I was thinking back to the 4th gen and Mini Days and I wish Firewire was back transferring is so sloow now it's terrible why don't they bring it back.
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iPod Who Wants FireWire Again?
- Thread starter Techguy172
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I miss Firewire. Firewire is so much superrior to USB for file transfers. Firewire doesn't require the use of the CPU do its work, it does use direct memory access.
TEG
TEG
I definitely miss it. You'd think they would be able to reduce the footprint of the Firewire chipset enough to allow them to use it.
much larger? no.
but it would require another chip on the ipod, making it more costly, yes.
Ya see this is the way it goes. You get your brand new 160GB iPod Classic you think to your self "Now this is going to be great, I can carry all my content." So you open up the beautiful apple packaging and it's wonderful looks great.
Now you Plug it into your computer Register it and get it all going. You got all your wonderful content from the iTunes store. "beep" Your iPod is ready to sync with iTunes, you think alright i'll just sync it and get our of here. As your watching the top menu bar 1... 2.... 3..... of 10 673 songs to go " SOB Now i'll never be able to go on the fishing trip with my iPod." That right there kinda killed the whole experience.
Apple has the Software and content right, The Hardware is good but the Connection between the two or the Syncing process if you will, is Crap. Fix that and the whole package will be exquisite. That's the only thing holding the iPod back.
Now you Plug it into your computer Register it and get it all going. You got all your wonderful content from the iTunes store. "beep" Your iPod is ready to sync with iTunes, you think alright i'll just sync it and get our of here. As your watching the top menu bar 1... 2.... 3..... of 10 673 songs to go " SOB Now i'll never be able to go on the fishing trip with my iPod." That right there kinda killed the whole experience.
Apple has the Software and content right, The Hardware is good but the Connection between the two or the Syncing process if you will, is Crap. Fix that and the whole package will be exquisite. That's the only thing holding the iPod back.
Exactly what I was thinking. Here's what they could do come september. iPod Touch 32GB iPod Classic get FireWire and I'd be happy that's all they have to do. That could be there one more thing...
I miss the days of the speedy firewire transfers as well. The syncing speed on my iPhone was an eye opener! I still have a 60GB iPod Photo and a 6GB Mini - both the end of the line for FireWire. I want a 160GB Classic, but I may trim down the collection and just keep what I have for now...
I know it will never come back, but I miss it too. Much better way to sync if you have ALOT to sync...
Hmm... why would anyone want firewire, it's slower than USB...
USB 2.0 480MBit/s
vs
Firewire 400MBit/s
Unless you put in Firewire 800 into the iPod, then of course it would be faster, but only if you have a Mac (or PC) with FW 800.
USB 2.0 480MBit/s
vs
Firewire 400MBit/s
Unless you put in Firewire 800 into the iPod, then of course it would be faster, but only if you have a Mac (or PC) with FW 800.
It's a lot faster than USB, USB does not even go near 480 MBits it's much lower and it cannot sustain it's speed over long transfers where as FireWire can FireWire also runs much closer to it's top speed.
Hmm... why would anyone want firewire, it's slower than USB...
USB 2.0 480MBit/s
vs
Firewire 400MBit/s
Unless you put in Firewire 800 into the iPod, then of course it would be faster, but only if you have a Mac (or PC) with FW 800.
no its not. its much faster for big transfers due to the way the two work.
USB has a theoretical speed of 480 that it almost never reaches and uses a burst transmission rate and needs to use your processing power to transfer as well.
FW400 is slow on the start up, so for small files it doesn't shine, but on long transfers it will reach 400MBit/s and stay there for the whole transfer, a constant steady rate, and doesn't need to use your processor since there is a chip on each end.
The older iPods had both Firewire and USB. However, in Apple's desire to make them thinner, etc, they ditched Firewire. Not because the chipset was too thick. But because it would make the iPod too thick to have both in there. And they chose USB over Firewire because of the myth that 2.0 is just as fast, but mostly because they knew they were selling tons of iPods to Windows users, most of which don't have Firewire. So it was they easy way out. Added to which, most people will have a slow sync at first setup but then adding playlists won't take long because we're not talking the same volume of data usually. Though that definitely isn't the case for movies.
while i understand their reasons for doing so, and i know it won't come back, i can't believe it has more to do with thinness than price. its cheaper to not put fw on the boards. and like i said, they really only should have it on the larger ipods really, which are thicker already. the nanos don't need it they're small enough in size that a transfer won't kill hours.
It's not because of thickness rather price and how many people were using it but I still think it's an essential to have on the larger Capacity Hard Drive models it's just too big to use USB it's not fast enough and takes forever. Or they could give you the option of an Apple Exclusive FireWire only iPod for users who desire to have it. It's not that much to change and I really think it would give a better experience.
I don't know anything about technology or hardware in terms of development, but why is it so much easier to make a USB with a dock connector end than a firewire cord with a dock connector on the other end? Is that just not possible, or is it more so that Apple just doesn't feel the need to create that?
It has nothing to do with the cable... the iPod has to have a firewire controller to manage the transfer process, which means either another chip or a more costly / more complicated chip that does USB and FW. Apple originally used FW because they sold to their own (Mac users), and we all had firewire. But most PCs don't, and so Apple started supporting USB2, which is what allowed iPod sales to explode like they have. Of course, we have USB also, and so Apple could drop FW without making us lose basic functionality (although we lose the speed and other perks of FW).
It does make a difference. I just bought a used iPod Photo 30GB from another user here and filled it up. Granted I put a larger library than I could have fit on my iPod 3G / 15GB, but it was substantially slower. Not that I hopefully have to do this too often. But the practical difference for loading an iPod is like a factor of two to three times as much time with USB.
That being said, I too think that it is, sadly, a pipe dream. I don't see any real possibility of FW making a comeback.