Why No FireWire in AirPort Extreme Base Station?

[JimmyDThing]

My assumption is that more people use USB, and it's useful for printers... but they promote the external drive just as much as the printer, why not have a firewire port?

 

[weckart]

You have Gigabit Ports. 1000Mbs > 800Mbs.

It keeps costs down.

 

[DoFoT9]

hhhmm i reckon fw800 would actually be faster than gigabit...jsut because of the way it actually transfers data. but uumm im not sure, true it would keep costs down. apple could afford it tho

 

[macleod199]

My assumption is that more people use USB, and it's useful for printers... but they promote the external drive just as much as the printer, why not have a firewire port?

It would take up room, and USB is the more common interface, and serves a dual purpose. Also, since drive transfers are already limited by the slow internal processor, putting a faster drive interface on there isn't going to make a difference.

 

[JimmyDThing]

Aah... that makes sense then.

I guess I'm happy with something that keeps costs down that doesn't really matter anyway.

 

[Chris F]

It would take up room, and USB is the more common interface, and serves a dual purpose. Also, since drive transfers are already limited by the slow internal processor, putting a faster drive interface on there isn't going to make a difference.

Ahhhh that explains alot. I was wondering why I was only getting 9MB/s transfer to an airdisk when I hooked my MBP up and forced full-duplex gigabit with jumbo frames. (anyone know why it would auto-detect itself into 100BT?)

I assumed the USB interface on the airport was junky but it does make sense that its processor limited.