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NRose8989

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 6, 2008
629
0
I'm sure this has been covered but I'm curious why Apple doesn't allow syncing iPods and iPhones with firewire anymore? This only raised my concern because i'm syncing my iPhone and it's taking forever.
 
Apple's new obsession of getting the device to be as thin as possible has led to them removing FireWire as the chip will require the casing to be a bit thicker then with just USB 2.0.
 
Also, most PCs do not come with FW, but rather USB.

These days, Apple is more focused on cross platform compatibility.

I miss FW syncing as well.
 
Actually most PC's these days come with FireWire.

My brand new motherboard has one port on the back I/O panel and another port on internal headers on the motherboard.

USB is simply the more widely accepted standard in the computer industry as a whole (PC and Mac included). Sepcifically in the PC community FireWire is hardly used at all compared to USB. The same motherboard I mentioned above, has 6 USB ports on that I/O panel and another 4 on internal motherboard headers...for 10 total compared to 2.
 
I'm sure this has been covered but I'm curious why Apple doesn't allow syncing iPods and iPhones with firewire anymore? This only raised my concern because i'm syncing my iPhone and it's taking forever.

Because transferring a series of small files is nearly as quick under USB 2.0. Use FW if you have a large file and need substantial high speeds.
 
I'm sure this has been covered but I'm curious why Apple doesn't allow syncing iPods and iPhones with firewire anymore? This only raised my concern because i'm syncing my iPhone and it's taking forever.

Because almost every computer made since 2000 has USB, most of which have USB 2.0. In the early days, FW was chosen because USB 1.1 was slow as hell. But now I think USB is actually faster (480Mbps for USB 2 vs. 400Mbps for FW400). Yes, there is FW800, but only a fraction of people have a computer with that. In fact, the new Dell I got my mom doesn't have FW at all (because I wanted to save $20-40), let alone 800.

As far as the people mentioning the speed of FW800, USB 3.0 is supposed to start coming out next year. It's going to knock the pants off FW800. Speed of more than 4Gbps. That will be backward compatible with the other USBs, so there ya go.

In short, FireWire is slowly dying. It has its uses, especially with digital video. But these new camcorders with hard drives use USB to sync since they don't need to stream anything. I don't know that FireWire will ever really die, but it will always take a popular back seat to USB.
 
This is probably a really stupid question......

The iPhone 3g doesn't come with it's own dock but it will fit on my old iPod's dock that used a firewire cable, can I safely (as in no danger to the iPhone) use the firewire dock with the iPhone instead of USB?

As I said this is probably a stupid question but call me stupid! lol
 
Actually most PC's these days come with FireWire.

My brand new motherboard has one port on the back I/O panel and another port on internal headers on the motherboard.

USB is simply the more widely accepted standard in the computer industry as a whole (PC and Mac included). Sepcifically in the PC community FireWire is hardly used at all compared to USB. The same motherboard I mentioned above, has 6 USB ports on that I/O panel and another 4 on internal motherboard headers...for 10 total compared to 2.

Ok, laptops are gaining in sales as desktops decline. PC laptops typically use 4-pin instead of 6-pin. That would cause consumer confusion between the two different types of connectors; 4-pin doesn't support charging, either. It's not just simplicity in design, but also simplicity for consumers.

Because almost every computer made since 2000 has USB, most of which have USB 2.0. In the early days, FW was chosen because USB 1.1 was slow as hell. But now I think USB is actually faster (480Mbps for USB 2 vs. 400Mbps for FW400).

USB may be faster on paper, but it isn't faster in reality.
 
This is probably a really stupid question......

The iPhone 3g doesn't come with it's own dock but it will fit on my old iPod's dock that used a firewire cable, can I safely (as in no danger to the iPhone) use the firewire dock with the iPhone instead of USB?

As I said this is probably a stupid question but call me stupid! lol

I believe that won't work. You might (BIG might) be able to charge the phone via FireWire, but it won't sync via it. I tried this once with an iPod. Similarly, if you have an older FireWire iPod, it won't sync or charge via USB.
 
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