A Brief History of Features Apple Has Killed

Technologizer writes "Some folks are outraged over the lack of FireWire in the new MacBook released this week. But Apple wouldn't be Apple if it didn't move faster than any other computer company to kill technologies that may be past their prime. And history usually validates its decisions. We've posted a decade's worth of examples that prove the point."

Comments

Outrage!

[Sponge Bath]

The new Macbook doesn't have an 8" floppy?!?!
I won't buy one then, wah, wah, waaaaaaahhhh!

Re:Outrage!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I strongly suspect that the reason wasn't the cost of adding a firewire port per se. Firewire(albeit in the annoying 4 pin form) shows up on a fair portion of genuinely cheap and awful PC laptops. Firewire addon cards are fairly modestly priced, and Apple clearly wasn't nervous about raising the price of the macbook in order to add the features they wanted.

This seems like a fairly blatant attempt to enforce separation between the macbook and the pro. Now that both are practically identical in build quality and the difference in GPU performance is merely large rather than absolutely enormous, they need a differentiating factor. Firewire seems to have been chosen. I suspect that Apple knows what they are doing, Apple zealots are zealous, most of them will suck it up and pay, and they can use their top of the line construction to sell macbooks to switcher college students. It sure isn't a nice thing to do, though.

Re:Outrage!

[altek]

I am thinking that they are starting to try to wean people off of FW because USB3 is on the cusp of becoming available in consumer devices. It will likely replace both USB2 and FW.

Re:Outrage!

[Toll_Free]

Please use real math.

The differences you cite would mean 50 gig of data would take approximately 100 more seconds.

15 minutes and a minute and a half are two different things. Just ask your gf next time YOU'RE done having sex :)

--Toll_Free

Re:audio recording

[Silicon Jedi]

They expect them to buy the cheaper computer that still has firewire.

Am I missing something...

[Desert Raven]

Something missing here. The article claims to be "A Brief History of Features Apple Has Killed" Yet, the article has nothing of the sort, and the linked page is a just an opinion piece on the lack of Firewire in the new MacBooks.

I'm guessing this is the link that was intended.

HUNDREDS of angry users!!!!

[mschuyler]

says the article. That's right: 'Hundreds,' not 'tens of thousands.' Get it? The average consumer doesn't give a rip.

Firewire isn't "past its prime"

[bonch]

Firewire isn't past its prime. Apple wanted to further differentiate the consumer and pro versions of their laptops, and Steve Jobs' comment about recent consumer camcorders using USB is a reflection f that. Firewire is still used in the professional space for audio and other high-bandwidth data transfer situations where you don't want the CPU bogged down.

firewire not past prime

[fermion]

It is just not in the mainstream, so there is little reason to include it on a machine that is primarily made to meed a price point. Most people who want a computer for $1000 probably have similar price requirements for other devices, which means they are unlikely to pay a 20% premium on a lacie hard disk with firewire. This is not a case of a cheap technology like a floppy disk being removed because no one uses it. It is a matter or an expensive technology being removed because most people do not wish to pay for it. This was certainly the case with iPod. I was able to charge an ipod by plugging it into my external hard disk, which was nice. But the iPod being a consumer product, had to be sold for consumer product, and the average consumer is not willing to pay for the premium Apple hardware and service, so the iPod, and unfortunately the iPhone, uses the lame and inferior USB protocol.It is not a big deal, but I had to buy a USB hub.

There is also a matter of not putting gratuitous features on the machine just to meet the buzz word compliance features. For example, many people complain that the Airport has no firewire port, and I am one of those because some of my kit is firewire only. But given the wireless transfer speeds, 54 Mbits/second, why put a 400 Mbit/sec on it. Sure, if one is using GHz ethernet, it would be nice a FW800 interface, but how many of us do this. And this is the case, perhaps an network aware hard drive is a better solution, which I see are not very expensive.

What is true is that Apple does not waste resources support tech that no longer serves a broad purpose. This means that many of us have closets full of old tech. What this also means is that we don't have to worry about installing drivers every time we put in a USB drive, most cameras work with the standard picture protocol, and if we are willing to pay for the machine, we have external hardware that communicates at fast speeds, built in.

And yet...

[CODiNE]

Firewire allows DMA access to all of memory, it was joked that since Apple's come with firewire they're more insecure than PCs. Nobody would seriously recommend removing Firewire for this reason... and yet these laptops have better physical security than the ones before them. Imagine an encrypted HD with a password request on resume... it gets stolen at the coffee shop, the bad guy takes it home being careful to not allow the battery to die. They open the lid, plug into it's firewire and snag the HD keys.

A laptop with sensitive information on it shouldn't have Firewire.

It's just one of the positives of this announcement.