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1394 Trade Association Adopts FireWire Brand
MaxVlast writes in that the
The 1394 Trade Association has adopted the FireWire trademark, logo and symbol as a brand identity for the IEEE 1394 connection standard in a "no-fee license agreement" between 1394ta and Apple. Apple has also granted 1394ta the right to sub-license the FireWire Trademark for use on products, packaging and promotion of the standard.
... cause that is what everybody calls it anyways. I'm glad Apple appears to have been cooperative and permissive about this, otherwise we'd see confusion about the burgeoning technology.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
I hope they keep the name "FireWire" for their 800MBps version. It is catchy and it rolls off the tongue, unlike *shudder* GigaWire.
I felt so much smarter calling it 1394 too... oh well.
Never attribute to stupidity what can be construed as a monopoly preservation tactic.
So, will Sony dump there attempt at branding firewire as i.link and adopt the standard? or will they try and go against the grain and keep 'their name' ?
Are there any motherboards out that are supporting USB 2, or is it still add-on only?
The cool thing about Firewire is that Mac's have support for it now. Plus there are plans to eventually bring Firewire up to 1600 Mbps later this year. Also, Firewire can transfer data from device to device, while USB has to go through your computer as a go-between. People more intelligent than I are more than welcome to expound upon, correct, or add to this.
Beef! Beef! Beef!
USB 2 suffers from a master / slave design. Theoretically one can plug a firewire drive into a firewire camera, and transfer footage from the camera directly to the HD. And you can run IP over firewire, for some really fast / cheap LAN for a central storage server.
On top of that, 1394b supports up to 1.2Gbps or 1.6 Gbps (depending on the media) which is being developed. And it works nicely with 1394a.
FireWire redundant? How could it be redundant if there isn't anything else on it? Most cameras don't have USB2 connections... I think the word you are looking for is obsolete, maybe? Not that it is... Anyway, IANAE but what I recall of similar arguments have to do with things like "stream vs packets", "peer to peer vs. master to slave", the fact that FireWire is already the DV standard and there isn't any point changing it now (until FW2), Firewire can provide more bus power than USB, etc.
Yes! FireWire allows something USB doesn't: peer to peer connectivity. This allows me to take a Sony DV converter and plug it into a Sony Camcorder/Video walkman with a firewire cable to dub VHS->Hi8(DV). With USB, you'd need a host controller, which up to this point means computer. I don't want to use a computer for dubbing tapes or doing other device->device transfers.
FireWire has many advantages over USB 2.0 that far outweigh the extra 80Mb/s USB2 claims over the current iteration of FireWire. Most importantly is the fact that it is peer-to-peer, meaning that no host PC is required to manage every FW connection. This makes firewire a good choice for video equipment, and interesting is also being adopted in the auto industry to connect electronic components together. Also, data carried over FireWire carries certain priority information with it, depending on the type of data being transferred. Video data or a CD burning session can thus be treated with a higher priority that pictures from a still camera. Anyone who has hooked up a USB CD burner downstream from their printer can attest to the importance of such a mechanism.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
I didn't even know apple was a company in 1394. :-) Back then FireWire was probably a rope on fire. But alas I digress.
USB 2 does have 'reserved bandwidth' (I believe they guarentee time slices like ATM).
Go out and get sailing!
First of all, Firewire allows devices on its bus to talk directly to each other. Thus when transferring data on a bus with a hard drive, computer, and camera the data can go directly from the camera to the hard drive.
With USB each device sends its data first to the host controller, and then back out to the device it was intended to go to. This effectively cuts the bandwidth of the bus in half and also limits the bus to how fast the central controller can handle requests. So using USB in the camera-computer-hard drive combo above, the data would go from the camera to the computer, then back out the computer to the hard drive.
Secondly, Firewire is built to handle streaming data. It handles reserving bandwith much better than USB 2.0 does. This is very important when you are recording from a camera to a hard drive and the data is time-dependant.
Thirdly, Firewire is able to operate much closer to sustaining its theoretical maximum of 400Mbps. USB 2.0's 480Mbps data rate is a burst data rate and cannot come even close to sustaining that rate of transfer. I've heard that your average transfer rates over a Firewire bus is going to be around 75% of theoretical, where USB 2.0 is around 50% of theoretical. These results can vary, but Firewire almost definitely outperforms USB 2.0 for sustained data transfers.
Another big problem is that USB tends to transfer data at the rate of the slowest device on the bus, Firewire does not share this limitation.
Lastly, Firewire is due for a speed bump very soon. Probably late this year you will see Firewire bump up to 800Mbps, a much better rate than the current USB 2.0 rate of 480Mbps.
Now I'm not saying that USB 2.0 is utter crap. It is decent when you only have a couple of devices connected that are not doing sustained transfers. So it should be great for printers, mice, keyboards, etc. However, when it comes to video cameras, hard drives, and other devices that need good sustained transfer rates, I'll stick with Firewire. Not to mention that it is already included with the majority of these devices and USB 2.0 is not.
Sapere aude!
Most of the people won't know it and won't use it.
And there are already cheap ($75) KT333 motherboards with 4 USB 2.0 ports on the market.
I think mobos with USB 2.0 onboard are
already much more popular than ones with firewire and people won't be willing to pay extra for the controller -they will stick with USB.
Apple again had superior technology but lost.
I personally chose USB 2.0 because I have quite a few USB 1.1 computers and devices will work with them, even if a bit slower. If I were to use
firewire I would have to buy a controller for each. I have some computer expertise
and I do not want to do it. I am pretty
sure an average Joe would be even less
likely to do so. If his mobo has USB 2.0 - he
will buy USB 2.0 device.
Kubus
Dude. You hit the nail on the head.
A couple of weeks ago I was at Fry's looking for an s-video to RCA adapter, and the geek with the name badge said he was sure they didn't carry those. The closest things they had were some s-video to composite adapters... =)
Get off my launchpad!
its like having an ad on every pc saying we're better because we get to name the shit you finally get two years later.
I want 2D games back.
Anyway, last I heard the new Macs are going to ship with USB2 and FireWire - so who cares which is better?
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
And we were all just getting used to saying "one thousand...three hundred...and ninety-four...a".
Got friends?
whole deal with RCA plugs.
Well, La-Dee-Da! "RCA plugs!" Give me BNC any day.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
It is supported on the VIA P4X333 and KT333 chipsets, for example.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
Okay, am I the only one who sees the irony in a 'lack of bandwidth' error on the home page for a trade association whose product is defined by its bandwidth?
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Are there any motherboards out that are supporting USB 2, or is it still add-on only?
I believe the latest round of Pentium 4 motherboards from Intel, Asus, Abit, MSI, etc. have USB 2.0 support built in. The current low end Pentium 4 offerings from Dell and Gateway also seem to support USB 2.0, I suspect these have it built-in as well given the history of such machines.
Saying "FireWire (Apple's trademark), formally known as IEEE 1394 and also called iLink by Sony " was always a mouthfull :(
IEEE-1394 (FireWire, i.Link)
its like having an ad on every pc saying we're better because we get to name the shit you finally get two years later
:-)
Clue: We live in a world where most people think Microsoft invented the graphical user interface.
FUD, pure FUD + 10% troll.
Now, read this, this, and this and weep!
>USB2 on the other hand is expected to be in Windows XP SP1
Oh yeah, that'll catch on just like USB 1.0 caught on when Windows 95 OSR2 came out (ffft... yeah, right...).
>Since 99% of all computer users use Windows, USB2 will catch on incredibly fast leaving FireWire in the dust.
Since 99% (as you say) of users already have firewire support why the f*ck would they switch all their stuff to USB 2.0?
>Sometimes you Slashdot folk have to remember that just because you think the technology is better, doesn't mean it will catch on. Hmm, how long has the Gameboy had a black and white screen until they used color?
All the real geeks knew the B/W systems were better because at the time you'd be lucky to play all of Sonic the Hedgehog without replacing the batteries. I could beat Super Mario World 3 times over and the battery light was still bright red.
>So, has Apple made an attempt to turn people away from USB?
And why should they? USB is fine for slow devices like keyboards and mice that need to be cheap, and don't generate a lot of data, and aren't likely to be hooked up without a computer being in the mix.
>not even with OS X which you can tell is aimed at Windows XP with it's XPish interface
Ahahah! I don't even own a Mac and I've never seen OS-X except for glimpses of it on "The Screen Savers" and I can tell you it doesn't look at all like XP.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Err, XP does support FireWire right now.
I could see Apple giving the trademark to the trade association to improve its visibility in the industry (and stunt USB2's growth while it can), but I can't see it "letting go" of such an important branch of technology unless it has a firm grip on the next branch up the tree.
Leave it to Apple to not try to gouge other people in the industry with licensing fees.
Are you listening Microsoft? Sometimes you can make just as much off of good PR as you can off of lousy licensing schemes.
Besides Sony's "i.link" what other competetion was their against the name FireWire?
Firewire is just plain smarter.
I can run 400 Mbps 10m with a good copper cable, 4.5m with a crappy one, and 700m with an optical one.
I can stream video from my camcorder to multiple hosts at one time. My camcorder can talk to a hard drive, without a computer interlocuter.
And Firewire already owns the prosumer/professional video and photographic markets, so it ain't going away any time soon.
i.secure? Now there's an unfortunate expression.
/usr/share/dict/words
% grep 'i.secure'
insecure
insecurely
insecureness
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
USB 2 suffers from a master / slave design. Theoretically one can plug a firewire drive into a firewire camera, and transfer footage from the camera directly to the HD
Unforutnatly the cost of actualy IMPLEMENTING this on a device shoots the price up by ~$25-$50 dollars. (it was worse. . . . )
And on say a $200 digicam. . . . ouch.
From a 12.5% to a 25% price markup for the ability to transfer images straight to a HD without a computer go between (uh. . . . heh.) may be useful to people who are doing high end work, but then again people doing high end work do not bother with $200 digicams;
which is why firewire is senseless to use in cheap devices and why USB{1,2} still has its uses and will for some time to come.
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I wouldn't be surprised if you see up and coming Macs with USB2.0 and FireWire (800mbs).
I don't think the two technologies compete that much. Everyone likes to make out that they are major competitors to each other.
I see it like this:
USB for your Printers/Scanners/Disk Drives/KeyBoard/Mouse etc, basically anything that is only usefull with a computer.
Firewire for your streaming devices, such as Hard Drives, Video Cameras etc. Of course there will be some devices that cross over but I don't think it will be that common.
Go out and get sailing!
Theoretically one can plug a firewire drive into a firewire camera, and transfer footage from the camera directly to the HD.
The catch there is that the camera has to know something about filesystems. Shrug, I have both, I'll have to try the experiment.
However, it does work very nicely to transfer DV between two cameras without a computer (MiniDV to D8 in my case) or to stream DV data to multiple PC's on the same 1394 bus. Since it's peer-to-peer (unlike USB), it's great for audio-video gear (where it is starting to show up).
-- Alastair
Don't forget power. 1394 can send more power across the line than USB or USB 2.0 can, eliminating the need for seperate power cords on anything that requires more power than a keyboard or a mouse.
:)
Isn't it funny how IBM calls 1394 i.Link and Apple uses Firewire? You'd think it would be the other way around. The way it is, we should be seeing Steve Jobs promoting it's new FirePod right about now.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Oh yeah, and another point. Apple stuck its neck out and adopted USB before it was even supported by most PCs. Yeah some PCs has USB ports, but Windows didn't have USB support. All those candy colored USB peripherals that came out after the iMac got the whole USB ball rolling in the first place!
-- if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic - Lewis Carrol
Actually, Sony has been promoting i.Link as an alternative name because of the angst cause by the translation of "FIREWIRE" into the Japanese language. Culturally, the Japanese seem to take product and marketing use of language and naming much more seriously than Westerners...
In English, we can easily distort meanings and make allusions to fuctionality with the same words and we fluidly do so.. In the case of "Hot" refferring to temperature, trendiness or even sexiness all taken in an appropriate contextual setting; the English speaker is not likely to experience any particular mental anguish regarding the particular usage of the term.
In this case, "Fire" and associations with "wire" porvide a particular image of speed. In Japanese, the Kanji "hi" (-hee-) is literally *Fire* and quite dangerous. Associating that with "wire" possibly alludes to the quite frequent burning down of older buildings with less than adequate electrical systems (a whole other topic).
Unfortunately, due to access to world press the term "FireWire" or "fieyawieya" is widely known in the technical community along with the "IEEE1394". Unfortunately, as computer people are just beginning to become acquainted with video technology, few seem to have made the connection between "fireWire" and "iLink".
Compactflash cameras transfer files onto the cards using files and directories. They've been working with filesystems for years.
Isn't [Sony's i.Link] the same thing?
It's also the same thing as Creative's SB1394, and I believe digital video cameras call it a DV port - everybody just wants to put their own name on it. The interesting things with creative's is, you can (at least theoretically) connect two computers to each other with it, like a really fast serial cable connection. I didn't have the means to test this out though.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
You've seen it before, take a look at your Gameboy.
Apparently when they came to look for a really robust connector they decided that the Gameboy one fit the bill. If it can survive massive PFY abuse it should survive anything.
Of course, that might explain Sony's reluctance to use it, being tainted by association with Nintendo.
The USB connector, by comparison, destroys far too easily.
Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
Isn't [Sony's i.Link] the same thing?
This unifies the standard. People with an iLink camera think it will just work with the VAIO systems and people with a FireWire cam think it just works with Macs. The decision will benefit everyone, assuming Sony will adopt the name on its existing iLink products. Maybe cobrand them as iLink/FireWire. It's a smart move - and I agree with the other posters who say the move preceeds GigaWire. Count on seeing that very soon.
== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign ====
By firewire camera, I meant DV camera. And I do believe the high end, 3-4 mega pixel professional models do have firewire on them also.
And Firewire was never meant to replace USB, USB 2 is actually trying to replace Firewire as a high speed device for hard drives, cdrws, etc. If i had a mixed environment of machines (Macs which all shipping models have firewire on, PCs with USB 2.0) there are plenty of devices that come with both USB and Firewire connections on them (hard drives and cd/dvd recorders).
Again, firewire is not for cheap devices, and more and more computers are starting to include them, since there is yet to be a DV camera to ship with USB 2 on it (that I know of). And Home Video editing has become very popular.
And while I don't have links to back this up, from the last firewire vs USB2 debate, I believe Firewire still gives better throughput to hard drives, etc.
Didn't Apple do the same thing for 802.11b? Being the first company to push this and effectively kill all those 802.11b "alternatives", it would have been a wise move to free-up the name "Airport" to prevent confusions with WiFi.
Exactly, in fact it is being used for a replacement to the aged midi standard. Basically you will not only get faster, easier to setup midi signalling but also the ability to send samples and multichannel audio between devices!
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
iLink is one protocol level up from FireWire. It's a standard for sending video over FireWire. FireWire supports both an isochronous mode for video and audio, and an asynchronous mode for devices that can wait, like disk drives. In theory, you can do both at once on the same cable without interference, although few do.
I believe that USB 2.0 will tax the cpu more due to it's master/slave setup. which isnt a big deal but hey why waste the extra cycles if firewire also provides the technical advantages everyone else has already mentioned.
It's interesting to note that intel the company that developed the USB standard infact has a vested intrest in it being a performace hog (more incentive to buy those fast pentium processors) just food for thought.
--aiee
Ergh.
You're all wrong. Trust me on this - I've been writing stacks and designing 1394 hardware for a while now.
There is no difference between iLink and FireWire. They are different names for the same thing. Yes, there are two plug types. One is tiny and 4 pin, the other is bigger and 6 pin. The big one has power. They are both part of the IEEE 1394 standard. They are both FireWire. They are both iLink.
There is no difference at the protocol level. Trust me on this. I have had my nose rubbed in more 1394 protocol stacks and chipsets than I care to remember.
The main reason that this hasn't happened before is that nobody trusted Apple. Especially after their stunt where they tried to tack on huge royalty fees for every 1394 port (this after agreeing several years earlier to pool patents with the other people who made 1394 possible). They timed this particularly well, and managed to delay the uptake of 1394 by maybe 2 years, and in some cases, permanently. Basically, they were complete idiots and damn near shot off their foot at the ankle. I think this had a lot to do with the fact that 1394 isn't standard kit on todays PC motherboard chipsets. The royalties alone were close to the cost of the entire chipset.
It Sony hadn't stuffed 1394 into every camcoder on the planet, 1394 would be dead. Apple are NOT my favourite people. Greedy idiots.
---
Everything you say is true. Firewire is an infinitely superior interface--and more than an interface, an architecture. It supports so many things, and so much better than USB 2.0. BUT...
Replace "Firewire" in the above comment with "SCSI" and replace "USB 2.0" with IDE. Now, finish the "BUT..." BUT...none of that matters because of practical considerations like cost--whether the vendor will spend the extra money or the customer pay the extra money.
It makes sense for high-end and mid-range (but still costly) consumer electronics equipment like video cameras and more expensive "prosumer"-level digital cameras to have Firewire ports. In the former case it's necessary because we're dealing with video data which could saturate the bus and either take forever to transfer or get more easily corrupted in the process without the safeguards Firewire employs. In the latter case a person who's buying a higher level of equipment would probably expect the same sort of interface he has with his DVcam and other higher-end toys.
But for most things other than DVcams and similar equipment, Firewire makes no sense. We want better faster cheaper. That means huge IDE drives over smaller more expensive SCSI drives (unless you need what SCSI offers, just as DVcams need what Firewire offers). That means not using the better but more complicated and more expensive Firewire when USB 2.0 will work much the same.
So, most suitable items will remain USB/2.0 connected, with Firewire gaining little ground even after its speed bump thanks to the expense of implementing its more complex architecture. Aside from digital video cameras and "prosumer" digital still cameras, and hard drives for people too lazy or lacking in knowledge to open their cases and stick another IDE drive in (or people whose cases are too small, like Mac owners), there's not much place for Firewire. USB 2.0 and its future successors, however, are perfect for most things which could connect to a computer--hell, even cable modems now usually have a USB port or two, since it costs almost nothing to add; even though it won't give as much bandwidth as with a $10 ethernet card and some cat 5, it's there because it's easy and nearly costless for the manufacturer to add and easy for uses who couldn't install an ethernet card to hook up.
Firewire's cost to implement thanks to its fancy peer-to-peer model guarantees that it won't be added to many things which don't explicitly need it, while USB 2.0's low implementation costs mean it'll go into everything and the kitchen sink. In the end it's just a SCSI vs. IDE debate--one's clearly superior, but the other is "good enough and cheaper."
Apple saw the writing on the wall, which is why they're finally deciding to stop being so stingy with their catchy Firewire name. If Apple wants to get Firewire on more than cameras and overpriced external hard drives and a middling number of computers, it has to start working for it or else...
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
USB2 needs a PC in the middle.
For example you can plug a firewire camera directly into a Firewire portable hardrive & tranfer data across.
You need a computer between the 2 to do that with USB2
For that matter, so does Win2K. I have a hard drive and a couple of webcams that use FireWire. (I had FireWire devices before I had any USB devices, for what that's worth...my printer is parallel and my scanner is SCSI (though the scanner's been acting flaky...might need to replace it).) Adding FireWire was as simple as adding the controller card...the driver for it was already part of Win2K.
I think Win98 SE had some level of FireWire support as well, but I had moved on to Win2K by the time I started doing anything with FireWire.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
I should also mention that USB depends on the CPU for its work, while Firewire has controller chips that take care of this. This one factor is probably what makes Firewire more expensive, but at the same time makes a huge difference in a computer that is doing heavy duty work.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Not to be a pain about this, but I would be more willing to bet that the reason Fire Wire isn't as standard on PC's as it could be is that PC manufacturers (and users) tend to dislike a change in their standards, and like to keep everything. Case in point, USB. USB was an intel developed product (if I remember correctly) but it never appeared mainsteam untill Apple started selling USB only computers, then all of a sudden everyone was making USB devices. Even now it's ver hard to find a USB only PC, many still have PS/2 built in.
I'm sure the lisenseing had something to do with Firewire not being standardized, but I personaly think it has to do with resistance to change. After all, how else do you explain the continued (albiet rapidly diminishing) existance of ISA
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Apple did some huge marketing for the first Mac (the 1984 commercial is still one of the top 3 commercials of all time) It aired once and had arguably the biggest impact of any commercial on a new product. IEEE 1394 is the technical designation for the technology. (Mostly) everything that you use on a computer has an IEEE designation, you just don't see it. They did allow the name to be used, but for a lisenceing fee. Not the brightest move and Apple realized that it wasn't helping their tech at all, nor was it bringing in a usable revenue, so they drop the fee and open the lisence.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
The difference of course being that Apple did finaly give it up and let consumers have what they wanted. Not that it makes much of a difference. People who cared called it Fire Wire, people who didn't care, just bought their computers and didn't think much of it.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Basically, they were complete idiots and damn near shot off their foot at the ankle. I think this had a lot to do with the fact that 1394 isn't standard kit on todays PC motherboard chipsets. The royalties alone were close to the cost of the entire chipset.
.25.
Are you saying that the entire chipset of a motherboard cost $1? Because that's how much Apple was charging in royalties for FireWire, until a very public backlash forced them to charge
I disagree with your assessment of why FireWire isn't standard on PC mobo's though. I think it has much more to do with Intel pushing Intel-owned standards such as USB and ATA (in spite of the fact that neither one of those is a true replacement). Had Intel embraced FireWire for the mainstream, then yes, we would see FireWire as ubiquitous on PC's as USB. But it was Intel's marketing strategy to position their competitor's product as being for high-end and niche markets, not for mainstream. Very shrewd.
I think for relatively low-speed applications (digital still cameras with small-sized memory cards, keyboards, mouse pointers, analog modems, and lower-resolution scanners) USB will do fine.
However, with CompactFlash memory cards already hitting 512 MB in size (and you know the Panasonic SD and Sony Memory Stick cards are going to increase way beyond 64 MB in storage capacity), the wide availability of FireWire port external hard drives and CD-RW/DVD recordable drives, and for higher-resolution scanners, you definitely want to have the higher sustained transfer speeds of FireWire connections.
Besides, how much does it cost to install a FireWire adapter card anyway? These cards are almost as cheap as USB adapter cards for older computers. And many computer manufacturers already include FireWire connections with the computer and many newer motherboards include FireWire support, too.
This isn't the SCSI versus IDE debate, because the price differential between FireWire and USB 2.0 is much smaller than the price differential between SCSI and IDE.
Looking at the specs for Camera Link, I don't think it will be popular.
There is one major reason for this: the size of the connector--it's essentially a modified DB-25 connector design. Compare that against the very small connector size for FireWire cables and I think for portability purposes FireWire wins hands down. Besides, at 400 megabits/second transfer rate the current FireWire standard is more than enough to transfer the entire contents of a 512 MB CompactFlash card to the computer pretty quickly.
Besides, the new IEEE-1394b standard for FireWare will double the data transfer rate to 800 megabits/second, which makes Camera Link even less attractive.
It used to be doable, but pricy, but on today's systems?
hawk
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
That is just not true. I bought a IEEE1394 PCI card with 3 firewire ports on it for about $70. You don't need a seperate controller for each one.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
I heard that they want to implement the protocol over wireless, and the engineers were geeked that they could call it Wireless FireWire (super cool, IMHO). Marketing got wind of it, was horrified by the "wireless" and "wire" in the name, and came up with Gigawire (Giga works for them because it's Gigahertz wireless).
Then again, the Apple world is full of crazy rumours!
Lies about crimes
You guys are old chums? What a freaky coincidence running into each other here!
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
As an owner of an iBook and an iPod, I'd be pissed off if my iBook didn't have the FireWire port as designed by Apple (read: it's a 6-pin port. RTFSpec)
Most firewire hard drives are bus-powered for portability reasons. The iPod uses the FireWire for recharging the battery while you mess around with transfering files. It's nice to plug in only one cable.
ALL HAIL BRAK!!!
I only repeat what the internal feeling was amongst the 1394 community, and I think that feeling is justified. I saw a number of chipsets that were going to have 1394 mysteriously lose that feature around this period.
Not so mysterious, really. Intel had been a long-time backer of FireWire, so the natural assumption was that FireWire would find instant adoption in the PC world. But a year or so before Apple started shipping the first FireWire Macs, Intel started grousing about how FireWire wasn't suitable for the masses and that USB and ATA were. Did it really matter to Intel if motherboards included FireWire? Directly, no, because all of those motherboards would have included USB and ATA, anyway. Where Intel stood to lose ground was in the peripheral market, where most manufacturers might start using FireWire chipsets in quantity instead of Intel chipsets. Intel had a chance to delay/slow this by a few years (maybe even kill it), and they took the shot.
From a business perspective, then, FireWire was only available on a small percentage of PC systems, and it was very questionable as to "when" FireWire would see widespread adoption on PC motherboards. Is there a reason to build for a niche market with a murky future (FireWire) instead of building for the market that 100% of new PC's will support (USB)? Of course most manufacturers/developers were going to build for USB over FireWire.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Okay, Sony then. Thanks.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
And while I don't have links to back this up, from the last firewire vs USB2 debate, I believe Firewire still gives better throughput to hard drives, etc.
Oh yes for HDs sure, but USB2 is NOT meant to completely replace Firewire or even take its place.
Think memory card readers and such, or even portable CDR burners, things that you do not NEED to have operate independently of a computer, or at least some sort of root USB hub* device.
HDs, digital cameras, and such, are definitely FireWire's realm
Even CDR devices that are designed as say a drop in for memory cards (oooh now THAT would rock!!! Hehe. Maybe those DataPlay discs could come in handy for something after all, LOL!) are in the domain of firewire.
*I think that is the proper term for the device that runs all other USB devices in the USB network, may have my terminology wrong though.
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