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Steve Jobs on Lack of Firewire in MacBooks

I'll say it again <grin>

If Apple's excuse for abandoning firewire is based on what most consumers have as peripherals whether it is external storage or cameras etc, then they are not being quite honest.

Most likely, there are some licensing issues (yeah, I read something about this elsewhere) and they, though early on involved in firewire, simply are cutting corners.

Again - give the end user the ability to decide. Give them an expresscard slot or an equivalent. People can chose what kind of card to populate it with - usb, modem, storage, firewire, esata or whatever.

Funny thing about firewire - it really is better than USB not just in speed but also in the fact of how it talks between two endpoints. The advent of the newest firewire standards sitting above a gig could even make it a great alternative to gig ethernet. Obviously, the latter wont happen too fast or at all because it makes sense which is contrary to the tech world <G>.

If Apple reconsiders their actions - they should abandon fw400 and put in only fw800 ports which is, in my opinion, what they should have done long ago. This gives backwards compatibility and better competition with USB2.

Oh well...nice to see Gates and Jobs deciding for us what we want.

Ford to paraphrase - you can have any colour you want as long as it is black.

- Phrehdd
 
localoid said:
Benchmarks measuring file transfer speeds measured in a lab are meaningless in the real world of audio production.
..
Click to expand...
Just to add to this, even though it's already been mentioned before, a very large difference between FW and USB exists at the core of the two standards. USB is designed to send packets, or bursts, of data while FW is designed to send a constant stream of data. If all you are doing is copying files then their isn't a huge difference really. But if you are working w/audio or video where you *need* constant streams of data then that's where USB can come up lacking.


Lethal
 
phrehdd said:
If Apple's excuse for abandoning firewire is based on what most consumers have as peripherals whether it is external storage or cameras etc, then they are not being quite honest.
Click to expand...

Plus, when did start being Dell in a better looking case instead of the company for the rest of us?
 
LethalWolfe said:
Just to add to this, even though it's already been mentioned before, a very large difference between FW and USB exists at the core of the two standards. USB is designed to send packets, or bursts, of data while FW is designed to send a constant stream of data. If all you are doing is copying files then their isn't a huge difference really. But if you are working w/audio or video where you *need* constant streams of data then that's where USB can come up lacking.
Click to expand...

Yes, FireWire was designed for isochronous data. But I will also say this again: USB 2.0 has an isochronous mode for time-based data. This will support high-speed, high-bandwidth data, and if devices would implement USB isochronous mode they could stream real-time data. The problem is that devices only implement USB bulk mode. So you are correct that USB devices come up lacking but the problem is with the devices and not with the protocol.
 
One should add that USB audio devices usually cause much higher latencies than FireWire devices, which makes real-time audio applications via USB painful.
 
phrehdd said:
If Apple's excuse for abandoning firewire is based on what most consumers have as peripherals whether it is external storage or cameras etc, then they are not being quite honest.

Most likely, there are some licensing issues (yeah, I read something about this elsewhere) and they, though early on involved in firewire, simply are cutting corners.

Again - give the end user the ability to decide. Give them an expresscard slot or an equivalent. People can chose what kind of card to populate it with - usb, modem, storage, firewire, esata or whatever.

Funny thing about firewire - it really is better than USB not just in speed but also in the fact of how it talks between two endpoints. The advent of the newest firewire standards sitting above a gig could even make it a great alternative to gig ethernet. Obviously, the latter wont happen too fast or at all because it makes sense which is contrary to the tech world <G>.

If Apple reconsiders their actions - they should abandon fw400 and put in only fw800 ports which is, in my opinion, what they should have done long ago. This gives backwards compatibility and better competition with USB2.

Oh well...nice to see Gates and Jobs deciding for us what we want.

Ford to paraphrase - you can have any colour you want as long as it is black.

- Phrehdd
Click to expand...

Look, its about APPLE not wanting PRO's to have a cheap option. Period.

The MB first and second gen DID NOT PLAY GAMES but you could run motion, so APPLE released X300 and crippled that even though the PRO is a palsly 1% of the market.

Now they release a machine that can run circles around the MB in terms of graphics - of course they will CRIPPLE any use of PRO apps.

JOBS is an idiot - he doesn't get PROS will buy PRO machines AND cheap machines - he pushes iLife and iMovie, then gets rid of FIREWIRE.

Please, Jobs, step down. He is a paranoid fool.

Watch the keynote where he talks about UNIBODY - acts like someone is going to steal one, even says, "times up, you can look later" while eying everyone. Talk about paranoid.


Geesh.
 
Eric S. said:
Yes, FireWire was designed for isochronous data. But I will also say this again: USB 2.0 has an isochronous mode for time-based data. This will support high-speed, high-bandwidth data, and if devices would implement USB isochronous mode they could stream real-time data. The problem is that devices only implement USB bulk mode. So you are correct that USB devices come up lacking but the problem is with the devices and not with the protocol.
Click to expand...

There are plenty of the major players in the audio world that have been making USB audio interfaces for some time and yet none of them have been able to match the specs of Firewire audio.

I think there's more to it than just lack of isochronous mode support... at least that was my impression from a conversion with an EE a year or so back. From what I remember of the conversation: USB audio implementations using isochronous mode also require some method for synching data. The USB spec has three synchronization modes -- asynchronous, synchronous and adaptive. At that time, apparently no one was making USB (audio) chipsets that supported asynchronous mode synchronization, which permits the use of a low-jitter external clock.

Meanwhile, Firewire was designed with audio/video streams in mind. And it works damn well for anything I need to do. Right now. Today.
 
localoid said:
Meanwhile, Firewire was designed with audio/video streams in mind. And it works damn well for anything I need to do. Right now. Today.
Click to expand...
Exactly.

One nice thing about FW, is that 800 through 3200 use the same connector.

The MBP already has the FW800 connector. In the future, if the FW controller chip is upgraded, we could have FW3200 capability with no change to the connectors, cables, etc. That would be sweet.
 
sushi said:
Exactly.

One nice thing about FW, is that 800 through 3200 use the same connector.

The MBP already has the FW800 connector. In the future, if the FW controller chip is upgraded, we could have FW3200 capability with no change to the connectors, cables, etc. That would be sweet.
Click to expand...

Orly? Geez, I'm getting madder and madder at Apple every day it seems.
 
I hope people are still sending Apple feedback asking for FireWire back. If anything they should be putting FW800 on the MacBooks and including FW400 to FW800 converter cables. Apple tries to be so cutting edge they should be giving customers more options not less.
 
vvebsta said:
I hope people are still sending Apple feedback asking for FireWire back. If anything they should be putting FW800 on the MacBooks and including FW400 to FW800 converter cables. Apple tries to be so cutting edge they should be giving customers more options not less.
Click to expand...

Given the speed of the Mac Books, it's the only thing that distinguishes the Pro models.

Now if Apple was doing FireWire S1600 or S3200 in the Pros, 800 would then be acceptable in the Mac Books... wait for the bump.

Personally, despite the design advances, I'm not too impressed with the new Mac Books/Pros and don't honestly expect them to sell, except to people with dead machines who MUST buy a replacement.

A couple of quarters of poor sales in Mac Books will fix Apple's arrogant attitude on this. Mac Books get used for a lot more than toy video cameras.
 
hiimamac said:
Look, its about APPLE not wanting PRO's to have a cheap option. Period.

The MB first and second gen DID NOT PLAY GAMES but you could run motion, so APPLE released X300 and crippled that even though the PRO is a palsly 1% of the market.

Now they release a machine that can run circles around the MB in terms of graphics - of course they will CRIPPLE any use of PRO apps.

JOBS is an idiot - he doesn't get PROS will buy PRO machines AND cheap machines - he pushes iLife and iMovie, then gets rid of FIREWIRE.

Please, Jobs, step down. He is a paranoid fool.

Watch the keynote where he talks about UNIBODY - acts like someone is going to steal one, even says, "times up, you can look later" while eying everyone. Talk about paranoid.


Geesh.
Click to expand...

Jobs is an idiot, then what does that make you? :D
 
albusseverus said:
Given the speed of the Mac Books, it's the only thing that distinguishes the Pro models.

Now if Apple was doing FireWire S1600 or S3200 in the Pros, 800 would then be acceptable in the Mac Books... wait for the bump.

Personally, despite the design advances, I'm not too impressed with the new Mac Books/Pros and don't honestly expect them to sell, except to people with dead machines who MUST buy a replacement.

A couple of quarters of poor sales in Mac Books will fix Apple's arrogant attitude on this. Mac Books get used for a lot more than toy video cameras.
Click to expand...

Differences:
1. Screen
2. Graphics
(3. Processor speeds)
4. FW
5. ExpressCard

It's hardly the only thing ... I do reiterate that replacing a current technology with no solution is pretty silly, however. It's not like they put eSATA in its place or something, irrespective of one's value call on that.
 
albusseverus said:
A couple of quarters of poor sales in Mac Books will fix Apple's arrogant attitude on this.
Click to expand...
A few years ago, Apple almost disappeared.

They expanded very quickly, became arrogant, Windows 95&98 came about and sales plummeted.

Apple's hardware is over priced. That's okay for most of us because of the OS and other things we like. Dropping FW, is a big issue for many. I hope this is not a peak at things to come.
 
sushi said:
A few years ago, Apple almost disappeared.

They expanded very quickly, became arrogant, Windows 95&98 came about and sales plummeted.

Apple's hardware is over priced. That's okay for most of us because of the OS and other things we like. Dropping FW, is a big issue for many. I hope this is not a peak at things to come.
Click to expand...
Things to come? Apple has made technology legacy for some time now. However, this seems to be the first time that there was no real alternative available, at least for the MacBook, I fully expect Apple to completely drop firewire in all its products in the near future, probably prematurely.
SCSI, adp, motorola 68000 chips, power pc, OS 9, etc.
 
rickag said:
Things to come? Apple has made technology legacy for some time now. However, this seems to be the first time that there was no real alternative available, at least for the MacBook, I fully expect Apple to completely drop firewire in all its products in the near future, probably prematurely.
SCSI, adp, motorola 68000 chips, power pc, OS 9, etc.
Click to expand...
You make a good point about Apple dropping technology.

However, as you stated, this is the first time that they appear to be dropping a technology without a real alternative available. Notice, I say appear. Currently, this is the breakdown:

No FW:
- MBA
- MB (new ones)

FW:
- MB (White one)
- MBP
- Mac Mini
- iMac
- Mac Pro

So FW is still used in some models but there seems to be a trend to change this in the consumer Macs.
 
sushi said:
You make a good point about Apple dropping technology.

However, as you stated, this is the first time that they appear to be dropping a technology without a real alternative available. Notice, I say appear. Currently, this is the breakdown:

No FW:
- MBA
- MB (new ones)

FW:
- MB (White one)
- MBP
- Mac Mini
- iMac
- Mac Pro

So FW is still used in some models but there seems to be a trend to change this in the consumer Macs.
Click to expand...
You're right, but I was addressing your statement,"I hope this is not a peak at things to come."

If I were a professional, I'd have to very seriously consider my commitment to Apple at this point. Professional users have a lot more invested in peripherals and software than the typical consumer(ie: like me). It may be time for them to begin the long painful switch to other platforms with more choices. Apple seems to be abandoning the professional market and concentrating on the consumer. Every time Apple abandons a technology the most effected are professionals.

Me, I'm a consumer and can tolerate the churn.
 
Belly-laughs said:
They say it´s the economic slowdown. I say it´s the lack of FireWire :)

Apple cuts MacBook production by 20-30 percent
Click to expand...

Actually, I think it's both. Apple has chosen to play in the high-end of the market with these new models, and the economic slowdown hasn't helped. People in the market buying a new laptop will probably go with cheaper alternatives.

On the other hand, those that were waiting specifically for a MacBook and were counting on Firewire may be holding back and just keeping their older machines just awhile longer.
 
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