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Actually, Firewire is the official brand identity for IEEE1394 now.

The good news is that the technology to do this is cheap, proven, popular, and available now.

The bad news is that the motherboard and drive manufacturers are largely ignoring it in favor of standardizing on an ugly, unproven and untested hack that won't be available in consumer kit until 2004 at the earliest.

Why? You got me, captain. As far as I can tell, because they prefer paying patent licensing fees to Maxtor rather than Apple.

If I sound bitter, it's only because of the blood I've shed having to route IDE cables inside my Wintendo box.

Nope... Apple did it. They originally came up with the idea in the mid-80's, refined it and got it accepted as an IEEE standard in 1995 or 1996.

• 1394 Trade Association
• Horse's mouth

"What we have done is called 'middleware,'" Juszkiewicz said. "We have put software on top of Ethernet that basically synchronizes those packets to a master clock and allows it to send many, many channels and have many work stations that work together in synchrony, meaning low latency, meaning music."

what have you done for us lately? ;-)

IEEE 1394

i could list more if you were seriously asking

USB2 is FINNALY catching up to IEEE 1394 (firewire, iLink, whatever) in terms of speed. Have you heard of 1394b? Coming to devices near you starting at 800mbps, ramping up to over 3.2gbps by 2003.

Ain't technology grand?

1394 was developed by Apple in 1986.

I'm not sure where you get your information, but truth about IEEE 1394 can be found at this site.

Why Apple for it's FireWire and not IEEE for it's same 1394-1995 spec or Sony for it's i.Link (again the same)? Because Apple is the one that did the development and the popularizing of the technology thus their holding the majority of the patents & controlling the licensing.)

I took a tour of this lab last Fall. While it was impressive from a consumer usability perspective, the technical decisions they made were at times curious. Like Microsoft, IBM sees the home of the future as a collection of dumb appliances that are dependent on a big, smart server to operate. Microsoft sees the server as the Windows XP platform, while IBM sees it as some form of their Websphere application server.

So there were no peer-to-peer technologies like IEEE 1394 or JINI to be found in their lab. And no Bluetooth or X-10, either.

In fact, the connection technology of the future, if the PvC lab is to belived... is CeBus! Now, CeBus is mighty fine at what it does, and fits well into IBM's architecture where everything is controlled by a Websphere set-top box, but it is much more expensive than the competing technologies. Right now, I can't see anyone (except Larry) paying a couple of hundred bucks extra for blinders that go up and down at different times in the day.

Corby

I have been following this for a year or so now so this is basically what I've discovered: the answer is that little has happened in terms of a marketable product with wireless IEEE 1394. Several companies besides NEC including Zayante and Philips Semiconductor have been researching this recently. In addition, the 1394 Trade Association (over 100 powerful companies like Intel, TI, NEC, Phillips) has announced the formation of a group to promote wireless interconnectivity between the IEEE1394 wired domains and wireless domains for computer and consumer electronics equipment. I think it is only a matter of time before some products appear. A quick search of Firewire World reveals the following up-to-date articles on wireless IEEE 1394:

• FireWireWorld - Zayante's Wireless 1394 Demo at IDF
• FireWireWorld - 1394 Trade Association Forms Wireless Working Group

2. They were early complete adopters of both firewire and USB.

Not to pick a nit, but I think you meant "inventors of firewire".

But at least other companies can and do make Firewire/iLink/1394/whatever equipment. And the specs are available. Most of the 1394 interfaces even support the Open Host Controller Interface, which means the same driver binary works on nearly any 1394 card and peripheral!

Take a look at:

• The Linux 1394 project
• Oodles of specs
• Linux DV utilities

Although it annoys John C. Dvorak greatly, no.

I thought that's just --Apple-- now.

Never has been, never will be. See 1394 Trade Association for more information.

And haven't some ppl been taunting USB2.0 over Firewire for video stuff?

Those "ppl" would be Intel. Luckily, not too many people (other than JC Dvorak) listen to them these days.

--

Hot-swappable, connector-powered, up to 63 per bus, FireWire hard drives are nice. Firewire RAID is nice too. So are the scanners, VCRs, DVcameras (as you mentioned), still-picture cameras, CD-RW drives, digital hi-fi speakers, and DVD jukeboxes.

http://www.firewireworld.com/

http://www.1394ta.org/

Please stop with the FUD, okay?

The wireless is, like HeghmoH says, fully 802.11 compliant. It runs at 11 Mbps instead of bluetooth's paltry 1 Mbps, and yet Apple's airport tech is still compatible with this & all IEEE standard wireless devices.

Firewire (IEEE 1394) devices which I can think of off-hand: external, internal, & network hard drives, CD-RW drives, scanners, video cameras, VCRs, hi-fi digital speakers, etc.:

http://www.firewireworld.com/

http://www.apple.com/firewire/

http://www.softacoustik.com/

http://www.sel.sony.com/clubvaio/new s0024.html

http://www.1394ta.org/

Last year, Lucent demoed a 1.6 Gpbs chipset.

Oh. And you can run TCP/IP over Firewire! Linux will soon have a Firewire stack. And it's a lot cheaper than SCSI.

Right now you get 400 Mbps with the non-vaporware Firewire, about 35 times faster than the non-vaporware USB that exists today.

Comparing the vaporware USB2 to today's Firewire is like comparing a Pentium to a 286.

* - joint licensing program

Actually, the AC's have provided several links. Here is one repeated at a starting score of 1 (although that might change).

http://www.1394ta.org/Press/1999.05/12.h tm.

Why should it suprise you that they dropped the price months ago? It doesn't seem to suprise you that everyone else lowers their prices.

Sony, the oft-forgotten codeveloper of IEEE 1394, markets its FireWire technology as iLink (since Apple owns the FireWire trademark). Most, if not all, Sony DV cams come with iLink, and most DV cams come with some form of 1394 capability. Check out 1394ta.org, Apple's FireWire Site, and Sony's site for more 1394 info and devices.

Remember, this is Sony we're talking about. They are far larger than Intel and I doubt they'll let a technology they helped develop just die. PSX2's going to have FireWire ports for external hard drives and stuff, I don't know about USB2. I doubt FireWire's going anywhere.

Isn't that just soooo easy.

What happened Intel? You already had a board with firewire on it? Remember?

Maybe intel couldn't figure out how to make it work? It certainly wouldn't be the first time that happened...

But I forgot, if it isn't free or open, it must suck...like those nice open and bug free PIII chips...yes sir, free and open.

Please don't forget the Patent Pool formed by Apple, Compaq, Matsushita (Panasonic), Philips, Sony and Toshiba

FireWire is being priced right out of the marketplace by Apple's licensing requirement, which I believe runs at US$1/device that implements it.

They lowered the price to $.25 per system (not per port!) back in May, Brainiac. Try keeping up.

Official announcement of the licensing change

$1 per post is a LOT morron [sic]

They lowered the price to $.25 per system (not per port!) back in May, Brainiac. Try keeping up.

Official announcement of the licensing change

It's hot pluggable.

It does not need a computer: camera to computer works as well as camera to storage.

And Digital VCR to TV ;) Hey maybe we will use ieee1394 hard drives for weekly taping, instead of tapes. It's easier to zap commerials that way.