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Recent Macs Have Built-in USB 2.0
RalphBNumbers writes "According to a forum thread at CreateMac, a Korean Mac community, the newer MDD 1.25 and 1.42 GHz dual G4s actually use a NEC PD720101 USB 2.0 controller for their built-in USB. Apple's drivers only support USB 1.x, but you can apparently enable USB 2.0 functionality by using the drivers for a USB 2.0 card from Orange Micro that uses the same NEC controller. YMMV." Is there a translation of any of this, somewhere?
A lot of manufacturers, including Apple, seem pretty pretty close-mouthed on the 1.1/2.0 issue. I don't recall ever seeing an ad for a complete system that specified which version of USB the system supports. I guess everbody has an inventory of motherboards with built-in USB 1.1 that they need to use up. Not that big a deal if you've got an extra PCI slot for a $20 USB 2.0 card. But what if you have an iMac or some other system with no "legacy" ports or slots?
Those Macs do have a USB 2.0 controller, but it doesn't really matter. I read the technical documentation for the NEC uPD7020101, which is the controller used in those Macs. The USB 2.0 portion of the controller is trivial to disable and yet still leave the USB 1.1 portion functional. It is also possible to make the USB 2.0 portion permanently disabled in hardware or disabled in hardware, but possible to enable with a hardware hack. Or for that matter disabled, but possible to enable with a new system BIOS or a new driver. Any of these are possible. Anyone care to guess which one is the case? Knowing Apple any could be the case.
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
the powermacs got an update to increase their speed performance to allow for the new higher speed media, and they may follow suit with that with the powerbooks as well.
i would also say that you should not expect much of an optical drive in a laptop. i imagine that it would be pretty system intensive to burn a dvd at 2x on a powerbook and would get mighty hot anyway.
apple really does not cripple their hardware so much as not allow for poor support of it. no dvd support at all until 10.1, so why expect them to have support that they feel is satisfactory on a relatively new concept? apple does a great deal of tech support and i think that they are best to not release anything unstable to save their already busy support people when it can all be avoided by quality products.