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Steve Jobs on Lack of Firewire in MacBooks

Anuba said:
Yeah, rejoice while you can. When USB 3.0 comes out in a few months, I'm sure they'll eventually remove firewire on *all* Macs. USB 3.0 will deliver 4 GBit after protocol overhead, which is more than the upcoming firewire 3200 will be able to deliver theoretically, and since Apple has a passion for removing ports and other stuff whenever there's an opportunity, their new wet dream will be to drop everything except USB3 and Mini DisplayPort.
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I'll remember where I saw it first. Sounds plausible given their current trend.
 
kamm said:
Yeah, like if a FW "adapter", another cable is cheaper than other FW cable...:rolleyes:
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It is. You said that you would have to buy new CABLES, plural. One single adapter is cheaper (and the adapters are cheaper than the cables).


Just because you didn't think of something so obvious doesn't mean you should get defensive.
 
sushi said:
Maybe you can do some research on your own and find out why. :)
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Looking at this blog post i'm not sure what point you are trying to make. Those pics show the battery as a simple brick, much like every other battery ever made. Tell me why putting a removable aluminum panel and 4 screws over the battery make it less efficient.
 
NoSmokingBandit said:
Looking at this blog post i'm not sure what point you are trying to make. Those pics show the battery as a simple brick, much like every other battery ever made. Tell me why putting a removable aluminum panel and 4 screws over the battery make it less efficient.
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Because if its not integrated in then Apple would have to include more parts in the battery and pieces to make it safer for the user to handle, which would take more space and mean there would be less space for the battery itself.
 
TuffLuffJimmy said:
Because if its not integrated in then Apple would have to include more parts in the battery and pieces to make it safer for the user to handle, which would take more space and mean there would be less space for the battery itself.
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...not to forget the real reason, there would be less profit for Apple.

Their profit hunting is now officially ridiculous. :eek:
 
celtikmind said:
...not to forget the real reason, there would be less profit for Apple.

Their profit hunting is now officially ridiculous. :eek:
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Although they are huge profit hunters, this is one of the few cases where it benefits the user. I would rather have a larger battery then a smaller user replaceable one.

Because when you think about it, if you were to get ride of the original battery and get another one, This ridiculously long lasting battery would be the one you would get. So in this case, I find it's better.

But in other cases you are right, and it is hurting the consumer- think iPhone battery :mad:
 
fef714 said:
Although they are huge profit hunters, this is one of the few cases where it benefits the user. I would rather have a larger battery then a smaller user replaceable one.

Because when you think about it, if you were to get ride of the original battery and get another one, This ridiculously long lasting battery would be the one you would get. So in this case, I find it's better.

But in other cases you are right, and it is hurting the consumer- think iPhone battery :mad:
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But I thought that I read that the new battery is actually lower capacity than the old battery? Does anybody know the old and new battery specs?
 
Anuba said:
Yeah, rejoice while you can. When USB 3.0 comes out in a few months, I'm sure they'll eventually remove firewire on *all* Macs. USB 3.0 will deliver 4 GBit after protocol overhead, which is more than the upcoming firewire 3200 will be able to deliver theoretically, and since Apple has a passion for removing ports and other stuff whenever there's an opportunity, their new wet dream will be to drop everything except USB3 and Mini DisplayPort.
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LMAO! Fat chance!! :rolleyes:

USB uses memory mapped IO which has to go through the host CPU, and though the OS. Firewire uses DMA transfer mode*, which writes directly to main memory, bypassing the host CPU and OS. Firewire is also isochronous, where USB is not**. Anyone doing real-time audio work has these features as a hard requirement - they are not optional!

So really, it doesn't matter how fast USB3 or 4 or 5 becomes. If it's not isochronous, it's useless to the Pro's. :cool: There's a reason that 100% all pro audio hardware is Firewire...

* DMA mode is one of the main reasons that FW400 (400 Mbits) is much faster in real-world usage than USB2 (480 Mbits), even though the hardware bit rate is 20% less.

** USB does have some isochronous features in the written spec, but they aren't implemented in any chipset. Further, without DMA transfer mode, there's no way possible to guarantee isochronous transfers, so it's pointless anyways.
 
danny_w said:
But I thought that I read that the new battery is actually lower capacity than the old battery? Does anybody know the old and new battery specs?
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No, it's higher, but not by a whole lot. You can check out the Apple website though.
 
fef714 said:
Although they are huge profit hunters, this is one of the few cases where it benefits the user. I would rather have a larger battery then a smaller user replaceable one.

Because when you think about it, if you were to get ride of the original battery and get another one, This ridiculously long lasting battery would be the one you would get. So in this case, I find it's better.

But in other cases you are right, and it is hurting the consumer- think iPhone battery :mad:
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Unless of course, you're out in the field when it runs out - with no access to an electrical outlet. Small or large, I rather take a user-replaceable over one that's not. Batteries are consumables. Going to be interesting to see how this get handled in a few years when they start to go bad. I can imagine resale value taking a big hit...

Guess there won't be any MacBooks on the next WWF or National Geographic expedition... :rolleyes:

Either way, I'm still waiting for the rumored "Steve Jobs on Lack of Express Card in MacBook Pro's"-thread.
 
Hooray. FW is back! Guess my email to Jobs, and all of your letters and petitions had the desired effect.

Am surprised the whitebook is still here. I thought it'd be dead by now. When my whitebook gives out, will certainly look into a MBP13, a very sweet machine. The 8GB RAM will come in handy too.

One small boo! for loss of the Expresscard. Replaced by an inferior port :( My camera has CF, not SD. Would have been nice to give us the choice. There are umpty umpteen different card standards on the market, why restrict us to just SD?

At first I thought it could be Apple wanting to save people the price of an adaptor, but USB SD adaptors are only a few pennies nowadays.

Honest, I do not see this SD port lasting long.

But I guess we know what kind of card SJ uses for his camera now.
 
Kudos to Apple, I admit my mistake. I did not think there was an iota of a chance Apple would put Firewire back in the 13" laptop.
 
celtikmind said:
...not to forget the real reason, there would be less profit for Apple.

Their profit hunting is now officially ridiculous. :eek:
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Have you priced out replaceable batteries lately?

Here's one for the HP 6510b business laptop, of which we have about 20 of:

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=751239

wow, Apple is so expensive! :rolleyes:

Unless of course, you're out in the field when it runs out - with no access to an electrical outlet. Small or large, I rather take a user-replaceable over one that's not. Batteries are consumables. Going to be interesting to see how this get handled in a few years when they start to go bad. I can imagine resale value taking a big hit...
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Or you could just use an external battery:

http://www.hyperdrive.com/HyperMac-External-MacBook-Power-s/91.htm
 
celtikmind said:
Unless of course, you're out in the field when it runs out - with no access to an electrical outlet. Small or large, I rather take a user-replaceable over one that's not. Batteries are consumables. Going to be interesting to see how this get handled in a few years when they start to go bad. I can imagine resale value taking a big hit...
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That would definately be a scenario where a removable battery would be better than a non-removable one. However, for most people, this situation would rarely come up.

How long before someone comes up with a supplemental battery that connects up to the mag-safe port? Think of all of the 3rd party opportunities that Apple just opened up.

ft
 
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