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A New Global Memory Card Standard
Lucas123 writes "The MultiMedia Card Association has approved a new memory card standard called the Multiple Interface Card (miCard). The card will make transferring pictures, songs, and other data between electronic gadgets and PCs easier. Twelve Taiwanese companies are preparing to manufacture the new miCard. 'The compatibility with both USB and MMC slots means most users won't need separate card readers anymore. MMC cards fit most consumer electronics, while USB connections are built into a wide range of IT hardware...'" Initial cards will hold 8 GB; the maximum the standard supports is 2,048 GB.
The compatibility with both USB and MMC slots means most users won't need separate card readers anymore. MMC cards fit most consumer electronics, while USB connections are built into a wide range of IT hardware...'" Initial cards will hold 8 GB; the maximum the standard supports is 2,048 GB.
...Of course, since most older MMC card devices can't read anything over 4GB,
you'll still need to upgrade either your storage or your devices (or both).
I applaud the direct USB compatibility and the increased capacity, but don't kid us with claims of backward compatibility. Everyone already has 2-4GB MMC/CF/SD/XD cards in all their devices nowadays, and the industry needs to find an artificial reason to upgrade. Nothing more, nothing less.
Please, lets do something other than FAT.
Well the obvious advantage here is USB support.
What does this do that previous ones don't? Why is this so much better than existing technology that it will supplant it?
The USB interface is a nice feature, but a USB nub is pretty clunky, and is, in and of itself, bigger than competing media cards. XD and microSD are both smaller than a USB connector. Every format is flatter (CF, XD, SD, MMC, MemoryStick). How is this going to be better than any of those? If it doesn't have a standard USB nub, then is it going to need an adaptor, therefore defeating the while "card reader not required" argument?
I really only see three markets for these cards. Large: currently filled very well by Compact Flash. Medium (a niche): filled by SD. And small: where microSD is doing well [I was routing for xD].
PS. "Taiwan's miCard chosen as global memory card standard" by the companies invested in promoting that standard. Check the list of supporters. It's all media manufacturers. There are no device designers on the list (possible exceptions are BenQ and Asus).
FAT is ubiquitous and can be read by nearly all operating systems, so it is hard to displace. However, given such a high capacity, these cards will have many video recording applications and hence something besides FAT is needed because of the 4GB limit. I doubt the format is a problem because you'll be able to just format it to whatever you need.
"What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sure but how many users have that installed already? It's a matter of native support if they want mass adoption, not some third party option being available that grandma won't or can't figure out how to load.
They're competing with essentially plun-n-play stuff now. If people have a choice between plug-n-play and "install drivers, hope it works, reboot and then plug" there's no need to guess which one the average consumer will go for.
You know the thing about UDP jokes? I don't care if you get it or not.
Of course, since most older MMC card devices can't read anything over 4GB, you'll still need to upgrade either your storage or your devices (or both).
Why? Have your old devices stopped working? Mine have not and I've got more than enough flash cards for the forseeable future. Time marches on, sometimes things get better. My six year old CF based Cannon camera is still a champ, but it shipped with a 16MB card! 64 MB cards were just enough for a weekend, 256MB cards were nice and the 1GB card I have is strictly overkill. My newer of the same takes MMC and I knew it's limitations when I bought it. 1GB cards are enough to get as much video as the device has battery. I'm looking forward to HD video devices that will tax this new card.
The big reason to move seems to be licensing. FTFA:
Slam, that's a lot of money. Hopefully, they see the same logic for OGG and friends. I'd really like it if my next camera did not come with a CD full of Windoze shit and that everything worked out of the box.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...several Years ago...Blah
Tm
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That's what the driver CDs are for. "Grandma" still has to use those in order to use her camera (or so she thinks), so it can be easily included with the installation process.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
We already have to put up with different memory card formats when we switch devices and phones, Mini SD, SD, XD, MMC etc. etc., and these people are creating a totally new format that we can all call a standard and not have to worry about it all any more?!
Forgive me for being a tad sceptical at that logic.
This is the upgrade of the MMC standard to beyond 8G. That was "planned obsolescence" in the sense that everybody knew that eventually, we'd need a new standard for that. But every other flash standard has done the same because it didn't make sense to design a standard for 4G+ cards in the days of 8M and 16M cards.
"Backwards compatibility" means that you can use your old cards in new devices conforming with the new standard. They also gave you a small card format and direct USB compatibility. Those are nice features; if they didn't care about backwards compatibility, they could just have chosen a new, small format that was incompatible with all your old cards.
Based on the image posted above, and comparing the USB plug to a USB plug in my hand, it looks like about 1/2 inch by 1 inch. Really tiny.
I guess, if old USB drives were "thumb drives", this should be a "thumbnail drive"!
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
"Tebi-" is mechanoid-speak for the binary "tera-" prefix (2^40), one of a set of binary prefixes that only a dweeb could love. OP feels so threatened by poetic ambiguity that he would force upon us these prefixes, though they run contrary to all convenience and common usage, not to mention stumble backwardsly off the tongue. Predictably, Wikipedia has a paean to their cold logic.
A driver CD doesn't help me when I walk into the local public library, hoping to use webmail to send a picture to a friend...
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
I know... this is nuts that there such a needless proliferation of standards. Some have hypothesized is that one a particular format becomes cheap enough and commoditized, the powers that be (flash memory card makers) have to come up w/a new standard so that they can turn profits again (to make $ on the higher initial standards).
So far, for memory cards, we've had PCMCIA, CF, SmartMedia, MMC, SD, XD, miniSD, microSD, the various Memory Stick formats and now this??? A lot of the oddball SmartMedia camera makers went w/another oddball, XD.
Thank you! Finally someone who actually knows what they're talking about rather than repeating other people's misconceptions.
Like you said, FAT32 can go really large, but Microsoft intentionally disabled support for formatting FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB. Many non-MS tools can format a larger FAT32 drive, that Windows 2000/XP will happily mount.
The bigger problem though, is all the 16-bit garbage apps that are typically present on FAT32 systems. Windows 98 is a very dirty thing. It likes to destroy anything it doesn't understand, so mounting a large FAT32 partition under these crusty old Dos Shells is disastrous.
Ideally, I'd like to see a simplified, open file-system for removable media. Something that could be trivially supported in future releases of all major operating systems. It certainly doesn't need balanced B-trees or any such perks, just a basic system that requires very little memory to operate, making it easier for consumer devices to safely access it, and easy for any OS developer to write a quick kernel driver.
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That's assuming you don't have any shots longer than 10 minutes. And without knowing the latency of the card who can say if it is suitable for video editing or acquisition. And some of us like to work uncompressed which brings up even more issues. It's got the bandwidth for one, maybe two, streams of uncompressed SD, but not even close for a single stream of uncompressed HD. I'll stick to my RAID.
+0 Meh
What the industry really needs is a memory card standard that is totally open with absolutely no fees required to produce memory cards, card readers or software for it (unlike SD where you need to pay license fees). Or failing that, develop a standard where you only need to pay license frees if you are producing the physical hardware (i.e. the memory card or socket) and where the software is totally open. Motorola for example were caught between a rock and a hard place a while back because they had released a phone with a driver for the included SD slot built into the linux kernel instead of being a module and were stuck between "GPL violation" and "violating the SD association NDAs" (at the time they had to choose "GPL violation". It was all cleared up when the SD card people were convinced to release the "simplified specs" and Motorola could release the code in question)
The problem isn't just the FAT32 device size limit, it is also that FAT32 has a maximum file size of four gigs. Given this format will be used for videos, that is a cripling limitation.
According to Wikipedia, Microsoft's solution is exFAT.
You missed the point of the SD slot on the 1Ds Mk II. It's not meant for primary storage. It's meant so you can have simultaneous JPG+RAW. Finish a card, give an art director the SD card so they can quickly look through the JPGs.
CF will be around for quite a while yet, for one simple reason. Large cameras have "plenty" of space available. CF cards are physically larger than SD, ergo, CF card sizes will always be larger than SD, and as resolution increases, so too will demand for space (one - not discounting the changes in technology re miniaturization, and two - not entering into the discussion of how best to increase resolution).