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Steve Jobs on Lack of Firewire in MacBooks

orthorim said:
Name a single PC that comes with FW standard - there are none.
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How about every Sony Vaio (except their netbook) and Toshiba Satellites Pro (starting at 800$) shipping with FW (a.k.a. i.Link or IEEE 1394) standard.
And these were just the first two brands I checked. I'll bet Lenovos and HP's produce their FW series as well. But you probably won't find IEEE 1394 on sub $500 Acers.
 
I posted before in this thread a year ago or so, when I was extrememly cross about FW being left off Apple's small laptops - I emailed Steve Jobs that our company had to change a purchase order of 4 macbooks because of it. I'm glad we got FW back on the small laptops.

Regarding Apple's new 13'' range, I grumble slightly at them leaving fw off the new macbook - why not even a mini-port? These are extremely powerful machines, the equivalent of a pretty high-end PC laptop, and their purchasers are likely to have DV camcorders.

I see quite a few cheap PC laptops in my job. Firewire is quite common, probably aimed for DV import. But it's become more usual to see a mini-fw port, without any power. That strongly suggest to me it's aimed at import from camcorders not for connecting to external HDs.

I do see apple's logic however in restricting FW on the 13'' to the MPBs. As a marketing company, they need product differentation, and at least we have that option now, whereas we didn't before, or it was too big a jump.
 
butterfly0fdoom said:
Most users don't even know what the port is or what the port is for. It's as good as wasted space to most people. With the emergence of the low-end solid state pocket camcorder market, the whole "cheap camcorders use FireWire" argument is pretty much irrelevant.
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I don't know about you but that new "built-in sd card reader" is a waste of space to me. I mean, if apple is really about catering to creative proffesionals, why not a cf/sd reader? Every pro camera that I know takes a CF card and they also have FireWire on them!!!

The more I talk about this or read about it, the crazier it sounds. It's stupid stupid stupid!
 
Alas no Firewire on the iPad

It could have been a great battery powered video storage device complete with monitoring screen - but no firewire chipset I presume. Can always hope (I still have an old iPod with firewire)
 
iBungie said:
Can always hope (I still have an old iPod with firewire)
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Bless you. FireWire was a huge selling point for iPod, and the quickest/most reliable way to charge/power/sync the device.

The big worry is that iPad has nowhere to go. In a couple of years time, where will there be an inferior interface to USB to which Apple could downgrade? Maybe they'll go against history and give it a Light Peak interface.

Maybe Apple will try to bring out a 4:3 media tablet named after a feminine hygiene product and make it the only piece of personal electronics released this year without a camera.

I wonder which is more likely?

Sadly, I think we can kiss FireWire goodbye. Apple builds a quad core 27" iMac with only one FireWire interface? We're looking at legacy support only from here on.
 
shaunymac said:
I don't know about you but that new "built-in sd card reader" is a waste of space to me. I mean, if apple is really about catering to creative proffesionals, why not a cf/sd reader? Every pro camera that I know takes a CF card and they also have FireWire on them!!!

The more I talk about this or read about it, the crazier it sounds. It's stupid stupid stupid!
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The high end pro cameras from Canon and Nikon do not have firewire any longer. It was dropped with the introduction of the Canon 1D Mark III and the 1Ds about 2 years ago, Same thing for the Nikons. They are now USB. I was not happy that my new iMac only has firewire 800. I had to by new cables because my Canon 1D Mark II(s), Epson 2200 pro printer and Epson pro scanner all had firewire 400. Fortunately the printer and scanner have USB connections as well as firewire. Still, I had to buy converter cables, UGH. Thanks a lot Steve.:mad:
 
shaunymac said:
if apple is really about catering to creative proffesionals, why not a cf/sd reader? Every pro camera that I know takes a CF card and they also have FireWire on them!!!
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I've made do since this topic began over 18 months ago but I finally managed to buy a MBP this week on eBay meaning I can hook up various bits of kit that use firewire - including a CF card reader - when I am out and about. Have to agree that the built in card reader is of little use to me at present - a CF slot would have been much more useful for still camera transfers and as a future purchase is likely to be a solid state capture device for a video camera - that too will use CF cards.

Will this be the last post in a very long running topic?
 
iBungie said:
Will this be the last post in a very long running topic?
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Short answer... No :p

Although there's nothing much to say apart from the fact that in the notebook line firewire is just being used to differentiate between consumer and *Cough* "Pro".
:mad:
 
Hehehehe...........I just purchased an Apogee Duet audio interface yesterday and the thing that pained me the most was the realisation that a new Macbook Air would no longer be an upgrade to a notebook option for me, instead I'm forced to purchase a PRO Macbook (puffs out chest in a salute to self-importance)
 
It has always seemed so illogical to me that my 2009 iMac has to be backed up via USB to my WD but my macbook can have lightning speed firewire. Shame to lose it really, god damn you Jobs.

I say bring back the 2001 iMac, Blue Dalmatian all the way...
 
Siriosys said:
Hehehehe...........I just purchased an Apogee Duet audio interface yesterday and the thing that pained me the most was the realisation that a new Macbook Air would no longer be an upgrade to a notebook option for me, instead I'm forced to purchase a PRO Macbook (puffs out chest in a salute to self-importance)
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I'm using an MBP 17" for that (not with a Duet though, but a TC Electronics Desktop Konnekt 6), and... I dunno, it works of course but I also blew the possibility to use firewire for my backup drive (WD Studio 2TB w/ FW800). Daisy-chaining doesn't work, and even if it would, audio interfaces do not like sharing the FW bus with other devices, especially hard drives. Glitches and dropouts galore.

Then again the 17" has an expresscard slot, I haven't looked into firewire adapter for that one since I'm not keen on having more stuff poking out of the computer.

Also, IIRC, Apogee has a USB alternative called "One" or something so that might be an option for the MBA.
 
Yes he does.
Just like we have to throw away old computers and upgrade them.

parapup said:
So he thinks it is OK to expect people to throw away their perfectly fine FireWire camcorders and spend money on a USB 2 one for no advantage of theirs, in this economy?

I call that being out of touch. Not a good sign at all.
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greenmeanie said:
Yes he does.
Just like we have to throw away old computers and upgrade them.
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That post you quoted was over a year and a half old.

This topic is pretty much pointless now, as there is a decent 13" option with FireWire. (Insanely cheap I might add, 13" MBP AU$1500. When this thread was made, that same model, without firewire and lower specs was AU$2100...)
 
iEdd said:
That post you quoted was over a year and a half old.

This topic is pretty much pointless now, as there is a decent 13" option with FireWire.
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This has to be the most resilient topic ever. Every time you think you've seen the last of it, give it a few days and it's "Holy thread resurrection, Batman!" all over again.
 
iBungie said:
I wonder if we'll ever see thunderbolt on pro camcorders?
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I hope not.

Do you understand what TBolt actually is? Why would you want PCIe controllers inside your camera?

Put an open connection standard like USB3.0 or eSATA 6Gbps in the camera, and let Apple sell a $199 TBolt to USB3.0 dongle so that you can connect.
 
AidenShaw said:
Do you understand what TBolt actually is?
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Clearly I didn't when I posted.

I read the following at http://www.apple.com/thunderbolt/ and wondered if video capture solutions meant camcorders:-
"Which means you can connect external devices like RAID arrays and video capture solutions directly to MacBook Pro or iMac — and get PCI Express performance."

From what you've said it would seem other types of connection will feed into thunderbolt via adapters rather than being on external devices.

Thank you for this explanation
 
iBungie said:
Clearly I didn't when I posted.

I read the following at http://www.apple.com/thunderbolt/ and wondered if video capture solutions meant camcorders:-
"Which means you can connect external devices like RAID arrays and video capture solutions directly to MacBook Pro or iMac — and get PCI Express performance."

From what you've said it would seem other types of connection will feed into thunderbolt via adapters rather than being on external devices.

Thank you for this explanation
Click to expand...

Adapters will be a intermediate solution. All the parts that want to talk on ta TB bus will need a TB controller chip in them, thus increasing the price of the device (much like FW). Plus with TB only existing on Macs (so far), with no known plans for expansion cards for PCs it would only make sense for adoption to be slow.

I mean the MPBs came out in Feb, and the only TB devices that have been publicly released so far are iMacs...
 
No devices will talk "on the TBolt bus"

diamond.g said:
Adapters will be a intermediate solution. All the parts that want to talk on ta TB bus will need a TB controller chip in them, thus increasing the price of the device (much like FW). Plus with TB only existing on Macs (so far), with no known plans for expansion cards for PCs it would only make sense for adoption to be slow.

I mean the MPBs came out in Feb, and the only TB devices that have been publicly released so far are iMacs...
Click to expand...

TBolt is a PCIe to PCIe bridge - a TBolt node will require both a TBolt controller and a PCIe controller, and the actual desired device(s). It might also possibly need PCIe bridge chips - although the TBolt controller might contain that logic.

Think about putting a hardware RAID array in your tower system.

  • You buy a PCIe hardware SATA RAID controller from Promise, HighPoint or 3ware (if you're serious).
  • You buy two or more SATA disks
  • You plug the RAID card into an open PCIe slot
  • You install the drives and connect them to the PCIe RAID controller

A TBolt RAID node will require a PCIe SATA RAID controller and SATA disks as well. The SATA RAID controller won't be a standard card, but it will use a similar PCI controller mounted on the node mainboard along with the Intel TBolt controller.

The popular TBolt to USB3.0 hubs will have a PCIe USB3.0 chip in them, along with the TBolt controller. TBolt disk drives will have a PCIe SATA controller and use SATA drives.

It will be interesting to see the prices on these devices, since they're not as simple as even a 1394 device.
_____________________

TBolt is just a way of connecting PCIe controllers to devices without PCIe slots. It's a smart idea, but carries some significant cost issues.
 
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