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FireWire 2 Coming Soon?

Posted by pudge on from the oops dept.

Twirlip of the Mists writes "Looks like SmartDisk pulled a Time Canada. IT World reports, 'Several hours after announcing that it is introducing desktop hard drives that connect to Apple Computer Inc. computers using the new high-speed 800M bps (bits per second) FireWire standard, SmartDisk Corp. asked that the news be 'killed due to premature release.'" Sweet.

7 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. Firewire 2 vs. SATA by HalfFlat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Would it really be that much more expensive to pop firewire control electronics on drives instead of ATA or serial ATA?

    Firewire 2 would offer enough bandwidth to support any currently available hard disk with room to spare, let alone the current crop of ATA drives. The fact that it's a powered interface, supports long cable lengths, has a small cable diameter, is chainable, etc. all seem to be compelling advantages. The command set, which IIRC is SCSI-like, I'm guessing is an improvement over ATA as well.

    I don't really expect to see firewire native drives, but it really does seem that firewire 2 offers a much better solution for connecting disks than SATA - even for internal drives. And having the same connection for internal and external devices would just make everything that much easier.

  2. The new AppleTalk by EccentricAnomaly · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Faster Firewire + Rendezvous means now there is an easy and cheap way to set up a home network of Macs, Printers, Scanners, iPods, and whatever else Apple would like to sell.

    --
    There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
    1. Re:The new AppleTalk by WatertonMan · · Score: 3, Insightful
      That's a great excuse. But three years? Sounds like there is Dilbert-styled politics going on. I had a friend who worked for Word Perfect just before they went to hell. The work environment totally sounded like Dilbert. I hope that whatever team is doing that at Apple isn't in that kind of situation.

      I'd love it if the new Appleworks was an Office killer and used all those cool OSX features. I have my doubts, however. That it is taking this long. . . Even a total rewrite shouldn't be that complex - especially if they are using Cocoa.

  3. *raises hand...* by WiseWeasel · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yep, he is probably pretty steamed. This is definitely good support for an entire lineup refresh, which was already sort of announced when SJ said all new hardware in Jan, 2003 would only boot in MacOS X.

    --
    "I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
  4. Re:Does it matter? by twiztidlojik · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Sure, you get a big RAID-0 on the other end of that thing with multiple busses and you'll have it running at full capacity, or it could even be a way to implement an UltraMegaSuperWideFatAndLong SCSI RAID.

    --
    I will now redundantly add my name to the end of my post. You know, in case you forgot me or something.
  5. Re:Daddy, can I be an analyst too? by bnenning · · Score: 3, Insightful
    the firewire based TV recorder that also records HDTV and is designed for real high bandwidth video


    That's what I've been wanting ever since Steve went to the "digital hub" strategy. Specifically, a Tivo-like box running OS X that your Mac connects to via Rendezvous and programs with a nice Cocoa app (with a web interface for non-Mac or remote users). It should use a channel guide delivered as part of .mac (which would be worth $100/year by itself) and be able to transfer video to Macs and new MPEG-enabled iPods. The profits should be more than sufficient to cover the flood of lawsuits from MPAA weasels.


    I expect this product to be available shortly after a lasting peace is established in the Middle East.

    --
    How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
  6. USB 2.0 by PeePeeSee · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I seriously doubt apple will ever use USB 2.0 in any product. Its just a bad idea all together - nothing good about it in any way - Firewire 0wnz j00r b0n3z that is if your name is USB2.0. That and why would they advocate another companies high speed data transfer technology when they have their own better implementaion. Yes I know they jumped onto USB(and made it what it is today) but thats slow speed - they had nothing and intel already did the dirty work.