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Users Rage Over Missing FireWire On New MacBooks
CWmike writes "Apple customers, unhappy that the company dropped FireWire from its new MacBook (not the Pro), are venting their frustrations on the company's support forum in hundreds of messages. Within minutes of Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrapping up a launch event in Cupertino, Calif., users started several threads to vent over the omission. 'Apple really screwed up with no FireWire port,' said Russ Tolman, who inaugurated a thread that by Thursday has collected more than 300 messages and been viewed over 8,000 times. 'No MacBook with [FireWire] — no new MacBook for me,' added Simon Meyer in a message posted yesterday. Several mentioned that FireWire's disappearance means that the new MacBooks could not be connected to other Macs using Target Disk Mode, and one noted that iMovie will have no way to connect to new MacBooks. Others pointed out that the previous-generation MacBook, which Apple is still selling at a reduced price of $999, includes a FireWire port. Apple introduced FireWire into its product lines in 1999 and championed the standard."
Isn't the new fast version of USB just as fast as firewire?
Why do mac users insist on using "different" stuff? Not that there is anything wrong with that...
Because they couldn't afford the royalty fees for using the technology? Just kidding.... but do you all remember what the original royalty fees that Apple demanded before they were forced to tone it down?
I thought we'd dispelled the myth that Apple's computers were significantly overpriced.
Oh wait, you were trolling. In that case, nevermind.
Of course you do, keep using the mac you have right now.
Am I eval()? - http://www.monst3r.com.br
No one is really "raging". A few loudmouths (and it's always the same ones if you hang around those boards and wait long enough) are whining about not being able to plug cameras (that they don't own) into the new Macbook (which they also mostly don't own). This is bitching for bitching's sake, and I can show you. Look here:
The white macbook is still being sold in the Apple store, and will be for the foreseeable future, having just been made Apple's "cheap" notebook. And white macbooks still have firewire400. Which is exactly what these whiny people are screaming that they want.
It seems to me that a few very loud people quite badly aren't going to shut up until Jobs give each and every single one of them their own free, customized mac.
Nobody but Apple uses it anyway--I think they're just surrendering to the inevitable here...
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Apple and "low-cost or free" hardware? What have you been smoking?
Is firewire really outdated? ISA surely is, but last I checked, despite being not widely used outside the Macintosh scene, it's still feature-competitive.
Firewire is actually fairly common on even budget PC notebooks, including Dells, so this omission by Apple is all the more perplexing. And Apple still doesn't offer Blu-ray drives or 3G wireless at any price on any model. (No 3G wireless option from the iPhone company!) It also amazes me that their latest hardware refresh still caps RAM at 4G maximum. Even Dell has figured out how to go to 8G max on a notebook.
That said, there is some great design in these new MacBooks. But Apple engineers waxing eloquently about "unibody" construction (it isn't, by the way) when they forgot the damn Firewire port is a bit too much to stomach.
Macbook = Consumer laptop
Macbook Pro = Better than consumer laptop
If you need to do particular work, you buy the tool best associated to do the job.
I wouldn't hammer a nail in with a screwdriver.
I wouldn't buy a point-and-shoot POS over a SLR if I was a newspaper photographer.
I wouldn't get a Macbook if I needed to do any kind of video editing.
Also, the Macbook screen sucks: http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/10/IMG_4649.jpg
Sorry, Steve was right, most new if not all HD recorders are USB.
Hell, I could not tell what they whining was loudest about, the fire wire or that the base aluminum macbook doesn't have a back lit keyboard (no macbook before this offered that feature anyway)
Fact is, people feel the need to be a victim or otherwise justify a decision for them. In other words, instead of admitting they had no wish to buy the new one (or means to) they can not blame Apple for not doing it. Very nice and tidy and common practice on message boards world wide. Besides getting to portray themselves as the victim they can get a sense of belonging with a possibly valid aggrieved party. It is always easier if you can blame someone else, regardless of the truth.
Yeah, it would nice nice if Firewire was there. However Firewire has always been associated with "Professional" and it has become an artifact of days gone by. Apple sunk FW themselves when they pushed USB to the forefront on iMacs and even with iPods now.
You want firewire, its easy to get, but the PRO line. It is only $400 more to the bottom end of the Pro line from the top of the "consumer" mac line.
Frankly, the new MacBooks are great. Some of the best integrated graphics seen on an Apple laptop. In fact the 9400M series removes a major reason people always held over Apple's head for not buying one before.
The real fault with the 13" Macbook is the viewing angles and color reproduction of that panel are horrible. Really cheaped out. So if you want your firewire and a great display get a Pro. After all if your buying an Apple laptop for more than sitting around Starbucks to look cool you would have gotten the Pro and never bitched
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Yeah but, unlike ISA>PCI, Firewire is actually BETTER than the only connection the new Macbooks offer (USB 2.0). It irks me because Firewire is still my choice for importing and exporting DV video. USB 2.0 just isn't up to snuff (not with the equipment I use, anyway).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I see now how rage is just opposite side of the same fandom coin.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
But sadly, there is no BBQ. Apple pushed FW on us as a superior solution and championed it, encouraging us to adopt it. We do. Then they drop it, leaving us with a load of FW enabled devices. Is that not clear enough to you? Hence the outrage. HENCE!
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
Thank you. Why people throw down thousands of dollars to get a new computer when they already have a working computer is a mystery to me.
Palm trees and 8
You can't make a USB target disk mode unless you either violate the USB standard and sell special Type A to Type A USB cables or you install a USB Type B connector in the laptops.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
And yet Apple will still probably sell a metric assload of new MacBooks.
Saying that hundreds of users are pissed off just means there is a small but vocal minority who are annoyed.
The vast majority of MacBook users and potential buyers couldn't care less what FW is, and probably don't even know what it is.
As a number of commentators have pointed out, the vast majority of consumer grade video cameras now use USB. Seriously, if you don't like the product, don't buy it. Is it really that hard?
Paul Leader
Maybe you don't need up-to-date equipment. Some of us do. Especially when more processor and disk speed, and more RAM, translate directly into more money.
For example, until laptops with 4GB RAM were reasonably available -- which first happened in 2007 -- I couldn't run two OSes at once without lots of unproductive swapping.
Beyond work, I like to be able to view current websites with reasonable speed. Much 2005 hardware won't do that anymore -- let alone 2002 hardware.
And today's features are useful too. I enjoy USB 2.0 and my MagSafe adapter. I don't think my purchase of machines in 2006 and 2008, both of which I still own, was wasteful at all -- especially since the machines they replaced are all being used by new owners.
If I didn't replace a system until it stopped working, I would be using a Mac Plus; my Mac Plus still works.
You've crossed the line from environmental awareness to punitive, pointless asceticism.
Let's face it:
FireWire is on its way out due to USB's huge dominance... if it's not discontinued now, it will be eventually. It will join the ranks of all the other discontinued proprietary formats like Atari, Commodore, Amiga, VHS, Betamax, DivX, HD DVD, and so on.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
USB 2.0 just isn't up to snuff (not with the equipment I use, anyway)
While Firewire > USB 2.0, it really only matters to people who are using fairly high end A/V equipment and need the dedicated bandwidth. So for "ordinary" users USB 2.0 should be just fine. For the high end users that require it, Firewire is still available on the Macbook Pro. I can see this as annoying for people who need Firewire but don't want to have to shell out for the Pro, but it's not going to affect the majority of users.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
Firewire has some advantages, but since USB 2.0 they look largely theoretical to me.
What is theoretical is USB 2.0's maximum transfer speeds. You will never see those speeds. While FireWire hits its mark and stays there for the duration.
FireWire is SR-71. USB 2 is MiG-25.
I like USB, it is fine for keyboards and the occasional file transfer. But moving gigabytes goes a lot faster and easier over FireWire.
I was hoping that USB 3 would have been a merger with FireWire. Now I am hoping that USB 4 is a merger with FireWire.
If Apple ever gets rid of FireWire from their pro equipment, that's the death-knell. That's when I go back to smoke signals.
Firewire is a "pro" standard. Apple included it on all older computers because at the time the USB 1 standard was worthless for anything but keyboards and mice. Apple was providing a convenient method of importing video from the cameras at that time.
Now, most of the consumer-level video cameras come with a USB connection, leaving the pro-sumer and pro cameras with firewire. Anyone who does any serious video editing is not going to do it on a MacBook. They will upgrade to the MBP. It sucks for all of us who still have perfectly good cameras and external drive enclosures with FireWire, but then again, I believe Apple is targeting the MacBook at *new* users who wouldn't necessarily be burdened with all the FireWire peripherals. They also need to differentiate the MB from the MBP in some meaningful way, otherwise very few will bother to pony up for the MBP - the MacBook is that good.
As far as the existing white MacBooks having it, it's already in their design and manufacturing process, Apple makes a good profit on them without changing the specs. I'll bet that next January we'll see Apple drop FireWire from the white MacBook, maybe make a few other cost-saving tweaks and roll it our at the $899 price-point, especially if the economy turns out to be hitting them harder then they are predicting.
The nice thing about the FireWire spec is that you don't need a computer to manage the transfers. This means we will be seeing more "adapters" with perhaps an intermediate HD in them that provide FireWire-in and USB/FW-out. Not a perfect solution, especially with Final Cut Pro set up to use time-coding for final imports of projects, but then again, if you've sprung for FCP, you're not going to do it on a MacBook and I'm sure USB cameras that are high-end enough to justify editing in FCP will be able to be accurately controlled over USB as well.
This still doesn't address target disk mode, but realistically I've only used that recently to migrate data from an older machine to a newer one. I'm sure there's a way with the migration assistant to use another method to make the transfer (if anybody knows, please reply). I have to admit, I'm typing this on a MacBook Air that I've had since day-one which has no firewire and have never needed target disk mode or to connect to any of my firewire drives. I really haven't missed it in spite of having a lot of FireWire devices (XL1 cameras, FCP, external drives, etc.) I use the Air for "everything else" and my tower for video editing where I can control the lighting, use a big monitor and be connected to my Drobo backup.
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
Apple drops support for X feature on a whim. How about PowerPC chips? How about MacOS 9? How about my Newton?
print $open-source-rant
The great thing about relying on a simple company is your at their mercy. You KNOW that Asus or MSI would throw a Firewire port in if they were competing with apple (and could run OS/X).
USB is terrible for external hard drives. Transfer rates suck.
eSATA solves this problem, but the designers thought that hard drives should be powered by an A/C adapter. That, and it's pretty assinine to have an external port dedicated only to 1 class of peripherals.
Powered firewire ports are so nice. Only one cable needed.
Note, I'm saying this as someone who still uses both firewire audio gear (I have an M-Audio Firewire 410 unit) AND a Sony Digital 8 camcorder with firewire ... so I *do* get the need for the connector at times.
But still, I think all this "outrage" is overblown. For starters, firewire is a slowly dying standard. No, it's not dead yet - but it's been struggling for years. The music industry is the biggest proponent of it still, but they're always SLOW to adopt changes - so that shouldn't come as much of a surprise. (Remember when Windows XP was released, and for years afterwards, you still had big-name audio apps that only officially supported Win '95/'98? Look how long music synthesizer/workstation makers hung onto SCSI ports as the answer for attaching your CD/DVD-ROM drives and external storage. They only started moving to memory card slots and USB ports after they exhausted their list of drive makers willing to re-brand external SCSI drives for them!)
As for camcorders? Apple's iMovie '08 total rewrite should have been the first clue on that! The main reason it was done was to support "AVCHD" video formats, as used on all the cameras popping up with built-in hard drives or flash drive storage. All of these were using USB interfaces, which older iMovie versions didn't even recognize. Go to any retail store today, and count how many camcorders on sale still use firewire! I bet it's no more than 1 in 5, and would be even less if it weren't for Sony's clinging to firewire (i.link) on their products.
Apple is known for a rather "minimalist" attitude with their products, and will delete options any time they think one is getting "old in the tooth". They were the first to ditch the 3.5" floppy drive, and go to great lengths just to eliminate switches and buttons on their products (iPhone, iPods, their very basic wireless remote control, slot-loading drives on portables with no eject button to be found on them, etc. etc.).
Obviously, they recognize that true "Pro" type users (who generally earn an income from the work they do on their computer) could still need firewire, so it's there on the Macbook Pro. It's there on all currently shipping Mac Pros too, and at least for the time being, even on consumer iMacs. (But I bet it disappears off the next revision of those too.)
Bottom line? A lot of people just wanted to try to do things with Apple's cheaper "consumer focused" portable that go a little beyond what that core market would ever care to do with one. Apple pushed back, and is forcing you to choose a "Pro" version of their machine if you're doing "Pro" things with it. Either go along with this thinking, or don't -- and use a last generation notebook that you can pick up cheaper than ever right now. By the time IT wears out, firewire will be much less attractive an option for you anyway, I suspect.
If IO latency is so important to you, why are you using a notebook? You can get a workstation with much higher IO throughput for the same price, with faster SATA disk drives.
Because designer hardware isn't worth much if you can't show it off.
Similes are like metaphors
Why is this flamebait? There are very few devices that actually use firewire, due to the massive success of USB. Macs can also be hooked to eachother (as can PCs and Linux boxes) via crossover ethernet, so the loss of firewire should really only translate, except in rare circumstances that ought to belong to the MNP market anyway, into lower production costs (lower sale cost would be nice, too, but lets not get too hopeful)
For all the components you get with a Mac, they're fairly priced. I still contend that they're over priced because I don't need all the components you get with the most basic Mac. If I want to get a Mac, I have to pay more than I'd have to pay for a PC that met my needs.
That article is poor. A 17" screen vs 15" screen and different video cards with significantly different performance make the comparison invalid. They also inflated the price by choosing the 80W battery option and the "Ultrasharp" version of the monitor. Plus you need to pay another few hundred dollars for the AppleCare warranty to bring it up to par with Dell's warranty. Poor indeed.
We've all known from day one that USB was being pushed by Intel, against rival IEEE-1394 (aka fire-wire, aka iLink, etc.).
We also knew that fire-wire would eventually go away the day Apple said they were switching to Intel CPUs.
(this has been signaled, as we've seen Apple release patch after patch that tended to introduce more fire-wire problems than they fixed; Apples priorities were evident. Who did not know we weren't witnessing a gradual phase-out? Probably the nicest and most gradual in the history of Apple.)
We're all aware that fire-wire is faster, we're all aware that fire-wire lets you do cool stuff that USB can't even dream about, and we all know that USB needs to be arbitrated by the host's CPU (which is why Intel supports it: USB performs better; overall when you have a faster CPU - so USB increases demand for Intel's flagship products - duh. No brainer. No wonder Intel wants people to use a keyboard/mouse interface for heavy data transfers).
From day one of the PC-age, crappy inferior technology has ALWAYS won-out over superior technology.
So. . . um, duh?
Whine all you want. Be happy that fire-wire was cool, and it was around for a long time.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Because of course computers never break. And it's not like buying a new one can be cheaper than the repairs, especially with laptops. No, not at all...
I just grab another one out of the recycling bin, scrub the hard drive to get rid of the worms and viruses that made the original owner throw it out, and load Ubuntu.
Seriously, I'm not kidding. I've got a stack of 4 Dell laptops in the chair behind me right now, people throw them out because "they're too old and slow" when all that's wrong with them is that they've been hooked up to a broadband ISP and infested with virii.
You can get computers for $40 or less at yard sales or from almost any newspaper's classified section.
Proprietary? Do you even know what that word means? Considering your list you apparently don't have a clue what "format" means either.
How you got modded insightful... that's a great big wtf there.
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
No, FireWire is not coming back on MacBooks any more than it is coming back on iPods.
Look, back in the day on PCs, we had a different port for every single purpose. You plugged your modem into the "serial port", your printer into the "parallel port", your mouse into the "mouse" PS/2 port, your keyboard into the "keyboard" PS/2 port. If you wanted a scanner, you bought a SCSI card and then you plugged the scanner in there.
This sort of thing is lame, lame, lame. Many PC laptops are still sold like this with a profusion of weird ports. For a huge majority of users there is no reason to have more than one type of port for general-purpose peripherals. It's completely uneconomical to ship a consumer laptop with a port that will go unusued almost all of the time.
FireWire is technically great but due to some historical accidents it did not win the battle against USB2. Placing it on a consumer laptop so that a few musicians and the people using older DV cameras can save a few bucks is completely crazy. (I've seen people on Mac forums complain that this affects "millions" of users -- nonsense). It makes perfect sense for a pro line to have special connectors, and this is where FireWire will stay until Apple manages to kill it off.
I know that a bunch of Mac users have everything from FireWire external drives to FireWire webcams, especially since USB performance on PPC Macs was awful. This does not play into Apple's plans any more than users with SCSI scanners did back when Apple dropped SCSI.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
While new devices that use firewire might be rare, I have no intention of replacing my camcorder just because Apple says I should.
Clear, Dark Skies
Hey, you can bet I'm still pissed about the iMac, with their switch from ADB to USB, making my WACOM tablet obsolete.
(in fact, the fucker's still working JUST FINE on my beige G3 - wish I could connect this $600 monstrosity to my Pro.)
Will it not work with a USB to ADB adapter like this? $39 doesn't seem like a bad price to possibly rescue a $600 device.
Putting moderation advice in your
...not widely used outside the Macintosh scene...
What the hell are you talking about?
Even the Dell Inspiron 13 (Dell's cheapest non-netbook portable at $600) has a firewire interface.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
The debate was over once the performance difference between SCSI and ATA wasn't big enough to justify the additional cost. That's not the case with USB and Firewire. For a few bucks more you get a big performance increase and access to a wider range or very interesting peripherals. (Plus as an added bonus you can do kernel debugging over it with firescope or whatever)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Well then don't.
And I'm not going to stop using my Super VHS VCR just because JVC stopped making them, but it's fact that this standard I'm using is now obsolete and will eventually die.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
The most common use of firewire are removable hard drives and home video import from Mini-DV cams. There is nothing "pro" about either of those uses.
Video input doesn't have to come from just the cheapest consumer cameras! There are certainly some video producers and television stations using cameras with a Firewire interface too.
Although USB 2 can give speeds similar to Firewire 400, there are quite a few devices made requiring Firewire since it came along and was popular well before USB 2. (The earlier USB 1.x was about 40 times slower)
I'd like to see at least one eSATA port provided. It would not be a replacement for all Firewire applications, but it would help for faster transfers with external drives. From what I've seen, drives in USB 2 cases max out around 1 gigabyte per minute, some of the larger SATA drives deliver close to 6 gigabytes per minute. Since downloading video is getting to be more common, and people can save large files record DTV with things like the Eye-TV USB tuners, the need for faster external drives is growing.
I would hope that it would be trivial to add a eSATA connector since there's already chipset support for SATA internally. I know with the early MacBooks, the mobile version of the ICH7 interface supported a lower FSB speed than the desktop version. The desktop version had four SATA ports.
It would be helpful to provide a variation of the eSATA data connector which would make power available for external 2.5" drives.
Having 12 Volts available, Firewire ports are good for a few other odd things USB 2 isn't too.
Maybe I'm the only one on the planet that has done it, but once by candlelight during a power failure I spliced together the Firewire end of an old iPod cable and the output end cut from an A.C. adaptor, making a cable that could power a common Speedstream DSL modem from my laptop to have net access during the power outage.
The architecture of USB is a bit strange, sort of a step back in some ways. Ie, no multi-master support is possible. Which makes sense given the original USB concept of being for very low speed peripherals (keyboards, printers, etc). It breaks down when extending the standard to try to use high speed devices like mass storage or video. The devices can be very simple, but the USB host essentially requires a fast CPU and bus for decent performance. Ie, a PC or Mac. But if you're an embedded device then being a USB host is very annoying.
The host controller standards are just downright bizarre at times (at least the Intel written ones like EHCI and UHCI). To be fair, I haven't looked at IEEE 1394 host controller drivers though.
To me, an engineer, the debate shouldn't be about who is the fastest at certain things. The debate should be about who does it the most efficiently while being fast, who has the better design, who is the most exensible and adaptable, who uses the least resources, etc. Ideally, I'd have been happy with USB for low speed and 1394 for high speed, rather than a one size fits all model. Yeah, one plug for everything is nice with the average consumer; but we're already getting PCs where only some slots support high speed.
But the firewire standard is not dead. It is used in all sorts of video, audio and hard disk devices. Nothing that remains works as well. Usually when they drop something, is because the replacement is better. In this case it is not true. The replacements are worse, or not useful at all.