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Steve Jobs on Lack of Firewire in MacBooks

jjobst said:
TD
This is what the applestore where I bought my new macbook told me to do.
1. buy a new video camera. (my Sony Mini DV is only 2 yrs old)
2. buy a $200 converter. (which may be good choice at this point)
or 3. Take my mini vd tapes,put them on a G-5 (which I have access to in a school), use a camera run them in real time to render. save this either as data or as a quicktime, burn a disc and run in the new macbook using the new imovie. I saw them do it in the store with 30 seconds of tapes so it didn't take long to render. On the g5 it takes hours of rendering a 60 minute video of 2 high school basketball games stopping and starting over the whole tape.
jj
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This guy is not an Apple genius, he is an Apple idiot!
The only decent advise he could have given you: "Forget the unibody Macbook and buy a MBP or the updated white MB instead."
Without FW the unibody Macbook is useless for DV or HDV capturing, plain and simple.
The easiest workable solution for your problem is going the G5 route with RedTomato's procedure.
 
New Mac Mini has Firewire 800

The Mac Mini announced today has a Firewire 800 port indicating Apple's continuing support.

It remains to be seen if this feature will ever be reinstated in the MacBook.

Here's hoping...
 
Mac Mini

Eric S. said:
The Mac mini is not directly competing with a higher-margin Apple product in the same category.
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I agree with your comment highlighting the marketing separation between MB & MBP.

However the inclusion of FW800 on the Mac Mini addresses the issues raised earlier in this forum about whether Apple would drop FW or not and also the myriad of comments on USB2, USB3 & non-existent cables & converters.
 
iBungie said:
The Mac Mini announced today has a Firewire 800 port indicating Apple's continuing support.

It remains to be seen if this feature will ever be reinstated in the MacBook.

Here's hoping...
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from the first post...
Whether or not you agree with Apple's decision to remove Firewire from its low end laptops, it's clear that Apple is abandoning the feature in their consumer-targeted machines.
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Clearly the macbook is a consumer product, and the macmini is for Pro use... Even though the macbook is better spec'd. :confused: x100.
 
Actually, all of the new HD camcorders of the past few years use USB 2
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Does this mean that the new minis and iMacs won't work with the new USB camcorder that I bought because I thought Apple were dropping firewire. :D

-----------------------
No matter what happens with the mac, as long as the iPhone farts people will be happy :)
 
If I have to make a guess I would say majority of them are kids or students wanting to be creatives or they just jumped in for the "cool factor".
It remains to be seen if this feature will ever be reinstated in the MacBook
 
We see the whole picture now with the desktop released, it's either FW800 or no FW at all, so they used that to differentiate the MacBook and MacBook Pro. I suppose that's not too bad since it gives me faith that Apple will continue to update the FW on all the computers (except for the MacBook and that's only a maybe) as new specs becomes popular.
 
Firewire ports

Sorry Apple you have made an awful lot of customers feeling let down. I have 3 camcorders all feature firewire. I think your market research and development team failed to fully investigate etc. I have access to a Mac which does have firewire, my wife who uses her Macbook all the time has complained but simply gets "that is how it is".
 
...

CrackedButter said:
I can't believe one little port would make that much of a difference in Apple's lineup, now that they have all been updated.
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Believe it. As you can see by the length of this thread (the longest that MacRumors has ever had), a disproportionate number of people rely on the FireWire port, so much so, that many have either already dropped Apple or are considering (for the first time ever), switching to another manufacturer.

Dropping the FW port was a tremendous mistake on Apple's part, which they tacitly admit to by having kept it on their consumer model Mac mini, for example.
 
the Helix said:
Dropping the FW port was a tremendous mistake on Apple's part, which they tacitly admit to by having kept it on their consumer model Mac mini, for example.
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I don't believe Apple has admitted anything, tacitly or otherwise. They have no reason to drop FW from the mini, unlike the Macbook where it was driven by marketing considerations. I very much doubt we will see FW added back to the Macbook.
 
Eric S. said:
I don't believe Apple has admitted anything, tacitly or otherwise. They have no reason to drop FW from the mini, unlike the Macbook where it was driven by marketing considerations. I very much doubt we will see FW added back to the Macbook.
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I agree that they probably will not add it back to the Macbook, but that is their loss. Customers will find an alternative, and a lot of those will NOT be Apple.
 
The more time I've sat with this, the more I feel it was a bad marketing decision on Apple's part. Put simply, it's a connection standard, one which they continue to use on consumer-based products. So it is not a "pro feature", it has never been a pro-feature. If they want FW to be a "pro-only" feature, fine...but it's too soon to make that move.

The claim that newer video products use USB 2.0 is really non-issue. Support of current & legacy FW devices on all Macs should be one of Apple's advantages, after all, it is the "eco-responsible" thing to do.

Although I'm not in the MacBook market, but if I were, I have a not-so-old video FW cam which works perfectly for me. I also have multiple FW drives and a FW iSight camera (which is quite useable and more adaptable than the built-in). I'm in the market for a laptop, not a laptop that forces me to replace perfectly good devices. As a typical MacBook buyer, I'm not about to spend the extra money for new cameras and drives.

Basically, as Apple users, we've made past buying decisions on devices based on Apple's solid and stabile technology. We understand Apple is an industry leader and pioneer, making bold moves such as killing floppy drives, etc. But FW was and is Apple's superior connectivity technology which they continue to use, even on the mini. Excluding it from one product in the line-up makes no sense, especially if low and mid-range products still have it. The overall loss in MB sales to protect against the few lost MBP sales because of a single connector just doesn't make sense. Pros will buy pro machines, consumers will buy consumer AND pro. A FW connector shouldn't be the deciding factor between them.

/end rant/ :D
 
danny_w said:
I agree that they probably will not add it back to the Macbook, but that is their loss. Customers will find an alternative, and a lot of those will NOT be Apple.
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I have found alternatives. It wasn't what I planned, or wanted, but I decided to let my business needs drive my purchases, not try to fit a purchase to my business needs. I have two small windows notebooks with every connector I could possibly need, an express card slot for expansion, and processor, memory and graphics that match a MB Pro specs, not a MB specs. It has worked out very well. Now I have to decide whether to move everything to PC's and I'm leaning that way.

It still leaves me a little sad. Silly, since it's just technology that's a tool for production. But it's hard to put over twenty years with a product behind you. But, life goes on and change is a sometimes necessary part of it..

TimTheEnchanter said:
Pros will buy pro machines, consumers will buy consumer AND pro. A FW connector shouldn't be the deciding factor between them.

/end rant/ :D
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And, I will add, a pro machine is one that does the job, not one with an artificial designation of "Pro". For me, the MB, if it had retained firewire, would have been a "pro" machine because I would have been using it (effectively) in a professional environment.

Fortunately, Apple is not the only company making computers.
 
editguy said:
And, I will add, a pro machine is one that does the job, not one with an artificial designation of "Pro". For me, the MB, if it had retained firewire, would have been a "pro" machine because I would have been using it (effectively) in a professional environment.

Fortunately, Apple is not the only company making computers.
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I agree, there is something distinctly off about owning AppleMacs, at first I thought I'd enjoy them for what they do of course but an added bonus I suppose was they are considered the underdog, ...but as I've gone on there is something altogether more,... controlled.. about the whole Mac thing, more controlled than I would like personally. It's kinda weird actually, how everything seems to be locked down so much- and the marketing is so slick... it almost makes me nautious .
I know I enjoy using OS X and all of that- but there seems to be a niggly little stone in my otherwise comfortable Patrick Cox's and I just can't get it out.
 
editguy said:
For me, the MB, if it had retained firewire, would have been a "pro" machine because I would have been using it (effectively) in a professional environment.
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This is precisely why (IMHO) Apple took the FW port out of the Macbook - to avoid MBP customers buying MB's. Don't get me wrong, it is a risky strategy because they risk losing not just the difference in revenue between a MBP and MB but the entire revenue from a lost customer,not to mention all future revenue from various other supporting products.

We will never know if they got it right or wrong but my view is that most customers (like me) won't miss the FW port on their MB. I have used the FW port on my iBook G4 to transfer data from disk to disk but I could manage to do this in other ways if I had to. I don't own any FW peripherals. Hell, it's not as if they are disabling my existing iBook's FW port, this would only affect me if I bought a new MB in which case I'd make the decision with open eyes.

If I couldn't live without FW then I'd have to decide between a white MB (second hand perhaps) if I wanted to save money or make the jump to the MBP. To me the last resort would be to jump-ship back to Windows but I don't think I would be able to do it, especially not now with the whole XP/Vista/W7 thing still running its course. Maybe once W7 is stable and has seen SP1, and has become what Vista should have been, but that is 12 months away minimum. OS X is really mature right now and I'm looking forward to Snow Leopard which should push the bar higher still - I just couldn't go back to Windows regardless of whether the MB suited my purposes.

So, IMHO, I don't think the lack of FW in the MB will hurt Apple all that much, at least not compared to the possible effect of the recession and the weak pound here in the UK. I also don't think they will bring it back unless they can find a way to separate Pro machines from non-Pro machines. Maybe quad cores for all MBP's and core 2 duo for MB's in future? That might allow them to bring back FW in the MB? ;)

Not looking for a fight here by the way - just my considered (and humble) opinion. I know you won't all agree with me.

Cheers,
Craig.
 
craig1410 said:
Not looking for a fight here by the way - just my considered (and humble) opinion. I know you won't all agree with me.
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I agree with everything in your excellent post. Product differentiation with the MBP is the reason FW was dropped in the MB, and the reason it won't be back (I can't see Apple putting quad-cores into all MBPs). The fact that Steve Jobs didn't want to own up to that just made his stated excuses ("all camcorders now come with USB 2.0") look even more lame.

I decided to upgrade to the aluminum MB even though I regret the loss of FW. But I really only used it for target disk mode and I can find other ways to do that. If Apple had offered a black version with the current whitebook specs, I would have chosen that instead. Apple sinks in my estimation for this though. Opting for better technology rather than more profit used to be a reason to choose Apple over Microsoft. Now there's not much difference.
 
FW = "Pro" model?

If FW is a "Pro" feature, then I suppose the iMac and the Mac mini are pro computers?

Yeah, right... Who are we trying to kid?

Apple is just gouging their most loyal customers. And btw, Apple is losing sales on their MacBook line in as far as there are already people who have not purchased it because of the lack of FW. Moreover, the people who still buy the MacBook do not buy it because it is lacking the FW port.
 
I'm one who was forced to get the whitebook NVidia over the unibody MB..because of the FW issue.

Thing is , I'm actually pleased the whitebook is available simply because it has firewire....it can do everything the unibody MB can do but is much much cheaper to buy...this is great the price difference gets me 4Gb RAM and a 500Gb 7200rpm internal HD
.....I can live with that, it'll help me forget how sexy that damn unibody is, mind you prolly a good thing I was forced out of buying the unibody MB...I'd rather wait for rev2 anyway but needed to buy now.

....just hope that when we see a refresh of the line, we who need firewire( audio guys etc) have an option that doesn't break the bank[see MBP] for a no good reason like , say ... a Firewire port.

It just boils down to forcing basically everyone who makes music & wants a mobile Mac to buy a machine which none of them really need for music production.
The bump in graphics is not required in my machine...the screen real estate is not needed either ....
 
the Helix said:
Apple is just gouging their most loyal customers. And btw, Apple is losing sales on their MacBook line in as far as there are already people who have not purchased it because of the lack of FW. Moreover, the people who still buy the MacBook do not buy it because it is lacking the FW port.
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I was so damned pissed at the lack of FW in the new Macbook, consequently I bought a used Plastibook instead. Although I could afford a new one or even a Pro...
Never been a huge fan of the cheap plastic case. But if this is Apple's only option for a small footprint FW machine, there is no way they will sell me a new one!

If Apple wants to plays cheap, I can play cheap as well!
Because sales numbers is the only language they'll understand.
 
cheesymogul said:
!
Because sales numbers is the only language they'll understand.
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That's the problem though, I don't think there is enough of us who have held off purchase to bother them, that much...most who get the macbook are just regular email/surfing types I imagine. Folks who have no need for a firewire port....it was just really convenient for us music producing folk that we didn't need to spend the money on the 'pro' for it's graphics and screen size..

Maybe they should make a pro music MBP??? as the current MBP is only really 'pro' for the people who intensively use graphics -it's the best mobile that Mac offers for making music.... but I bet they could do much much better for a pro audio mobile Mac ......which is why me and loads of others only bought the macbook- we don't need the MBP's graphics/screen .....throw the music guys a bone eh Steve :).
 
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