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Apple Backing Away From FireWire
farmdwg was one of several readers to submit stories about Apple backing away from FireWire. The latest generation of iPods no longer ship with FireWire cables, but instead use USB 2... although FireWire can still be purchased seperately.
Backing away?
Certainly not. FireWire is still integral; it is the standard for communication with a DV camcorder; it is important to the function of iMovie. The iLife suite is a big draw. I know people buying Macs just because of iLife.
Arguments of which standard is better aside, USB 2.0 is more widely available. As the article states, "It's more cost efficient to ship with one cable rather than two, and USB is more broadly supported on both platforms." It's not Apple backing away, it's Apple making a business decision. If they later remove FireWire support from the device, then you can get upset.
Using USB in the Shuffle was key because the, as mentioned, USB 2.0 is more broadly supported, and the connector is built it. Using FireWire on the Shuffle would have prevented it from reaching its target audience.
Apple is trying to save money and drop prices at the same time. Sure it sucks for us FireWire users. I have several FireWire peripherals and will probably spend the extra $20 getting the FireWire cable when I get my next iPod (hopefully soon). But it's a luxury, because I have USB 2.0 anyway.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
That tells it all. Apple is keeping FireWire, of course. The C|Net "oh my God, we're gonna DIE" headline aside, FireWire is still a very important technology for Apple, particularly because of their investment in FireWire for DV. The distinction is in how a more nuanced Apple is handling it. In the old days Apple would have kept FireWire cabling in the box simply because they felt FireWire was a better technology.
These days Apple has a much, much firmer grip on the realities of the consumer electronics and computer markets, and decisions like this bear that out. As Oculus Habent stated, it does suck for FireWire users, but it's not a terrible burden to bear to have to buy a FireWire cable. This is a case of Apple keeping costs down in an effort to stay one step ahead of the competition.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
... I have to agree with you wholeheartedly.
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... I'm beginning to think this site is dead and we just don't know it yet.
This was a cost savings move and nothing more.
And it makes the front page of
Why do I come here anymore?
I'm starting to wonder the same thing. Slashdot has never been known for its "vetting" of stories, or even much editing of the captions, but the last few weeks it's become really terrible. Stories spinning the broadcast flag and attempted banning of digital HDTV VCR-like hardware as "piracy prevention", pro-ms stories rearing their heads more and more in what is (or was) supposed to be a free software/opensource news and discussion forum, and an ever increasing number of flat-out misleading headlines that misrepresent TFAs, and links to TFAs that are flagrant products of MPAA/RIAA shills
Anyone know of any decent competitors out there?
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I guess you can't boot of the iPod anymore. I know you are not supposed to but it was a nice feature. Or is it still possible with USB2?
Also they no longer have to provide with every iPod what appear to be custom-built rounded white adapters for connecting 6-pin FireWire cables to 4-pin ports, like they did before iPods shipped with USB cables -- bear in mind that a lot of Windows PCs with FireWire have the camera-style 4-pin port.
I would bet money there are more Windows iPod users now then Mac. PCs, for the most part, do not have and do not come with firewire. USB is far more common.
Plus they get the 19.99 from people who want firewire cables.
Geez...
this made out to be a big freaking deal.... it's not
now microsoft selling products to protect you from their insecure products... that's disturbing
As for USB v FireWire, don't judge "better" in terms of how elegantly engineered each product is. There are obvious parallels to Betamax v VHS. The difference in performance is generally not significant for most people. USB is in markets FireWire isn't interested in, such as low bandwidth applications like keyboards, mice, printers etc, (though to be fair USB has little penetration in the DV market). USB is cheaper. USB has become standard on PCs, largely because it started as a replacement for existing functionality that most people used: the PS/2, serial and parallel ports, while FireWire replaces external SCSI - something comparitively few people use. IMHO, FireWire is just hanging on, right on the edge of being relegated to being solely used in the niche market of DV. It's use in set top boxes might be it's saviour.
Nope. For whatever reasons, the Ipod software does not work with USB1. It will not report any error, but it will NOT work. Somewhere deep in the manual it clearly states that USB2 is required.
It's one of those things that makes me (as a PC user) think that the whole Apple=easy thing is a big lie, as setting up that Ipod for my wife was a PITA with USB1 not working, no networking capability, and having to leave CD autorun on.
Actually, you're completely wrong.
Mac OS X is actually the number one shipping UNIX/UNIX-like OS in the world, surpassing Linux and all commercial UNIXes.
Yes, surpassing Linux.
No, not just on the desktop.
Yes, even servers.
(Okay, maybe not on embedded devices, but definitely in computers/servers/workstations. By far.)
Apple, in unit shipments, is the largest vendor of UNIX systems in the world. They may not be used in the same fashion, but Apple completely eclipses "unix/solaris/linux/bsd" in shipped units, in fact ridiculously so.
"With the release of Mac OS X, Apple became the largest vendor of Unix in the world"
"There are over 5 million Mac OS X users, including scientists, animators, developers, and system administrators, making Apple the largest vendor of UNIX-based systems."
A lot more...
This has been common knowledge for a couple of years now.
And to repeat. THIS INCLUDES SERVERS. There are now over 12 million Mac OS X systems in use (source: 23:40 of WWDC keynote). This by far eclipses shipments by all other UNIX/UNIX-like system vendors. Apple is the single largest vendor of UNIX-based systems in the world, bar none.
As a PC user, I find firewire nifty for me. I use an external (120GB) firewire hard drive to share my /home directory between my server and laptop. When I want to run a game that won't run on my laptop, I can boot my laptop to act as my linux server (taking care of downloads and other services), and boot my server to play Half-Life 2. That is also the setup while I'm doing rebuilding work on the server.
I saw it as a way to make large amounts of external storage available if needed. But in my case, I'm not finding "firewire faster" enough, but the opposite. No way is USB2 going to satisfy my need for throughput. Too bad firewire never really caught on in the PC world. Its only $10-$30 to add cards to the server & laptop.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
"...and his portable Mac is a tool to edit and manage photos."
There's nothing wrong with that, computers are primarily supposed to be tools to get things done. These days the tinkering aspect is fairly minor part of personal computing - the 70's are long gone (ahh, mis-spent youth: the thrill of new technologies like LEDs and the 4000 series CMOS logic family, hand wiring bit-shift registers...sigh...). But your blanket statement "they suck" (and your explanation why) shows that you could learn from your teacher's approach: use the tool that's does the job you want. For example, would you recommend a PC to a non-geek classmate on the basis that YOU know how to fix spyware, viruses, etc, or would you suggest they get a Mac because THEY won't NEED to fix those problems?*
"I like to get under the hood and tweak the system, and I find that hard to do on the Mac."
Which is probably one reason your school uses Macs: fewer "experts" to "optimize" the performance (try running a lab sometime...argh!). But seriously, if you really want to tinker with Macs, might I suggest you go to VersionTracker and pick up Clix (100KB; tiny!), which is a GUI wrapper for a few thousand terminal commands, each with a description so you aren't guessing what it does. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised just how easily configurable OS X is if you are prepared to...well, tinker. And if hardware floats your boat, you couldn't ask for a more tinker-worthy case than the G3/G4 tower form. Plus, you get the added excitement of finding compatible peripherals or chipset-compatible drivers...I've hacked drivers for Ethernet and USB cards, and the odd 802.11b adaptor in both OS 9 and X. Fun!
I'm not trying to convince you to ditch the PC in favour of Macs or that one is superior to the other, what I'm saying is if you're at day one when it comes to the OS you're in the position where you can enjoy discovering it's capabilities; remember how much fun that was the first time round? Go nuts, the worst that will happen is learning, and that's never a bad thing.
*I suppose that comment, though true, classifies me as a fanboy. Which reminds me of an anecdote: a couple of years ago, a collegue spent hours trying to convince me that Windows 98 was the most stable version of Windows ever, because "you only have to re-install it every six months". I tried telling him that my idea of stable was "you only have to re-START every six months", but he simply didn't believe it was possible. The pain, the pain...
Blank until
Actually, it's interesting this is brought up - because not too long ago, I recall reading a number of messages on Apple's own message forums from users encountering problems with their iPod syncing properly on Macs via firewire.
After much testing and speculation, folks seemed to pretty much determine it was a problem caused by Apple's iSight firewire camera combined with an iPod on the firewire interface. Apparently, the iSight, when turned on, consumes the majority of the bandwidth on the firewire 400 bus. Trying to xfer large amounts of data to an iPod while it's on can lead to crashes/freezes.
This is probably made even worse when people have an external firewire drive attached and use it as part of this equation.
Considering how often Mac users opt for an iSight camera to go with their system, this seems like an issue worth addressing. I almost wonder if Apple thought about this one too - and figured a migration of iPods to USB might be an easy work-around?
Back in 1997, Firewire was going to be the connector everywhere in PCs, in and out. IDE, SCSI, external -all 1394b. Even laptop docks
But then apple demanded $1 per port, which would mean $5-$10 per PC, plus something for every peripheral.
The result: USB2.0. That's right: USB2 came into existence primarily because of Apple's pricing strategy for 1394 ports.
So it is kind of ironic that they are not shipping firewire on ipods to better serve the PC market. If they hadnt got greedy, there might not be a USB2.
USB2 was Intel's bus of choice from the get-go. They pushed the standard hard to chipset/mobo manufacturers. Why? Firewire controllers have much more integrated logic, aleviating much of the io overhead from the CPU. USB controllers rely on the CPU to a much greater extent to sheperd the data to and fro. Which standard do you think a CPU maker would promote?