Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Steve Jobs on Lack of Firewire in MacBooks

yadmonkey said:
The Duet is not a Pro product. And it's on the Logic Express page, which is the consumer version of Logic.
Click to expand...

The Duet is a Pro product

Just because it doesn't have as much i/o as the ensemble that doesn't mean its not Pro

I sold my RME FF800 (sold all the analogue gear I was using) and replaced it with the Duet because it has enough i/o for me right now
It improved the sound quality on both the preamps and the hole A/D D/A conversion ;)
 
Looking for opinions...

I have a black macbook that a friend want's to buy. Thought I would get a loaded up aluminum macbook. No firewire? I have a sony HDV camera that is three yrs old. I have 2 choices, buy a new AVCHD camera that records to flash drive and use usb with new macbook or upgrade to macbook pro 15'. Either way, I'm spending a thousand bucks. I like the smaller size of macbooks.
 
10 year old PowerBooks have something the new MacBook does not have that is needed today. And how do you boot of an external HD without FireWire? I have never been able to boot off USB.

FireWire 400 is twice as fast as USB 2.0 for hard drives in my own testing.
 
marbles said:
That's the problem though, I don't think there is enough of us who have held off purchase to bother them, that much...
....
Click to expand...
Maybe.

All this ruckus over a part that costs what $10 in a laptop computer that starts @ $1299. Maybe they should drop firewire in the previous white Macbook and add it to the new aluminum Macbook.

At least that would make more sense.
 
Eric S. said:
Any Intel Mac should be able to boot from a USB 2.0 drive as long as the drive is formatted with a GUID partition table and contains an OS that is compatible with that Mac. What problem did you have?

See: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1948
Click to expand...

So Intels can. I have never had an Intel Mac. But USB is dog slow for HD's. Old MacBook Pro's (2.33 GHz) are the same price as a new aluminum MacBook. Although it has a 15" screen and there is no 12' PowerBook replacement unless you count the $999 MacBook which is a better choice than an low end aluminum MacBook anyway. FW 800 vs USB 2.0 is a joke. USB is 3-4x slower. Xbench took 5 min to benchmark the first 3 parts a USB HD before I quit it. And why does the new $600 MacMini have FW 800 and the $1400 MacBook not have it? My 4 year old PB has FW 800 and my iBook has FW 400. Some clamshell iBooks included FW when the new MacBook does not have it. The $1000 MacBook has it but not the $1600 MacBook does not?

FW has many uses today and I will not buy a computer without target disk mode regardless how easy the HD is to access. 1 screw and 2 cables vs 0 screws and 1 cable to connect it to another Mac is ridiculous. The MBA is a technicians nightmare when it comes to data recovery with it's proprietary HD connector and no FW. You have to have a emergency boot drive if you do not have FW. I do not have a FW camera and I still need FW. My video camera is USB and it was cheap. And what do owners of a FW only iPod do besides upgrade?
 
dmmcintyre3 said:
So Intels can. I have never had an Intel Mac. But USB is dog slow for HD's.
Click to expand...

Your question was how does one boot from an external drive without FW. Since that only applies to the Intel MB (or MBA), there's your answer. As for performance, I've never noticed much difference between FW400 and USB 2.0.

And why does the new $600 MacMini have FW 800 and the $1400 MacBook not have it?
Click to expand...

I've already stated a couple of times here that the mini doesn't compete with any other Mac. The decision to leave FW off the MB is obviously marketing-driven, to boost sales of the higher-margin MBP.

I will not buy a computer without target disk mode
Click to expand...

Well, more power to you. The whitebook is a better option now than when the unibodies came out and I bought the aluminum MB. I miss having target disk mode capability, but not that much.

And what do owners of a FW only iPod do besides upgrade?
Click to expand...

I have a FW-only iPod. And it's really old, a 2G that now has OS 9 and 10.4 installed on it as an emergency boot drive for my PowerMac G4. I also have a Classic, a touch, and a Shuffle, all of which use USB. For a music player, if you haven't already upgraded to a USB iPod, it's time.
 
James Cole said:
He shouldnt be answering emails...
Click to expand...

why?.

One of the good things for me about Apple is that the guys at the top occasionally respond to this type of thing you know.....should do it more IMHO, simply because sometimes they lose touch, well anyone would I imagine,...... surrounded by what they are surrounded with....a lot of 'yes men' and copious wealth
 
I used the Migration Assistant over Firewire over the summer to move my workstation from my MBP to my Mini, so I could put the MBP into service, and then migrate back again. It made the task incredibly easy, and I boasted to friend and family that Mac upgrades were smooth and trouble free.

Irony struck thrice in the months since.

First was when I had to (family obligations) upgrade a PPC 7200 and a G3 Bondi iMac to a shared G4 450MHz. Obviously, not a match for the 7200, and the iMac doesn't have firewire. Nightmare.

Next, I helped a friend's gf buy him an MBP (early 08) for his birthday, and handled the migration from his graphite G4. Unfortunately, that G4 didn't match the specs for Target Disk mode. Luckily I was able to pop the ATA drives into an external FW400 enclosure, and migrate that way.

Yesterday, I helped a friend migrate from a G4 running 10.3.9 (Firewire mode only), to a new MacBook. No direct mode would work; the external enclosure is FW only, and my LaCie FW/USB 2.0 enclosure was a cable mismatch to the old HD. To make matters worse, the G4 had a faulty power supply, and wouldn't boot after attempting a couple variations. What DID work, was to pop the G4's HD into the FW400 enclosure (mounted on my MBP), run Disk Utility to create an image directly from the old HD to the USB drive, mount the image on the new MB, and migrate from a local volume.

The trouble with Macs is that they last longer than the standard upgrade paths account for. Maybe that's why the build quality is diminished: to force people to upgrade within the compatible upgrade window.
 
In related news, Dell just released the "thinnest laptop." Looks like Apple has some relevant competition and needs to pick up the slack.

http://hothardware.com/News/Dell-Unleashes-the-Adamo/

small_Dell-Adamo-Pearl-2.jpg
 
Grrr

I wish that apple hadn't taken firewire off there macbook, A because my White macbook as broken so many times that they said if it breaks again they will give me a new one, I really like the new macbooks and I can't buy one because I have a firewire camera. So now i will have to get a old white macbook which i have lost faith in because my one has broken so much.
However i do have a solution and i would like you to tell me if it is a good one or not, buy a powermac g4 off ebay and transfer video over firewire with that, then put it on my macbook? Is it a good idea? :apple:
 
butterfly0fdoom said:
E-Sata and extra USB ports aside, I don't see how the Adamo poses any threat to the MacBook Air. It costs more and has lower specs.
Click to expand...

Plus the thing is bigger than the air, and people complain about the size of it, slower than the air, and cost more.
 
Holy heck, this thread is still going!? That's a testament to how hot an issue this is.

I'm sure this has been discussed over and over again, but I'm not about to read 118 pages. I stopped at 60-something.

The new Mac Minis have FW800, so that blows away everyone that argued that FW is "pro only". The Mac Mini is certainly NOT a Pro machine.

So, now that the MacBook is officially the ONLY (correction: computer family) not to have FW.... any new arguments on this subject? Or can we safely say that Apple purposefully crippled the standard MacBooks to prevent cannibalization of the Pro and Airs...
 
Hemingray said:
So, now that the MacBook is officially the ONLY model not to have FW.... any new arguments on this subject? Or can we safely say that Apple purposefully crippled the standard MacBooks to prevent cannibalization of the Pro and Airs...
Click to expand...

The Air doesn't have firewire, nor do the airport and time machine.
 
TuffLuffJimmy said:
The Air doesn't have firewire, nor do the airport and time machine.
Click to expand...

I think he was referring to computer models, but yes he must of forgot the MBA, even though it was mentioned in his post, wtf?

but on the bright side guys Steve Jobs sent me an email saying if this thread got up to 3000 posts he'd put FW back into the MBs

(uh...j/k for anyone that didn't catch that)
 
MasterNile said:
I think he was referring to computer models, but yes he must of forgot the MBA, even though it was mentioned in his post, wtf?

but on the bright side guys Steve Jobs sent me an email saying if this thread got up to 3000 posts he'd put FW back into the MBs

(uh...j/k for anyone that didn't catch that)
Click to expand...

Yeah, but it'd be nice if the airports had FireWire.
 
Hemingray said:
So, now that the MacBook is officially the ONLY model not to have FW.... any new arguments on this subject? Or can we safely say that Apple purposefully crippled the standard MacBooks to prevent cannibalization of the Pro and Airs...
Click to expand...

The MBP, yes; the MBA has a different target market. But the fact that product differentiation was the reason for dropping FW on the MB has really been clear all along.
 
Eric S. said:
But the fact that product differentiation was the reason for dropping FW on the MB has really been clear all along.
Click to expand...

And then Apple introduces a new cheap (relatively speaking) Mac Mini which has FW800. It bogs the mind, eh?
 
MasterNile said:
I think he was referring to computer models, but yes he must of forgot the MBA, even though it was mentioned in his post, wtf?

but on the bright side guys Steve Jobs sent me an email saying if this thread got up to 3000 posts he'd put FW back into the MBs

(uh...j/k for anyone that didn't catch that)
Click to expand...

Yeahhhh, my bad. I was thinking "family" but I said "model".

I definitely agree, the MBA is for a different market. My post was mostly directed to those who were arguing that FW was a "Pro" technology. I thought that consumer products like iMovie and camcorders were evidence enough against that statement, but the FW800 on the Mac Mini was the clincher.
 
Tosser said:
And then Apple introduces a new cheap (relatively speaking) Mac Mini which has FW800. It bogs the mind, eh?
Click to expand...

But what is the Mac Mini competing against? the iMac? there's already enough difference between the two that they don't need to exclude FW from the Mac Mini to differentiate the 2, but the MacBook and MacBook Pro are very similar so they needed an extra difference.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back