.

Bad Bad Bad

Who the hell made this decision at Apple? And --- way to piss off the faithful Apple audio hardware manufacturers (who just had their potential market share slashed).

At what point are we going to have to throw our hands up in disgust and go back to wintel (I was a recent convert).
 
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