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iPod Why oh why does the nano NOT support FireWire??

King Elessar

King Elessar

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 13, 2005
8
0
Why? I mean... WHY? FireWire is an Apple technology, and has been pushed by Apple for so many years now... if anything we should have FW 800 on new iPods... not going backwards and only support USB 2.0.

My PowerBook is the first 17" from 2003... it's not THAT old yet... but it's the last Mac to not have USB 2.0...

I've been sitting here for almost an hour now and the nano still hasn't filled up...

Apple should have at least offered FireWire as an option, but it's not even supported by the nano... I'm gravely disappointed.

Oh, and yeah, the nano is really nice... BUT it doesn't support FireWire... I'm starting to feel guilty for "betraying" my mini now...
 
There probably isn't space inside the nano for the required circuitry to handle Firewire. (Pulling recharging current through the cable is easy... handling data requires more work.)
 
King Elessar said:
Why? I mean... WHY? FireWire is an Apple technology, and has been pushed by Apple for so many years now... if anything we should have FW 800 on new iPods... not going backwards and only support USB 2.0.

My PowerBook is the first 17" from 2003... it's not THAT old yet... but it's the last Mac to not have USB 2.0...

I've been sitting here for almost an hour now and the nano still hasn't filled up...

Apple should have at least offered FireWire as an option, but it's not even supported by the nano... I'm gravely disappointed.

Oh, and yeah, the nano is really nice... BUT it doesn't support FireWire... I'm starting to feel guilty for "betraying" my mini now...
Click to expand...

There's a couple reasons, if I had to guess... They all stem from the fact that they are going to sell more nano's to PC/Windows users than to Mac users. Including both USB and FW would have:
1) Added cost, something I am betting they were trying to keep down as they probably aren't making the same margins on the nano as they were with the mini
2) Added to size. They wanted to make this thing as small as possible and they may have only had room for one
3) Increased battery consumption. This is just a pure guess, but having both FW and USB may have been a slight drain on the battery and they were likely trying to maximize battery life on a very small battery

So, having just one interface was the way to go in this case, and since a (very) large portion of PC users don't have a FW but DO have a USB2 port the choice was probably pretty easy. If FW connectivity is essential for you, I would recommend you grab a 6gb mini. :(
 
also firewire requires it's own dedicated controller, usb 2 can run from the ARM cpu thus will run with less chips on the pcb, have you seen the mini pcb it's totally packed with chips not a square millimeter spare.
 
Hector said:
also firewire requires it's own dedicated controller, usb 2 can run from the ARM cpu thus will run with less chips on the pcb, have you seen the mini pcb it's totally packed with chips not a square millimeter spare.
Click to expand...

Right on, you beat me to it ;)

I do agree though, having to use USB sucks now. The speed for transfers on my ibook is TERRIBLE when compared to my 15gb with the firewire connection. I guess I need to get a laptop with USB 2.0, however in some cases usb 2.0 is still slower then firewire.

I am hoping they honor us Apple loyalists with a Firewire 800 connection option on the supposed ipod Video, and next generation ipod.
 
It's not an ideal solution, but I'm pretty sure you can get a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card for your PB. It sucks that there's no FW support, but USB 2.0 speeds on the nano are actually pretty good.
 
ham_man said:
Isn't the flash memory the limitation though?
Click to expand...
It's significantly faster than in the Shuffle. While not as fast as a standard iPod's FW connection, it really doesn't take long to fully load a 4GB nano.
 
Yeah I knew all the reasons... just needed to vent, and feeling the being a first adopting Apple loyalist (the 1st 17" PB is the only one to not have USB2) isn't always fun...

It's also ironic how Steve Jobs was saying the nano is smaller than the original iPod (which I own), but suddenly I can't even do what the original iPod can... (remember how Apple was praising the iPod using FW that it takes less than 10 minutes to fill up, while it'll take forever with USB?)
 
Size and cost would be my guesses - a FW controller would add to the size of the nano, and would also bump up the cost ever so slightly.
 
... Or it could be the Intel Transition (USB was originally developed by Intel) :p

It's most likely just to keep the costs down, and the fact that most iPod buyers are PC users (As mentioned above).
 
mrgreen4242 said:
3) Increased battery consumption. This is just a pure guess, but having both FW and USB may have been a slight drain on the battery and they were likely trying to maximize battery life on a very small battery
Click to expand...
Why would it increase the battery consumption if the the data transfer controller won't be used unless it's connected to to a FW or USB port (which would charge while syncing, assuming the port was powered)? :rolleyes:
 
When it came time for Apple to trot out people for press fawning purposes, notice that they provided Ive and no engineers. That's all you need to know about the new Apple.
 
Is flash memory even capable of having transfers via FireWire? I've never heard of a FireWire flash drive ...
 
i dont think its the lack of firewire compatibility that matters: apple is a business and obviolusly they have observed that USB 2.0 is much more widely used and convienient than fire wire. most pc users dont have firewireports, so this takes away the problem. eg. i can only use my firewire hard drive with my mac, and no other PC. luckily, i have my ipods to transfer any files i need.

tastic
 
FireWire is more convenient than USB. I can plug a cable without having to look directly into the port to see which way it goes.
If you have a piece of garbage PC (what redundancy) without FireWire that shouldn't be the Mac users problem.
 
I have to say, I am disappointed in a lack of FireWire capability. It's the 2nd reason I won't be getting the nano.

(the first being that I have way more than 4 GB of music :p)
 
cube said:
FireWire is more convenient than USB. I can plug a cable without having to look directly into the port to see which way it goes.
If you have a piece of garbage PC (what redundancy) without FireWire that shouldn't be the Mac users problem.
Click to expand...

Except that it IS your problem. The only way Apple is going to be able to offer such great products and keep the price down is to sell a LOT of them. The 5% marketshare of Macs doesn't represent a large enough audience base to market to, so they HAVE to sell to PC users, or else we wouldn't even be seeing 4gb flash based players.

ALso, in response to the battery life :rolleyes: comments, my point was that having an EXTRA chip in there (for firewire - USB is mandatory and controlled with the ARM CPU already there anyways) you're going to have to be powering it even when it's not connected, presumably, for polling the port, etc. Not a lot of juice, but I suspect that every single mA in the nano is accounted for.

I can just see the Apple engineers sitting around measuring electrical draw from the nano, like the scene(s) in Apollo 13 where Gary Sinese is trying to come up with a low power restart sequence... :)
 
Plus you have to remember, how many times will you actually ever fill this thing up? Once maybe at the start? Then all you'll be doing is adding songs to it. Well that's all a normal user will be doing with it anyway. Why make it bigger, add cost and lower battery life by adding a chip that only makes a big difference the first time you fill it up.

Personally i wouldn't be annoyed with apple for selling a USB only iPod, i'd be annoyed with them that your laptop doesn't have USB2. I'm pretty sure most 2002 PC laptops had USB2.
 
I assume you can't use the nano to boot a Mac due to the lack of FireWire.

Can you do that with the iPod mini?
 
mrgreen4242 said:
Except that it IS your problem. The only way Apple is going to be able to offer such great products and keep the price down is to sell a LOT of them. The 5% marketshare of Macs doesn't represent a large enough audience base to market to, so they HAVE to sell to PC users, or else we wouldn't even be seeing 4gb flash based players.
Click to expand...

I don't care about the price. I can't use it.
 
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