Slashdot Mirror
Is firewire dying?
According to an Article found on Infoworld, IEEE 1394 (a.k.a FireWire) appears to be dying, while Intel updating the USB specs to 2.0 with speed expected at 360-480MB per second range. Intel is not (and will not) supports the FireWire on their core logic chipset. I think it's a sad thing when a technology is dying.. What do you think about it folks?
Sony has sold 60 million PSX consoles in the last four years. Their new PSX2 console will arrive with integral Internet connectivity and with IEEE 1394 connectivity. A few million PC's in homes making little use of USB for anything significantly new will pale in comparison to the several tens of millions of PSX2's that will be sold in the next few years. Fortunately, as the consimer electronics industry knows, there's a lot more going on in the world than the home PC business. And all those new electronics devices for the home will have IEEE 1394 connectivity. Let's not pretend that the PC is the only device that has significance for the electronics design and consumer business. Intel is not a player in the consumer electronics business. They wish they were - they wish that they could sell computers by the tens of millions like Sony can sell its home entertainment hardware. Don't let Intel convince you for one instant that IEEE 1394 is not the centerpiece of the consumer electronics business and has a secure future - by any measure it absolutely does.
Thats simply not true based on their internal design specs. Hubs supporing USB 2.0 are switched, they have mini host controllers inside of them and proxy the packets from 1 Mbps or 12 Mbps up to the final speed.
This comment is just as ignorant as your average PC user. Dude, Intel hardley ever included SCSI with their hardware and it survived up until now. Apple users can carry a technolegy, it happenned before and it will happen again. Superiority will overcome majority, time and time again.
"Read that last sentence carefully. Somehow, I don't read this as a declaration that firewire is dead, or even sick. The problem lies with biased reporting and provocative headlines, not with the technology or even the marketing."
Not to mention these common Slashdot responses that seem to be the main threads here:
1. Apple must die because they are greedy/closed/stupid: So therefore, Firewire must die. If A is bad then B must be great!
2. Ill informed or outdated knowledge: "That darn Apple, charging $1/port That's too much!" No, that's Intel FUD. Nevermind that Apple lowered the licensing cost to $.25 per system. People don't know/care about that. I also doubt many people here know how much money OEMs make on a particular hardware component, yet in this case they repeat what Intel said.
3. People not reading the actual article: Seems about half the time people here just post knee-jerk reactions to the headlines without even reading the original article. Much as you pointed out the supposed reporter did.
Look people. USB 2.0 is vaporware. You bitch about MS doing it, but in this case it must be okay because Apple owns the patent on IE1394. What logic! I guess if Intel released a press release saying Apple was dead and it was quoted in the PC press, that must mean it's true.
Sheesh. Less quantity more quality.
Maybe the price of camcorders will go down if Intel licenses USB cheaper. Apple seemed to fix the price of Firewire well out of the range of rational thought, which drove camcorders through the roof.
Firewire(1394) is not a competitor of SystemIO ( the name of the merged NGIO/FutureIO).
Neither is SystemIO a replacement for 1394. Which is an equally misguided statement! Just because there may be some external connectors does not make it a 1394 replacement. IBM's SSA mainframe interconnect technology goes outside the box. It is isn't a 1394 replacement either.
1394 and USB may feed into a SystemIO network. SystemIO is not for directly connecting devices to. Unless channel adaptors become dirt cheap (which is probably unlikely for years after the technology comes online). SystemIO also requires a switch. In short, it is targeted for the benefit of server I/O demands. For instance, isochronous transfer is not what you want for cpu to cpu communications. Losing bits is a bad thing in that context!!
Since the server of today becomes the desktop of tomorrow (and wristwatch of the more distant future), eventually SystemIO will trickle down into your "dollar and a dime" commodity box, but that isn't going to happen in next six to ten years.
Futhermore, it is much more critical that the operating system providers provide support. I realize there are "chicken and the egg" ramifications. However, a major factor in USB slow (5 years!) adoption on the PC side is that Microsoft make the software widely available in a timely fashion. Likewise with Apple's non support of Firewire hard drives in previous versions of MacOS and incrementally improving USB support.
Actually, the AC's have provided several links. Here is one repeated at a starting score of 1 (although that might change).
http://www.1394ta.org/Press/1999.05/12.h tm.
Why should it suprise you that they dropped the price months ago? It doesn't seem to suprise you that everyone else lowers their prices.
(currently testing something about signatures here)
The IEEE policy on patents allows them to be used in IEEE standards if the patents are licensed at a reasonable rate and without discrimination.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Here's an informative URL:
For the lazy and/or illiterate, here's the bottom line:
USB 2.0 could conceivably push IEEE 1394 into a niche, but it would be a huge, huge shame, and it would have absolutely nothing to do with superior technology. What else is new in the PC industry...
who trusts them anymore?
Oh yeah, Microsoft and Intel are so much more reliable.
I disagree. Floppies are great for setting up a new system but how often does Joe Blow do it? I do it a lot and I have an external floppy drive. Most people don't have one - and don't need one. One of the biggest problems I have at work is with broken floppies. People coming to me saying "My disk won't work." My responce - "Use the damn server." I hate floppies. They're just too unreliable and not necessary in a world where everyone is on the internet. (FTP anyone???) (And if you havn't noticed, Win98, MacOS, Linux are all easier to install when you use a bootable CD.)
now take a look at the real apple specific ports, as there are:
- ADB: Sucks badly, because you cannot connect cheap but high quality keyboards and mice from the massmarket. Instead your stuck woth the apple crap. All PCs use DIN or PS/2, with the latter also used by all major workstation vendors nowadays. Really cheap DIN<->PS/2 adapters are available, ADB converters are not.
- the stupid d-sub vga connector on all but the most recent macs.
both of these hase been repaced by open and widely employed standards on apples lately - for a reason!but the story does not end here:
- the RS422 serial port is a *major* annoyance on all macs. the right cable for the need at hand is never available from your dealer - you'll almost always have to solder one yourself. RS232 cables are no problem to get however.
no wonder apple has cut this stupid bus lately. i see the same coming with firewire on the desktop. FW has a place on consumer electronics however.I agree that there were many USB products before
the iMac. I was using a Mouse, Keyboard, and
Camera before it's release. Most vendors said
they had plans for USB products, but they
hadn't been released yet. The iMac accelerated
the release of these products. I hate to do
this, but I have to give them credit for this.
Dude, not even. Apple changed the licensing from $1 per port to $.25 *per system*.
I agree that Mackido is a little biased, they seem to think that Microsoft is wrong all of the time, unlike Slashdot, where we're more fair, and think Microsoft is only wrong 99.999% of the time!
(currently testing something about signatures here)
Hmm ... there's a box labelled 1394A in the diagram but it doesn't go into more detail. Anyone care to shed more light one it.
Athlon Chipset
The price for a 2GB or a 4GB hard drive that supports FireWire is ridiculous.
Its a matter of supply and demand, and as demand grows the price will drop.
More importantly, USB drives are just as expensive, and you have a max transfer rate of 12 megabits instead of 400 (soon to be 800 and eventualy 1600).
And, Panasonic owners are not so anal about promoting their TV and feeling like they are some kind of better humans just because they own and use a bunch of knit together silicon from some manufacturer somewhere in the world. Quite a few apple ownerz however are..... and this is annoying.
I'd like to see a $2 design for a generic firewire interface to a microcontroller. The connector alone would take up a good bit of that. It's a pretty fancy design if you look at it. Now we have to add a physical interface chip to drive the signal (about $5 from lucent in a 64 pin package) and enough smarts to interface from a microcontroller to the device on the other end. Don't forget the power supply/converter.
Now add all of those devices and try and put them in a small package like a drive. Combined with the normal drive controller hardware for a high performance unit and you get a large package without some fancy board layout.
So we have moderate to high recurring costs and high non-recurring costs. Plus a cramped layout to fit the consumer demand for size. In a few years I'd expect to see a single chip solution like USB, but bigger and around $2-$5 without the connector.
why didn't these companies just come out and admit that they don't like giving Apple any money, even if its for a cool technology like Firewire.
Thanks to firw wire now we can connect a digital camcorder and a FireWire hard disk to a Mac and have a non-linear editing sistem for less than $4000 dollars, imposible in other times.
There has to be communication logic in both places though. At least with USB you can have one 'dumb' device like a keyboard or mouse that only takes commands to itself over USB, runs them through the mechanism, and gives back a state value or binary from the eeprom. If you have mutual data transfer going on between two devices, they both have to be smart.
For instance, I hook a USB-enabled hard disk up to my computer, and all it does is look at the driver and send seek messages, read/write messages, etc to it. With firewire, the device has to be smart enough how to load and save files from itself. A Firewire DVD player, for instance, has to send _encrypted_ video over the wire, and the connecting host has to have the logic to decrypt the data. This is a good example of devices getting very complicated and how not having a device in control limits forward-compatibility (supporting devices you haven't seen yet)
Firewire is cool (although it looks to be little more than a network with device-powering built in). USB is cool too, it was designed with manufacture of cheap devices in mind. The implementation of USB is much cheaper right now, both in devices and on the motherboard, so Firewire's main advantage is speed and disadvantage is price. While I see Apple doing much to market its advantage, they are also doing things like charging for usage, which makes the price differential even higher.
Unfortunately it is hard to compare a USB device against a Firewire device since they are completely different markets, but you can add a USB-enabled microcontroller to your hardware to make it USB-compatible for under a dollar. Firewire costs a more than that just to license.
Doh ... further inspection indicates that FireWire isn't part of their chipset, merely that it would be connected to the PCI bus ;(
ADB is not supported on the iMac or G4 Macs (without a USB-to-ADB adapter or somesuch). It is a dead technology. It was Apple's single, self-powered, self-configuring, keyboard and mouse interface for the past 12 years.
RS422 and "the stupid d-sub vga connector" have not been on a Mac since the introduction of the iMac and Blue and White G3's over a year ago.
Ethernet...coax, cripes, even fiber needs repeaters. Whats your point?
Someone scored this post down to a 0 - why? Seems pretty much accurate to me.
While the consensus amongst those who need to do more research is that 'Firewire is dead', those of us in the Mac community are happily plugging away with the technology. All Macs with exception to the iMac and iBook have Firewire standard (replacing the otherwise pretty fast SCSI). the next major rev of the iMac is rumored to come with at least one firewire port, and the iBook is sure to follow.
Slightly more expensive, but the graphics professionals andsuch who rely on it could care less. $50-70/hour chargeout rates will do that to a guy.
Someone - moderate the parent post up. Promote sanity on Slashdot!
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
- Jeff
That 25 cents wasn't even considered in calling it expensive. I was talking only about the hardware implementation and design costs.
Boy, that AC sure got you.
>From the IEEE 1394 Trade Association Website:
>http://www.1394ta.org/Press/1999.05.12.htm
How's the foot?
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
- Jeff
I think both technologies have their place. Although FireWire was designed by Apple, Apple uses both USB and FireWire in their motherboards. I'd hope Intel would be open enough to support both standards also.
the one buck is not really such a big problem, although quite annoying. but i think you are missing the point here. the point is free competition vs. closed BS. Who guarantees you that apple will not raise the fee to 20 bucks anytime in the future? or forbid "clone makers" to employ FW anytime in the future? or when apple decides to cut FW because "it has no future" (things like floppies and serial bus come to mind) and withdraws all third party licenses and you are stuck with your FW peripherals with no new supporting HW available? Does that sound nice to you? Think again, it might be worth it before betting your money on FW.....
To use USB, there must be a computer (or at least an intelligent hub) in order to allow transmisions; you can't just go camera to camera. FireWire makes no such demand: you can easily connect two cameras directly, with no hub whatsoever.
Yes, but you cannot connect any firewire device to any other- they are universally compatible. For instance, you can't plug a Firewire DVD into your camcorder to tape your favorite movie while in blockbuster (hurry! hurry!)
With computer control, you get the ability to have drivers upgraded for new devices, that is if they device doesn't conform to standards already in place (like the human interface device standard)
5. FireWire guarantees speed.
FireWire can say to a device, "You need a constant 200 Mbps data flow? Sure!" Whereas with USB, it's more like, "well, if your friends don't hog the bus too much, I'll see what I can do." No promised rates.
There is a guaranteed rate, but it is computer-controlled, not device controlled. If the operating system cheats you, you can't blame the standard right? But on the other hand, the standard is a bit weak on how a new device is supposed to convince the OS to negotiate more space than the leftovers it has. I haven't read the IEEE specs, so I don't know if they account for renegotiation.
But it's not dying on the Apple side of things. Seems to be going strong there with more and more products being introduced and announced as we speak.
Remember USB was pretty much going no where also until Apple brought it out in the iMac. How many USB devices were there before iMac? How many now?
Many might say that it wasn't the iMac that made the jump in USB popular...but then just look at all the translucent USB devices that go along with the iMac's color scheme.
I see Firewire not moving as fast as USB...but I don't see it dying out any time soon.
--- "It's not enough that I succeed...everyone else must fail."
It's $.25 per machine (no matter how many ports).
Oh man, now you are going to give me bad dreams...
Sound just too good to be true.
Please explain your reasoning here. Is there a better and price:performance comparative equivalent alternative to AirPort?
Firewire is now where USB was a year or so ago and more. Its an IEEE standard like serial ports and parrallel ports(not really a propietary standard). Apple has even open sourced there firewire drives in Darwin, so Linux and other OS can port them. I was shock the last time I was in Best Buy. I looked at the PC's and the HP's had firewire built in to all of them!! BTW: Rumors(mostly from the licensing articles) point to 800mbps firewire around the corner.
Firewire has (had?) much greater potential than the lame USB. I was at one time excited by USB, until I discovered how limiting it is in cable length. USB has potential only in home computing. Firewire could have become an adjunct to 100Mb Ethernet. Perhaps the shenanigans of Apple with respect to royalties have brought us to this point.
I suppose now we must hope for gigabit Ethernet to become cost-effective and pervasive. Perhaps then we can consign the wimpy USB to the dusty closets of history.
--- Bill
Intel's a big corporation, and they're support (or lack of it) may mean the demise of firewire of the PC side of things. But I think the Apple has every intention to stand behind it's product and support it, they're for, I think it'll be around for a good while longer on Macs'
No man is an island, But if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie them together, they make a pretty good raft.
You're missing the point. A number of Intel Motherboards come with SCSI support of varrying degrees and types. As I understand the article, few if any Intel boards will come with firewire support at all. I have never seen a firewire device, but USB on both MAC and PC is quite available.
-matt
I don't ever remember it "living"? In all of the computers I've used, in all of the computer stores I've been to (including the one I work at), and from all of the people I've talked to, I've never heard of (or seen) anything that uses Firewire. Maybe you could count the iMac, but that's a "foreign world" as far as I'm concerned.
"Everything I think I see, becomes a USB device to me!" -- distorted lyric from the old Tootsie Roll ads.
<p tone=mild>and all the good and cheap to keep technologies were cut from the new macs (SCSI and floppy). You have to buy them for big bucks if you want compatibility with your old peripherals. And no, SCSI is not obsolete (the floppy ,may be, but it should have been cheaper to get one for the new macs).</p>
USB is improving, that's a Good Thing. It's got a lot of shortcomings today. But Firewire is better suited by it's very nature for higher-end tasks like digital video editing, hard drive connections, and _high-end_ scanners in the prepress range. It's likely that Firewire will never be the mass technology that USB is and will continue to be, but it's going to be perfectly safe - like SCSI is to IDE.
Remember, Apple includes it on all their high-end desktops (and supposedly on the Kihei iMacs), Sony has it on much of the Vaio series systems (including some laptops), and a lot of the newer digital camcorders use the interface as well. Firewire doesn't degrade under contention the way USB does (and legacy USB devices will probably have a negative impact on a USB 2.0 system), and that's another factor in Firewire's favor. Intel may not like it, but Microsoft supports it, Apple supports it, and consumer electronic companies support it. Firewire's not going anywhere. Unfortunately, InfoWorld has an Intel-centric view here (if it's not on the chipset, it's doomed).
- -Josh Turiel
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
That said, it would be a shame if FireWire really did go extinct. Imagine all the ReplayTV owners who would be unable to add more harddrive space when they could finally afford it after paying such obscene amounts for the box. ;)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Just admit that Apple gave USB the jump start for it to take off.
There were plenty of USB devices available before the imac, I had my USB intelemouse, USB joysticks, printers, scanners, etc etc
Yeah, all of one or two deivces in each category. Sure, USB connectors have been standard on PC motherboards for a while, but that doesn't mean that people were using them.
Thats because normal PC users will take a cheap parallel printer over a slightly more expensive USB one, same with mice, keyboards etc.
For one of the owners of the 2 million+ iMacs out there, they have no choice but to use USB devices. Thus, the USB market finally starts to take off.
Yes, it's true about the packets, but the hub holds the 1.0 packets until they equal a 2.0 packet. Only then are they sent out. This does damaging things to streaming video or audio. There are other problems as well.
I agree - what happens if the world starts to turn in the opposite direction, we start having to live underwater, what then will we do if we have to pay $0.25 more for a motherboard that has firewire, well for one I would, firewire is a cool technology, and it works - unlike macos which is a bad os, with a good UI.. In all honesty what is this all about, is it a tactic to force apple out of the market, or just intel being cheap. my 2c
It's nonsense about Intel being lobied. Compac has stated that Firewire will be a big part of their stratagy. IBM has announced products. So have other computer makers.
The thing about this is that Inlet is scared of Firewire. They need to sell CPUs to be viable. Firewire negates that need. Intel would like us to wire our home networks of audio, video, home protection, coffee makers, air conditioners, heating systems, and other devices to a computer. Firewire allows us to do without one, perhaps using the Tv screen to set the devices.
The FCC has already MANDATED a firewire port on all future HDTV devices, set-top boxes etc.. What will this do to Intel in the post pc world that is being spoken about? Is there any wonder they don't want to support it any longer?
Wrong! If you're not backed by Microsoft & Intel, then you're dead. USB made it not because of the iMac, but because the number of PC Motherboards that support it out there make it economically feasible to produce USB devices. Those USB devices just happen to work on the iMac also.
---
I agree, it is a sad thing whenever a technology dies. I think of my 386, with its 2x scsi cdrom on the soundcard, and I think of microchannel pc's...there's something beautiful about oddball computers.
---
This is all well and good, but Firewire isn't dying from what I can tell.
It's like saying SCSI died because it was pretty much supported exclusively in Macs for the desktop market. If Firewire is as good as dead, someone should tell Sony and Apple.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
- Jeff
Firewire is sleeping. Bottom line its faster.Firewire is not sitting still. Multimedia in general is not getting any less bandwidth hungry.
Currently the largest deployments of firewire have been seen on upcoming and some current consumer electronics. Apple will do something slick like bundle a fireware equiped iMac with a video camera that supports firewire. That will get people moving.
USB had a fair amount of peripherials out for it before Apple came out with the runaway hit called the iMac. Now their is hardly a USB peripherial out their that doesn't come in atleast a shade of "Bonsai" Blue, or "Blueberry."
You will see Firewire show up on VCR's, Camcorders, and professional equipment. It is already Apples G3's and G4's. And is just waiting for that consumer kick. Intel's USB was dying a slow death before Apple kicked it into overdrive. The same thing will happen with Firewire.
Cheers,
WFE
===========
Furthermore, Windows 9x and NT can boot off any device connected to it as well. I boot NT off a Castlewood Orb and 98 off a Zip.
The iMac is a success because of gullible non-technical families with a little extra dough to waste.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
MACS hardly supports SCSI alone. What about the large number of high end machines of various types with SCSI devices? In fact MACs are coming with fewer SCSI devices replacing them with the cheaper IDE drives.
they don't have to pay Apple squat if they don't refer to it as FireWire. For instance, Sony uses the exact same thing but refers to it as I-Link.
They are a hardware company. Making their OS under the GPL would totally screw them. Of course they have no problems with linux on the PPC because it encourages people to buy their hardware to run it (they are a minority in the market), but they aren't going to give up the source for their GUI so that people can take cheap x86's and run OS X.
Btw, unless you have a few dozen things connected to your firewire chain, how is 1600 megabits per second data transfer rates for the bus important to a hard drive, whose physical limit is, at best, 20 megabytes per second right now?
-A.P.
P.S.: You might make more friends if you didn't insult people right off the bat.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
>That's right - that's why Apple is doing so well, >because they are doing everything wrong. They're not doing everything wrong... just many things. They're doing well now because they managed to find a new selling point.
Yeah, and while we're bashing the industry leaders, $0.25 per system is a far cry from the hundreds of dollars Intel charges as a "licensing" fee for its latest Pentiums, right? I enjoy paying $500 for a piece of ceramic which actually costs pennies to make. I mean, who does Intel think they are, raping us users when they could be giving away their stuff for the good of the industry.
Damn Intel, too, for not letting other companies use "Pentium" as the name of their CPUs--I get so confused when AMD keeps coming out with those damn "K-this" and "K-that" stuff...or is that Cyrix?
Screw those companies who spend millions developing stuff. Anarchy rules, dude. Screw everybody, while I get mine.
Next chapter: the Microsoft foundation.
All of the PCs I've seen so far with USB (and, of course it's the current slower version) have two ports. From what I've read, those two ports have an independent path back to the rest of the system. So would a potential fix be (on a USB 2.0 system) to plug the fast devices into one port, and the slow ones into another?
The fact that "hot-plugging" SCSI devices is a good way to fry them notwithstanding, I've been able to do this for years on my PC with SCSI as well. Yes, it is available on PCs too, go figure. Just because you haven't witnessed people using SCSI in this way on their PCs doesn't mean it's not possible.
SCSI qualifies as "ancient" in my book, btw.
name any task on a PC, and it can be accomplished in an order of magnitude less time and hastle than a PC with a Macintosh.
Use a Sony Mavica digital camera on an iMac.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
It aint' FUD if it's true. Apple still taxes the ieee1394 ports. It may not be a lot, but of course a money making venture is going to tend towards the open standard that should be equivalent. Once again Apple is fumbling the future with yet another draconian hardware hegemony.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
There are IEEE1394-USB cables, haven't used one myself though. Check out Fry's or something. I know that there 1394 PCI cards for abot $100 though.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
---
(Disclaimer: I'm a Mac user. Uh, sorry, or something.)
---
Good lord, that's the funniest thing I've seen in a long-ass time.
BTW: I'm a Mac user too (clone, actually). Err, sorry?
---
I don't mean this in a negative way, but this kind of analysis typifies the Mac v. PC debate. The typical PC user's assumption being: "I expect to pay no more than _x_ for _blank_ commodity since I saw _blank_ advertised for _x_ somewhere." Whereas the Mac user says "I need to do _y_ with my computer; how can I do this in the most efficient way, where _blank_ commodity is one piece of the puzzle."
---
Exactly. Price is rarely the primary consideration for Mac users - at least, those that I know. I guess it can't be, considering Apple's high prices (they're much better now, though). Apple simply doesn't make commodity systems, for better or for worse. The kind of people who buy Macs aren't generally thinking "gee, should I get this Apple system or a cheaper PC", they're thinking "gee, which Mac should I buy". PCs don't enter into the equation. Especially now, after the last 4 or so years shook out most of the fence sitting population.
Even now, the prevailent reaction of many Mac users toward other operating systems is disgust - particularly Windows. My take on it - MacOS has a sort of 'feel' to it, like you know the creators fell in love with the project. Linux has the same exact feel, even though it's a drastically different operating system. Both were made by artists with different intentions. Windows, on the other hand, is/was made by suits.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
- Jeff
all the companies have to do is...stop calling it FireWire! Then they don't owe Apple jack shit. Therefore this argument is pointless. Apple loses if they jack up the price and everyone decides to call it by another name (and people would not realize the two different names are the same thing).
Apple computers have had floppy drives for an extremely long amount of time. I think they're on the "bleeding edge" with cutting floppy drives because they are still used...not nearly as important as they used to be, but some people use them to transfer text files. That's about the extent of their usefulness these days. Unless you have old software you still like to use that is only on floppies.
Are you upset you don't have a 5 1/2 floppy drive on your computer now? Someone had to move on at some point to the better, more modern alternative. Right now though, floppies are still important to some people, so this move is bad for some consumers. But they can also buy their own floppy drive if they really need one.
---
25 cents a system is pretty pricey for that $20 CD player -- or even a $100 stereo system -- companies budgets are tight -- and 25 cents can make a real difference.
---
Right. And if you are in the market for cheap crap for hardware, more power to you. Apple has stated that they have no interest in the $399 PC market, and I for one am thankful.
As far as I'm concerned, eMachines can have that market, and the inflated support costs related to it.
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
- Jeff
OK, let's clear up some misconceptions here, shall we?
1. Apple DOES NOT own the serial bus technology IEEE 1394. It merely owns the FireWire(tm) name.
IEEE 1394, as the name implies, is an IEEE standard since 1995.
2. FireWire(tm) is Apple's name for IEEE 1394. iLink(tm) is Sony's.
2. IEEE 1394 licensing fees are $.25 per system/device, regardless of how many 1394 ports or controller chips come in each system/device.
3. IEEE 1394 licensing fees are split among the companies that agreed to a joint licensing program, back in May. Some of these companies include: Apple, Sony, Matsushita, Toshiba and Compaq.
4. Apple owns several 1394 patents, since they invented the interface. The use of those patents are covered by the IEEE 1394 licensing fee($.25 per system/device is very reasonable IMO)
For more information please check out the 1394 Trade Association's website at
http://www.1394ta.org
The license started @ $1/port, now it's $0.25/port.
FYI, the price of camcorders is on a steady downward trend, like all new electronics technologies. When digital camcorders hit the streets, they were professional-only devices, costing tens of thousands of dollars. Now, they're under $1K.
Nobody "drove camcorders through the roof", they came out at a high price, which is falling as volumes permit. The effect of a 25 cent license on the price of a camcorder is miniscule.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You seem a little sensitive on this issue, AC. If Intel doesn't want to pay Apple to use it's technology, how is that FUD? Intel doesn't include support for the G4 in it's motherboards either, is that FUD? Gimme a break. You seem more paranoid than insightful to me.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
As a DV filmmaker, Firewire is the bomb. I won't be hooking up my camera to the USB port anytime soon, and you can bet the thousands of DVcams out there will still have Firewire (1394) ports.
OliverWillis.Com
An Operative with an Agenda
FW may be an IEEE standard, but is owned by apple. and evryone employing one connector on any device has to pay apple one buck. and you call that "not proprietary"???
/.
http://www.1394ta.org/Press/1999.05.12.htm
let me highlight a few things:
"The patents can be licensed for a fee of US $0.25 per system regardless of the number of components that incorporate 1394 PHY LSI."
and
"Apple Computer, Inc., Compaq Computer Corporation, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (Panasonic), Royal Philips Electronics, Sony Corporation, Toshiba Corporation and the newly joined companies Canon Inc., Intel Corporation, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, STMicroelectronics, and Zayante, Inc. today announced the implementation of a joint licensing program for patents essential to the IEEE1394 digital interface."
And, Panasonic owners are not so anal about promoting their TV and feeling like they are some kind of better humans just because they own and use a bunch of knit together silicon from some manufacturer somewhere in the world. Quite a few apple ownerz however are..... and this is annoying.
And so are quite a few annoying Linux, Windows, Be, Sun, SGI, BSD, Amiga, etc. "ownerz".
There are zealots in every platform. To single out Apple reeks of hypocrisy.
Note: I am not a Mac user, I'm just mad at the hypocrisy that runs rampant on
And I guess it just a coincidence that so many USB devices have coloured cases, eh?
Actually, ADB is hot pluggable :P ADB can't really be compared to USB. It's more comparable to PS/2. PS/2 is the perfect example of crappy Intel technology that becoming a crappy standard. ADB is superior to PS/2 because it's hot pluggableand can be daisy-chained. Daisy chaining is great when you want to use a mouse and keyboard and only take up one port on your machine (which comes in handy with a laptop).
P.S. I've never heard of anyone burning out their motherboard by hot-plugging ADB.
Quite a while.
Until every machine has a newer read/write medium.
The ONLY thing that remains the same from machine to machine is the under appreciated floppy.
Keyboards - different
Serial Ports - 25pin -9 pin one/two one on mouse one on modem.
Printer Port -almost always 25 pin, but usually taken by a printer or maybe not, or maybe disabled, or not having a compatible mode.
Nope the one thing I 'almost always' know is there is the pathetic, worthless, lets me get stuff in and out floppy drive.
Intel is just blowing smoke. USB 2.0 is just a white paper, and still won't be as fast as Firewire 1.0. They just can't stand the fact that they can't control it.
-Rafi
-Rafi Remove the Spanish to email me.
Imagine a computer with only usb and firewire connections...
:-)
Umm... kinda sounds like a G3 or G4 PowerMac.
Apple (if they have any business sense) does care about whether firewire is adopted! FireWire is built into every new G3/G4 desktop. If PC's adopt FireWire as a standard, there will be lots of devices that those macs can use, which goes towards eliminating the whole "macs never have any hardware" argument. As for your quote
"Why would your average computer user need a hyper speed external port? " I leave you with a quote from Bill Gates in the early 80's
"I don't ever see anyone needing more than 640k of RAM". Ukab's Law: "Data expands to fill the bandwidth allotted."
Because I prefer to build my own system, source my own parts, etc, and desire to get the most I can for my money I'm a lousy customer? WONDERFUL business ethic there.
And I don't call $2000 for $1200 in parts "a little more." Especially not a system that's hamstrung by an OS as broken as MacOS is. ESPECIALLY when real-world performance for the tasks I accomplish is better on a cheaper PC system.
There are people who buy prebuilt systems. That's what Dell, Compaq, Gateway, and HP are there for. You're paying a premium for them to assemble the system and provide software. But don't try to tell me that PPC components are SO EXPENSIVE that Apple couldn't slash prices dramatically and still turn healthy profit. Remember, these are the people who were pulling down 60-70% profit margins on their systems in the 80's. Still think Apple is all buddy-buddy? BAH!
If you want an Apple computer that's not much more expensive than the components plus labor? Buy IMac. Of course the processors won't run most next-gen software at anything resembling satisfactory speeds. But that's not iMac's purpose. It's a disposable computer. Good enough to get people's feet wet. Not much more.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Cite your sources, AC. Everyone says this, no one shows it. I guess that's the advantage of hiding behind the AC wall...
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
There're 7 million camcorders out there with Firewire on them. Meanwhile, we're adapting and getting Firewire on more and more of our industrial projects. http://www.csem.ch/
All video FireWire devices I know of transmit using the DV spec. Therefore, you can plug a FireWire DVD into a camcorder and tape your favorite movie. 'Course, you'll probably be kicked out, but, hey, at least it's possible.
> The price for a 2GB or a 4GB hard drive that supports FireWire is ridiculous ...
... they're notebook drives in little custom enclosures and they're built to be carried around and roughed up a bit and still work.
You're looking at the little pocket-sized ones (from VST probably) that take their power from the Firewire bus. They'd be expensive no matter what the technology
You can get an 18GB 7200rpm external Firewire drive for $400 (I just did recently). It's an IBM drive in a MacTell "Firepower" enclosure. That's about the same price as the equivalent SCSI drive but its plug, play and forget. Add another by plugging into the first all the way up to 63. Works NOW, works great.
Everybody here who's mourning the passing of Firewire along with Intel is in great danger of making a fool out of him or herself.
IEEE1394 is free to implement? Not that I would know, but then wouldn't that nullify Apple's position? I mean, the name "FireWire" is pretty cool, and that little icon of thiers to sit next to the port is pretty snazzy, but hardly a hardware manufacturer would pay a dollar (or a quarter, is that's the price now) for that pleasure. Where did you get this information?
(And why the hell does everyone post in AC mode unless they are posting sensitive material?)
So what? If Intel doesn't want to pay the $0.25 per system or the $1 per port, then it doesn't have to. There is no requirement that every hardware company has to support every new technology that rolls down the pike. If Apple wanted the ports to become the high speed standard they would have given it away. Instead, they choose to play the same stupid game they tried playing in the '80s (the one that nearly bankrupted them I may add) that says that discerning consumers are willing to pay through the nose for technology that is superior. Well, it didn't work very well then, and in this age of sub-$400 eMachines, it works even less now.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Intel will probably implement FireWire oneday, but will probably do something like they did to PCI bus, Implement it at half the speed it was designed to be used at.. Why?
Just out of curiosity, what the hell do you have a non-networked machine for? Collecting dust? I haven't used a non-networked machine in at least 2 years. And then it had a modem, so I still wouldn't consider it "non-networked"!! --Chris (chris@ntr.net)
Moderators, please moderate up the above poster. That being said, I must correct you on the firewire license. It changed back in May, it's now $.25 per PC or device.
the IEEE 1394b spec is the 800mbps connector you are talking about, that is being developed by an open consortium and will not serve to subsidize Apple's past failures. I think that's a great idea. That will bring the transfer rate up to 100Mb/sec which is faster than SCSI-3.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
The licensing fees are now split among Sony, Apple, Philips, Compaq, and a bunch of others.
And their only charging per system, not port.
http://www.1394ta.org/Press/1999.05.12.htm
Ok.. USB is nice... it is better than COM ports, game ports and all these... it is meant to replace that kind of devices... Firewire is meant for data transmission... Maybe it is because it doesn't go on the chipset for now... I mean... you don't see SCSI on the chipset, you don't see gigabit ethernet on the chipset, you don't see S-Video ports on the chipset. I think it is just because Firewire is noty meant for the common user yet... Fire wire is not dying... that I am certain of... look just to the rumors (or has it been comfirmed?) that it will be featured on the PLayStation 2, it is already coming on Digital cameras, VCRs and DVDs... also on many computers consoles ans consumer electronics. Firewire has a technical advantage over its competitors, I know this is not always significant but still... It has been accepted in many areas.. and mind you that what I have seen of FireWire Hard drives... it is very iimpresive to me... So maybe when there are more FireWire devices available it will get on the chipset. USB has been around for a while you know. And obviously there is a larger market for it right now. So FireWire is not dead.. and intel is probably not trying to kill it. If they are... they are just plain stupid. Oh and about that 1$ license fee on devices by Apple, Philips and others... yeah yeah sure the margin are small and all... but really... they already pay so much on rights on other technology they use in inside components taht it is not that a big deal.. FireWire devices aren't like USB devices you know.. they don't cost 20 or 40 dollars... they are more likely to cost a few hundreds... sometimes thousands... Maybe if they choose opaque plastics over tranluscent ones they can affford putting a firewire port can they? :u)) Oh yeah.. I almost forgot.. Apple and a couple other constructor are shipping their machines with FireWire support already... so it will be out there... i am not afraid for firewire at all..
According to an Article found on Infoworld, IEEE 1394 (a.k.a FireWire) appears to be dying, while Intel updating the USB specs to 2.0 with speed expected at 360-480MB per second range. Intel is not (and will not) supports the FireWire on their core logic chipset. I think it's a sad thing when a technology is dying.. What do you think about it folks?
.0083% of the cost.
I think HeUnique should actually read the linked article before he posts it to Slashdot. With the exception of one anonymous comment, every negative thing said about Firewire came from Intel! As Firewire comes from Apple, and USB 2.0 is being developed by Intel, don't you think they'd be just the least bit biased? This is no different than SCO's derogatory comments toward Linux.
Like an unloved house plant, IEEE 1394 -- the high-speed peripheral serial bus -- appears to be dying on the vine
Sony loves it. Apple loves it. Compaq doesn't necessarily love it but they have it on their systems. The audio/video industry is having massive orgasims over Firewire. More importantly on the PC side is that Intel's lover Microsoft apparantly likes it and has it in their specs for future PC's.
In October, at Intel's USB developer conference in San Diego, the chip giant is expected to release the final specification for USB 2.0 which will, it now appears, have an equivalent performance to IEEE 1394.
The specs which might be released in October are equivilant to current Firewire speeds shipping today! I hate it when people compare products that will come out in the distant future (USB 2.0, Playstation 2) with today's technology (Firewire, TNT2, Voodoo 3).
USB is expected to perform in the 360-480Mb per second range or 60MBps, while current shipping versions of IEEE 1394 perform at 400Mbps.
See what I mean? By the time USB 2.0 devices start arriving. Firewire will be at 800 megabits with 1200 on the horizon. By the time USB 2.0 devices are common, Firewire might be at 1600 megabits!
"1394 deployment into the PC platform has proceeded more slowly than expected," said an Intel document
As somebody pointed out before, this is a joke considering how long it took USB 1.0 to catch on. Bet they didn't give Apple any credit for jump starting the market with the USB only iMac.
One key factor in the "slower than expected" deployment of IEEE 1394 may be that the bus is not supported by Intel in its own core logic chips.
Oh, of course if Intel doesn't support it it must be dead, right? Then the PowerPC must also be dying. Oh, and Intel didn't come up with Apple's Airport strategy, so of course it will be DOA when the iBook starts shipping.
The Intel Web site also cited "uncertainties about cost and licensing," for lack of IEEE 1394 adoption.
The "uncertainties" were settled earlier this year when Apple droped the fee from $1 a port to 25 cents per system. Even on a $300 peice of shit computer, that is
Last year Intel cited video conferencing systems, high resolution scanners and printers and auxiliary data storage as devices that would benefit from the IEEE 1394 bus but this year the company is citing the same peripherals for use with USB 2.0.
Not going to happen. For the same cost or maybe a little more, you get much higher bandwidth, peer to peer connectivity, longer cables and guaranteed bandwidth.
If Microsoft make a press release that Linux is dying because they don't support it, are you going to post that too (as a serious article)?
Yet companies are willing to pay for the Windows liscense. Intel just doesn't want to pay Apple for a clearly superior technology.
IEEE 1394, Firewire, iLink... If they all marketed it under the same name it would be a lot less confusing to consumers.
as an aside, is 'Consumers' synonymous with 'Iduhviduals'? that is, is 'consumer' now a derogatory term?
From the IEEE 1394 Trade Association Website:
http://www.1394ta.org/Press/1999.05.12.htm
"Joint Licensing Program Further Increases Attractiveness of the IEEE1394 Digital Interface
(Tokyo, Amsterdam, and Cupertino, CA-May 12, 1999) -- Apple Computer, Inc., Compaq Computer Corporation, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. (Panasonic), Royal Philips Electronics, Sony Corporation, Toshiba Corporation and the newly joined companies Canon Inc., Intel Corporation, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, STMicroelectronics, and Zayante, Inc. today announced the implementation of a joint licensing program for patents essential to the IEEE1394 digital interface.
At this time, the eleven companies have decided to license essential patents. For the convenience of the potential licensees, the portfolio will contain essential patents which cover those portion of the Specifications (IEEE 1394-1995, IEEE P1394a and IEC 61883 Part 1) required for their products to be compliant with the Specifications. In addition, these companies intend to include the IEEE P1394b specification, which has not yet been adopted, in the license. The patents can be licensed for a fee of US $0.25 per system regardless of the number of components that incorporate 1394 PHY LSI.
Other patent holders are encouraged to participate in the joint licensing program. Interested companies should submit a letter stating their interest and listing the patents that they own and believe to be essential. The period for submitting these documents is from May 15 to June 30, and interested patent holders should contact Gerrard Beeney, Esq., at Sullivan & Cromwell, at the phone number and address listed below:"
Also this: http://www.1394ta.org/Press/1999.06.nl-arch02.htm
The thing that held back support for USB was the fact that until June 1998, no operating system really supported USB devices in true "plug and play" mode.
It wasn't until Windows 98 shipped in June 1998 and the iMac shipped in August 1998 that there was major software support for USB devices. Since then, there has been many USB devices shipping, primarily keyboards, mouse pointers, scanners, digital cameras, and a few other items. USB is now very important: even Linus Torvalds said that the Version 2.4.x kernel for Linux will sport USB device support.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
I don't think this is bad for Apple. If Intel adopted Firewire then PC's could use Cams and other peripherals that only the Mac's use. That would be terrible for Apple because they would loose their market.
Aren't Firewire and USB both going to be on the Playstation two anyway?
I love my computer -- You make me feel alright (Bad Religion)
What are you talking about? What do you mean, nobody supports DVD? Hardware-wise, there are many different manufacturer's with many different models of drives available. The drives are cheap too, around $150 (Canadian). Decoder cards are freely available and inexpensive, and there are quite a few different software based DVD players. Software is just starting to come out on DVD-ROM because we're really just starting to see programs that are too large to fit on one or two CD-ROMs. There's already approximately 3000 movies available on DVD and more and more are available every week. DVD has only been around for about 2 years and it's already come quite far. Look at how long CD-ROM lasted.
If anything, something will replace firewire and USB long before a technology will replace DVD.
You don't get it. Just pass the cost on to the consumer and it costs you nothing! How many people are going to not buy a CD player because it costs $0.25 too much?
Besides which, Firewire is the only solution for your hypothetical CD player. USB doesn't do peer-to-peer, so you'll need a computer around if you want that CD player to talk to anything else.
--
This space unintentionally left unblank.
Is Intel now suffering from the "Not invented here syndrome"?? I don't beleive that story about price on device for licensing... come on.. they already pay on licenses for so many other things... gee... Intel's processors are so expensive for the performance they give compared to comptetitors anyway... this is obviously intel's way to push it's own standard... it's standard not ready yet.... mmh.. vaporware? I don't think so really but we never know... we haven't seen Merced out yet have we?
The point is that USB always requires a host ... one device is boss and the others all plug into it in some way. Firewire is peer-to-peer. There's no hub, and you just daisy-chain devices as required. None of them has to be a computer, or something as sophisticated as a computer. Camcorder to VCR to audio system to TV to hard drive to DVD-ROM and they're all talking. Take any one device away and they're all still talking. With USB, there's always one device the rest are relying upon. Intel is hoping that future communications between electronic devices will always require a (mostly Intel-based) PC.
One dollar per FireWire port? You sure havent caught up with development on the FireWire. If you really want to count in dollars, count the licencee fee VIA and Apollo pays Intel. Were was much talk that Apple were going to take 1-2 US dollar per FIreWire port in licencee, but they didnt, a completely other solution with an forum (incl Compaq) was created instead. Check your memory before attacking Apple for something they dont charge! Örjan
RS-422 is used in almost all High end VTR's to talk to Edit controlers and switchers. Also most
edit decks will hook up to computers for frame control. I uses to use it to dump video Frame by
frame to my EVO9650.
I don't see Firewire dying either. Not when you have a motherboard manufacturer like ASUS making a P3B motherboard with Firewire inbuilt. Pity that they didn't give it the full set of 4 sdram slots though.
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
I think they dropped the licence to 20c/port no? Even tho, the damage is done. It doesn't look good for going mass market anytime soon
...if you're trying to copy from one USB storage device to another. You see, USB 2.0 doesn't support peer-to-peer networking. It's on a star topology, so if you wanna copy from one volume to another, the info has to go from the first device to the computer, and then goes through the USB chain a second time to the destination storage volume. That eats up double the bandwith it normally should and results in horrible latency problems. Firewire, on the other hand, doesn't require a CPU to babysit the information from one point to its destination. If data needs to get from one point to another, it goes straight there without needing to go through the computer and hence travels through the pipeline once. Intel designated USB to be the cheap, low-cost connection standard, saving chipset cost by forcing the processor to handle a lot of the traffic overhead and it's beginning to show.
Now that we have that taken care of, Firewire is here. Now. My company has a Sony DV cam that I record stuff with. I dump it to my computer using Firewire and Final Cut Pro (which remotely controls the camera through the Firewire, let's see USB do that) and edit it on my G3. I dump it out to the camera through Firewire and the camera dumps it to a video tape through an S-Video cable. I am doing this now. Can USB do this at 720x486 @ 60 fields per second? No. Will USB 2.0 be able to do this, whenever it comes out? Maybe, but I'm not risking any of my video editing projects on it, considering what I've read about its latency problems.
By using its chipset/processor leverage, has tried to control the market (and put x86 compatible makers out of business...oh and it has made good progress with that goal). Now if you want to 'clone' their chips you have to have an entirely different motherboard! Oh, BTW, you can't license the right to use the slot design for your chips for $1 or $100 per chip. "Sorry your chips no longer work on the majority of motherboards! (Big Intel Grin)".
At least you could license 1394 if your application warranted it (e.g. DV)...
Good, at least one who have a memory and knows facts, instead of "isnt it like this, hmmm" Tnx! Örjan
What happens if you need to stream video in while downloading off Ethernet? You'd have to keep reprogramming the chip and you'd take a speed hit, wouldn't you?
--
This space unintentionally left unblank.
I would think Win98's release with decent USB support and the new specs and almost all new PCs coming out with USB ports now is what drove the USB peripheral market. I don't like Microsoft, but hardware vendors usually follow closely on their coat-tails. USB devices became widely available when Win98 started becoming widely available on the new systems. iMacs may have driven a small portion of it like the Imation Superdisk drives since they idiotically didn't come with a floppy drive.
I actually had one of these idiots in IS tell me a 12-port 10-base T switch that he was carrying was part of the phone system. Needless to say I do all my mother's techsup both at her home, and at work for her.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
it may not be very popular on PCs, but sony and the other electronics companies are using it for connectivity in their products. i dont see them changing after investing all that money into it. its fairly good technology for that. as such, it may spread to PCs as electronics and PCs converge.
firewire really shouldn't die because it has such potential. Imagine a computer with only usb and firewire connections.. the usb would be great for low bandwith connections such as keyboards, joysticks, mice, etc, and the firewire would connect harddrives, scanners, and other high bandwith devices to the bus. No Irq's to worry about (except system devices) and all plug & play. shame on intel for not adopting this technology
like a man without arms, you can't hang......
Yes, it would have been extremely helpful if Apple had put Firewire ports on more machines and added operating support. But if no one buys in on the PC side of the house it isn't going to fly (at least for high end PC specific peripherals).
However, going forward I bet that Apple makes their whole computer line Firewire enabled before any other manufacturer(except maybe sony :-)). The iMac is flipping soon and the laptops will probably follow next spring. [ The iBook may take a while it doesn't even have video out, scsi, pc card nor a sound input jack. Its connector budget is on a starvation diet. :-) ]
Yes, the gestation of Firewire has be long and labored. However, it is starting to gain a bit of momentum now and if the peripheral and os support grows; so will firewire.
Firewire hasn't been the only competitor to the follow on to SCSI. There has been Fibre Channel and IBM's Serial and SCSI itself. USB avoided that surmish and aimed for the market below that. Now Intel wants to move it up.
In part I think Apple is trying to let 1394 develop its own momentum instead of being an Apple driven standard. In that case some folks will ignore it just because it is associated with Apple. [ Now that the company is healthy again, perhaps it is time to revist that thought.]
You are correct sir! I was thinking in past tense and how rediculous it was for PC manufacturers to be whining about a $2 per port charge for Firewire while they bend over and grap their ankles for Microsoft. Especially considing how the cost of Windows has stayed the same while the cost of the rest of the computer has plumeted.
I absolutely needs this technology in order to
:-)
connect my video camrecoder to my pc.
I'd like an Athlon AMD chipset that would support firewire
at least, I'd like Cryotech Atlon with FireWire and AGP 4x and if possible with DRDRAM
But that's a dream...........
Apple- "Here, we spent a lot of money and came up with this really nice spec, you can use it and its trademark for 25 cents a machine."
Clueless Users - "You are sooo evil, what a ripoff!"
(Disclaimer: I'm a Mac user. Uh, sorry, or something.)
I don't mean this in a negative way, but this kind of analysis typifies the Mac v. PC debate. The typical PC user's assumption being: "I expect to pay no more than _x_ for _blank_ commodity since I saw _blank_ advertised for _x_ somewhere." Whereas the Mac user says "I need to do _y_ with my computer; how can I do this in the most efficient way, where _blank_ commodity is one piece of the puzzle."
For example, while supposedly the Mac is an "ancient" OS compared to Windows, I still don't see an easy way to attach a mass storage device to a PC on a temporary basis to get files on and off the system. Where the Mac user has been used to plugging and unplugging external, portable hard disks (via SCSI) from systems for years as a way of transporting large amounts of data, the PC user still has to suffer through ridiculous gyrations of attaching peripherals to "ancient" I/O systems to do this. I think the best (quickest) way to date to move files on and off a "standard" PC easily is to try to hook up a parallel port Zip drive using the Guest util installed via DOS. A Mac user plugs his/her firewire drive into the firewire port, and instantly has access to gigs of storage (at much higher speeds than a 25 year old parallel port). How "modern" is an OS which doesn't allow people to easily extract data off the system? Not very, IMHO. It might be marginally cheaper on a commodity basis, but in terms of how I'd rather spend my time in front of the computer, there is no comparison.
Trying to quantify the price of this convenience in terms of the price of a commodity hard disk is ridiculous...it completely misses the point: your time has value! Tinkering with a ROM BIOS to activate a parallel port, installing drivers, blah, blah, blah is not pleasant to me.
Sure, you can say "well, that's because you're a Mac user and don't understand how to use a PC." This is true, but guess what: name any task on a PC, and it can be accomplished in an order of magnitude less time and hastle than a PC with a Macintosh.
RS-422 is popular in certain applications. It is widely used in high-speed synchronous serial connections. RS-232 can't hack it at high speeds. Where I work, we use RS-422 with twinax cable for most of our high-speed serial connections. A full-duplex interface uses four twinax cables, one each for Tx Data, Tx Clock, Rx Data and Rx Clock. The cabling and patch panels are expensive. The cost is justified by the reliability and performance, esp. over long cable runs.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Your sig made me picture a gorilla holding a dismembered brain screaming obsecities...
All I have to say on the subject:
;-)
Competition is a good thing...
The link goes to an article on The Register about Via's 1394 plans...
What does this button d$#%* NO CARRIER
Please add a correction to the original POST!
/. editors! At least pretend to have a tinsy insy bit of technical savy (and journalistic integrety, go ahead CENSOR me down, at least it proves SOMEONE is reading this).
/.??????? Where else can I go?
You are just feeding INTEL's FUD by making USB 2.0 sound like some sort of SUPER bus.
Come on
We are talking UW SCSI speed here (40 Mb/s)
NOT
Quad Channel Fibre Channel!!!!!
WTH is happening to
..count the iMac. It uses USB only, not FireWire. FireWire is in the PowerMac G3 and G4.
Every single one of the connectors mentioned was not proprietary! That was the idea! There is not a single proprietary connector on any current Mac model, though some of the consumer models do have proprietary slots.
Jeez. I've never seen people with sarcasm recognition skills this bad any place but Slashdot.
--
This space unintentionally left unblank.
I use Firewire. My friends use Firewire. The store I go to has devices and computers that have Firewire.
Also, you can't count the iMac...since it doesn't have Firewire.
Where do you live? The moon?
--- "It's not enough that I succeed...everyone else must fail."
That's only the licensing cost and does not include the actual hardware needed in order to support Firewire on the motherboard.
View it as similar to SCSI and you may see why the motherboard manufacturers think it's a bad idea. SCSI is a great technology but it didn't start to get included on motherboards until it was WAY successful and peripherals abundant in the marketplace. Until then everyone used an adapter board to have SCSI functionality. Even now, I don't think that SCSI capability is designed into the chipsets that Intel makes. It's handled by the motherboard manufacturers and SCSI chip vendors (like Adaptec).
For Intel to design Firewire into their basic chip sets would be like them designing SCSI into the basic chipset. I don't think you would want to pay the additional cost for a SCSI controller on every motherboard out in the marketplace would you? To not have any choice about it! Either get a Firewire controller and stick it in an open slot or let the individual motherboard manufacturers design it into the motherboard the same way they did SCSI.
Since when has Slashdot been a shill for Intel. FireWire is a proven technology running at 25x the speed of USB _today_ -- so what was the problem again? Oh yeah, Intel can't put it in their motherboard designs w/o paying the rightful inventors. Geesh -- poor Intel.
Last thing before going to bed read the horribly written /. post that fire wire is dead IT's Mb/s not MB/s Woke up and in the "Virginia Pilot" (local rag) had a nice Feature on how FireWire will change the world. Just as poorly written. Caption for a graph read: MB/s (megabits per second) Then showed SCSI as doing 40 (megabits per second).
The imac currently doesn't have Firewire. The only Mac with Firewire is the Blue and White G3 boxes. No where near two million of these have been sold in the past seven or eight months. The new iMacs will likely have it so by this time next year that two million number will probably be accurate.
I think the vendors (and their main supplier Intel) are looking for some silver bullet that will provide a low and high speed bus with one shot. I suspect that USB 2.0 will be a giant kludge. Of course this is the same group of people who cling desperately to the ISA bus. Now that it is about to die, the industry needs a new hack to screw things up. After all you might just make computers easy to use or something horrid like that. :-)
I read an article about this. I wish I remember where I saw it, as it was pretty convincing. The basic argument is that USB 2.0 is a too little, too late attempt on Intel's part to make sure that they don't lose control of the peripherals storage market. It would be a shame if they succeeded in killing Firewire.
The main reason Firewire is better is that Firewire is here now, and USB 2.0 is set to achieve equivalent speeds a year or more from now. By that time, second-generation firewire will be out, which will boost speeds. In addition, I've read that there are technical issues with USB 2.0, and that Intel's time table and performance goals are optimistic to say the least.
The article also said that USB 2.0 would not have some of the features that Firewire has, and will be hobbled by backwards compitibility with the current USB. Looks to me like FUD on Intel's part to kill a technology that is technologically superior.
Anybody know more about the two technologies?
But if FireWire is dying, can it bounce back? I'd like to see FireWire get somewhere. USB has its moments being a good "universal" interface. And I applaud for it. But I like to have options open for interface, so that one can purchase a device that is most appropriate for an interface. I'm just hoping that a cool technology like FireWire don't get pounced over by another. Oh well. Both are good. And in my opinion, that's good for me.
You do need to pay money to Apple because Apple owns some of the patents involved in Firewire. As for Sony's "different connector", there are two standard connectors for Firewire; a six pin and a four pin. Both have 4 data pins. The remaining two pins in the six pin carry power.
The Firewire logo and name can be licensed from Apple separately.
--
This space unintentionally left unblank.
I agree, it is a sad thing whenever a technology dies. I think of my 386, with its 2x scsi cdrom on the soundcard, and I think of microchannel pc's...there's something beautiful about oddball computers. My first machine was a pc jr, a weird, proprietary IBM that was way different from the pc. It was a great computer in its own way...it had a wireless keyboard, and I got an optical mouse for it! And a whopping 256 k of ram. Firewire is in an unfortunate situation in the pc world, and it just can't win. It's a shame that intel now dominates the chipset market as well, because it gives them an unfair advantage, as this shows us. But firewire will become one of those strange technologies passed over by time, like the strange flying machines in William Gibson's 'The Gernsback Continuum.' It's a sad but beautiful thing, this passing on.
I'm told by guys at our company actually working on FireWire boards that the standard is muddled, messed up, and the royalties to Apple make it a real pain in the neck to do anything with it. Intel is in favor of open standards, like PCI, not proprietary standards. So, unless things change, FireWire will probably remain rather useless unless you have a Mac.
> "Screw Apple"????
Oh sure, they invent the technology you love, and then you show them the door. There's gratitude for ya'. Never mind that Sony does work with Apple on the "joint licensing program". You make it sound like Apple only invented the cable. They invented the standard for moving the data that's on the chip inside your camera... Ha ha! No mater where you go you're carrying a little bit of Apple with you!!!
It's mandatory to wash your hands before returning to the land of Dairy Queen.
Slashdot might as well run with this headline:
"Intel says that Firewire is dead, USB 2.0 will replace it".
I guess Intel has bought space or invested in Slashdot. Oh well, I knew this place wouldn't remain "free" for very long.
--- "It's not enough that I succeed...everyone else must fail."
The open consortium you are referring to is the IEEE 1394 Trade Association(www.1394ta.org).t m
They control the IEEE 1394 spec since 1995. Apple just owns some patents, but now those patents are being used in a "patent pool" between Apple, Sony, Phillips, Matsushita and others.
Here's the link,
http://www.1394ta.org/Press/1999.06.nl-arch02.h
I don't understand what do you mean by "Apple's past failures", 1394b will be based on, and backwards compatible with the current 1394 implementation, so how can you say it's a failure?
Or does the fact that Apple invented it bothers you?
I have SEEN an NT server delivering *actual* performance of 190 Mbps (NetBench results), and I have seen a 1394 network working perfectly with *sustained* traffic of more than 320 Mbps. This simply CANNOT happen with USB. Even if you make it run at 1000 Mbps, you will never get much better performance because the protocol itself sucks.
Let's see... As FireWire is starting to catch on, Intel "introduces" a so-called "USB 2.0" standard which works out to be the approximate equal of FW and theoretically used for the same purpose.
So now the sheep are lamenting FW's demise, except for one thing -- the first being that USB 2.0 is, to coin a phrase, no-ware now. It doesn't exist. No one has it operating, not even Intel.
Sounds familiar? Remember Merced, the chip that was going to make our lives easier? It's now pretty widely acknowledged that, well, it's not going to enter full production; we'll have to wait for McKinley, god knows how many years after Merced was announced. And these people honestly want us to believe that they can develop a fantastically complex technology (if their claims of backward-and-forward-compatibility are to be anything but scoffed at) within a year? Get real.
As for "better marketing", well, I admit I see lots of Intel ads. Most of them refer to less-than-tangible benefits of intel products. Aside from supporting a couple of plugins, how exactly does the P3 make the internet "a whole lot more fun"? or do we consider inane plugins which make an interface even dorkier than standard to be a great advance in the history of computers?
The fact is, Apple's share of the computer market is growing. Intel's share of the "wintel" CPU market is shrinking, due to their comparatively high prices and lower performance when compared to the competition (can you say "Athlon"? I knew you could). USB 2.0 will fail to meet specs (par for the course), and will only succeed in damaging FW, but then only if Intel can find enough sheep willing to believe them lock, stock and barrel in the face of their history.
I think it will be more expensive than USB. How much more remains to be seen as well as whether that matters from a whole system viewpoint.
As far as power goes... in the perhipherals if it isn't supplied by firewire it supplied by something. Is the alternative less space/cost consuming?
Get off of this! I haven't used a floppy drive in almost 5 years. Not once in those 5 years. Both at home and at work. Neither does anyone else where I work.
Of course, Mac's are married to the floppy like PC's are...since a Mac can boot off of any device connected to it...be it a CD-ROM, Zip, Jaz, extra HD.
Get over it. The iMac is a sucess...AND IT DOESN'T HAVE A FLOPPY. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
Sheesh.
--- "It's not enough that I succeed...everyone else must fail."
I kind of expected it to die when
A. I read somewhere apple was charging manufacturers 1 or 2 dollars for each firewire port produced. (IRC)
B. I have yet to see it in any machines.
Doesn't apple charge a royalty of $1 per connection?
Maybe that will keep firewire from being adopted.
"That's just plain juveniel and idiotic"
Is not...
--- "It's not enough that I succeed...everyone else must fail."
The original poster said
not "they should take GPL their OS in its entirety".
...but the original poster didn't suggest that they do so. (Note that much of the code behind the GUI on most Linux systems isn't GPLed.)
Please update your information.
Firewire licensing is $0.25 per _device_ not per port, and Apple doesn't even get all of that (it's divided among all the companies involved in Firewire development).
--
This space unintentionally left unblank.
First is a bit of an opinion, then there is the meat of the message about the specific technology.
;-). But, seriously, a great deal of people do tend to take these things *way* too seriously, and I think there should be more discussion on that topic.
:-)
:-)
The following is a sample of possible Slashdot headlines, and the (possibly) inevitable AC replies:
-----------------
"Is FireWire dieing?"
To ask such a question is FUD!
"Who do we blame when Linux breaks?"
Ahh! That is FUD!
"Is NT good?"
To ak such a question is STOOPID! Linux r00les
---------
It's true, and it's sad. I love Linux, and hate NT, but I don't like it when people go out and actively force opinions on other people... The problem is that people tend to take too much of this far, far too seriously. I mean, cripes, it's a place to discuss things. What *I* say is mostly tongue-firmly-in-cheek! Yet people *still* will reply to me, "You're a Slackware bigot for saying 'horrors' when there was not colour ls, what do you know about Unix bblahalhhblah" and so on. Remember breathalizers on steering wheels for chronic drunks? Perhaps a similar device would be beneficial. The Slashdot Intelligence Meter (this is a tongue-in-cheek remark, please don't take it personally
MEAT OF BODY HERE!
As for USB, I think USB just needs device contention issues fixed and is great for very, very lowbandwidth things.
People that push standards too far, to the point where they are over compensating for things, are just funny. Look at ATA-66. WTH!?!?!?! 66 MegaBits a second FOR TWO DAMNED DEVICES!?!?!? These better be solid-state harddrives!!!! And if you had such harddrives, why not use SCSI!? An 8gb solid-state storage unit would be very cost-prohibitive. I can understand PIO 4 (16.6mb/s) because two HDs (high-end) could put out a combined 16mb/s or so. Ultra-DMA sorta overkilled it, but would be good for two HDs in the distant future (2+ years, maybe). But 66?!
I just don't get it. Just like I don't get USB being pushed to 450mbs. Why? FireWire sounds like a good standard, and does exist today. USB "1.0" just needs a few device contention problems fixed, and it'd be fine for keyboards/mice/joysticks, etc. And low-bandwidth device that needs to communicate with the system.
Oh well. Let them sort it out, I don't have any USB or FireWire devices
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
that I was reading on the Adaptec web site states that you pay Apple a
licensing fee for a fireWire designated product (Sony probably charges
a licensing fee for i.LINK as well). It implies that you don't owe
apple any fee for a product that follows the IEEE 1394 spec. And
since all three are equivalent this would effectively mean that nobody
is forced to pay Apple (or Sony) for building a fireWire compatible device.
It doesn't make sense that IEEE would develop a spec for something that
was already patented. Did Apple waive it's patent to get IEEE approval?
-- E-mail any Flames or Spam as addressed. Otherwise replace with first name
... when I read that "forewire is going to be cut". Not sure why.
--
Is it because when Slashdot spreads FUD, they have to put the sponsor's icon in place to keep track of all the crap they repost?
Shame on you Slashdot...
--- "It's not enough that I succeed...everyone else must fail."
Not me. I don't have any floppies. Also, since when is burning a CD not cheap? They're SOOO cheap to burn.
Floppies are dead....dead dead dead.
--- "It's not enough that I succeed...everyone else must fail."
The price for a 2GB or a 4GB hard drive that supports FireWire is ridiculous. Nobody would pay that kind of money for such a small drive, regardless of it's speed. Sure, it's a great technology, but think about supporting it. If a company has to license the use of the FW BUS from Apple *choke*, then build the unit, then sell it at a high price, you're not going to get many buyers when there's a cheaper alternative. Not only that, FireWire was introduced with very bad timing. USB is much more cost efficent, and actually has comperable performance for an end user.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
You know what though, what you should REALLY hook up to your computer is a 5 1/4 floppy drive.
Or better yet, hook up a cassette recorder to load programs into memory like the old Radio Shack TRS-80.
Also, you prove my argument when you say: "Furthermore, Windows 9x and NT can boot off any device connected to it as well. I boot NT off a Castlewood Orb and 98 off a Zip."
Thanks...so you too agree that floppies are useless! Thanks for your support.
--- "It's not enough that I succeed...everyone else must fail."
If it's not Intel/Linux, IT'S CRAP!!!!!
How can I help you.
--- "It's not enough that I succeed...everyone else must fail."
Every mobo needs USB as it is going to replace PS/2 ports and many, many serial/parallel port applications. So, USB2.0 will be faster? ...good! In a year or so, we'll be able to begin enjoying that increased speed. I'm not alone in predicting that
Not everyone needs 1394, so it should NOT be on most mobos! IEEE1394/FireWire is NOT an i/f for keyboards and desktop scanners. This is for DV and high speed stuff like volume opscanning and (strangely enough) for i/f between consumer video devices w/out the use of a computer. It is not an i/f for Internet servers either! Point is this specialized i/f has the major consumer electronics cats behind it (Sony, Matsushita, Phillips) and it will be used in their stuff, and in specialized uses on computers...USB is NOT competition for 1394, and neither will 2.0 when it comes in a year or so (as 1394 will double speed and need it even faster use in consumer electronics).
You will see MORE and MORE 1394 in the spaces described...you will see 1394 on some mobos from mfgrs that have big share in multimedia markets (Sony, Apple)...you will not see 400Mbps 1394 on most mobos interfacing keyboards and 1.54Mbps webcams. You'll see precious little 1394 in the linux space because linux is not yet heavily involved with work/apps where 1394 is a huge advantage (though I hope that changes; if linux boxes get that kind of work, expect to see a change in Linus' opinion on putting support for 1394 in the kernel).
Seems the poster did not understand the use/usefulness of this tech very much, maybe because it is used for things outside his acquaintance. I don't like Intel/Apple/MS FUD & hype. Could /. skip that kind of hash? This would have been a cool post if it had headlined "What is 1394 needed for and can USB2.0 take its place?".
Think about it, they arn't even alowing anyone to *call* it firewire. it's IEEE 1394, or whatever. Apple sure is being a bitch. I mean, what did they think was going to happen? that the industry was just going to roll over and let apple rape them in the ass for 25 a port?
Some times these damn tech companys really piss me off, The way they play politics with these types of things, instaid of giving us good technology. *sigh*
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
There is an article that will make things a little more clear to those who still think Firewire will die: http://macweek.zdnet.com/1999/01/24/rfi.html
Well, ethernet on coax is obviously not on twisted pair, and part of the whole idea behind LVDS is to be able to use thin and cheap twisted pair. Ethernet on UTP can hardly be called low voltage (the LV in LVDS). Sure, 1394 is better suited for highspeed transfers, simply because USB and 1394 are not designed for the same purpose. Note the difference is in design, not in technology (unique engineering design doesn't mean unique technology). USB wasn't designed for highspeed transfers, USB was designed to interface everything and its mother to a PC. And that last one is why USB sucks, the spec tries to cover every little detail, including the mothers involved. But that last one also may also be the reason why USB is more widespread than 1394, because there are so many mothers to be interfaced to. You cannot simply state that 1394 is better engineered because it can go faster than USB, and I disagree with the flexibility. For example, you just don't want to put 1394 on a mouse for the simple reason of the cost of implementing such an interface (why do you think that Intel did not hesitate to put USB on the mainboard, but never even put 1394 on their high-end chipsets, that reason is not just patents). There is a reason why USB has a 1mbit mode. power consumption comes to mind. Originally, USB was made as a low cost and practical replacement the various cables for the printer, modem, mouse, keyboard, gameport, tablets, etc. on the desktop PC and on laptops. Originally, 1394 was designed to give the new functionality of highspeed device interconnects (mostly for multimedia applications) and to replace SCSI in high-end hardware. Different design goals, same technology.
It seems to me that no one is talking about digital video... FireWire has a very strong grip on the DV market. I don't see USB on any DV equipment anytime soon. All DV manufacturers has embrased firewire (even though many call it i.Link).
Boy, you guys suuuure know how to miss the point. Apple doesn't care if everyone in the entire PC industry uses the Firewire port or not. It's not made for everyone. It's for people with super high speed external storage and video/content creators. They know their market and their target demographic but it seems to me alot of posts here have overlooked this fact. Why would your average computer user need a hyper speed external port? Better question: what percentage of PC users actually buy and use USB hardware? I think you see the point.
Bottom line: Apple made a standard to fill a need their customers had. SCSI isn't a good standard to pull full frame, full motion video from a DV camera so they invented something useful. I see very little overlapping between what Intel and Apple are doing as far as all this port business goes. Once again, Apple does what they need to, and every company looks on and gets jealous.
AFAIK, both IEEE 1394 ('firewire') and USB are based upon the low voltage differential signalling (LVDS) basic technology.
Their difference is in their specs/the standard, not the technology, so I wouldn't say a technology is dying here, 1394 is just a standard that isn't really taking off.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
$100 my foot ... I've seen one as low as $35 and you can easily find them for under $60.
Its really a non-issue.
-just another AC
Let's see, it's a consortium of many vendors that sets the pricing, not Apple.
Jesus. How paranoid.
I don't think it's a sad thing when technology is dying. Alright, it may be sad, if the _better_ technology is dying in favor of the one with better marketing, but evolution of technology per se is not a bad thing. It leads to standards and the (sometimes lowest) common denominator.
FireWire is being priced right out of the marketplace by Apple's licensing requirement, which I believe runs at US$1/device that implements it. That may not sound like a lot, but costs are high enough, and margins razor thin, that $1 means a big deal when it's applied to millions of devices, especially from one manufacturer. What we have here is history repeating itself. IBM did this with Micro Channel in the late 80's. IBM was going to charge a licensing fee to every manufacturer that wanted to make motherboards or add-in cards. Instead, the industry, lead by Compaq and including Intel (the Gang of Nine) came up with EISA. That led to VLB and finally to PCI. IBM has since learned, as witnessed by their free release of a PowerPC motherboard reference design. That would have never come out of the IBM that gave us MicroChannel.
Apple is too greedy to take the long view. Apple should have given away the spec to FireWire and evangelised its use in everything from disk drives to camcorders to digital TVs. Then it should make FireWire a common port on every Apple system. With Apple being the standard creator, and providing powerful systems to take advantage of all those FireWire enabled devices, the market might have seen considerable advantage to buying Apple (there are no guarantees). But Apple will never learn. And with Steve "Reality Distortion Field" Jobs back in the saddle, it will stay mired in the business practices of the bad old 80s.
Acctually a good place for information about IEEE-1394 is the 1394 Trade Association page
In this Press Release the licensing fee is discussed. Interesting to note that they say Intel is a new member, and Intel has a page on 1394
-Steve
Yes, there were USB devices, but not that many.
Hell, USB wasn't even fully supported in Win95(well, with another patch to the OS it could somewhat)...had to wait for Win98 for that. Linux is JUST NOW getting USB support in it's Kernal (thanks in a large part to the guys doing LinuxPPC writing for iMacs).
But hey, if Intel doesn't want to use Firewire, no big skin off my back. They also don't use PowerPC's...and that's not hurting Apple either you know!
This is all just FUD spread by Intel to promote USB 2.0. There will always be the cattle out there that believe this crap.
--- "It's not enough that I succeed...everyone else must fail."
"They're already using unix as the base for their server os, they should just take the linux kernel and port most of their utilities to it, then sell imacs with linux/mac os on them. Those would turn some heads, rock solid reliability combined with a userfriendly interface."
You need to do some more research. Mac OS X Consumer - yes, that's the version for Joe Average that you want to see - is this, except running on BSD Unix and Mach instead of Linux. Expect to see it within six months.
"...think of all that they've brought to the mass market guis(yes i know xerox made them first but apple made them popular)..."
Actually, Xerox - like Apple - was only building on ideas that had been kicking around since the 60s. And unlike Mac OS (the first *real* GUI OS), the Xerox system was only a tech demo, pure proof-of-concept stuff and nothing more.
"If they'd port their software to linux/unix we'd finally have a mac os that's compatable with the rest of the world."
Well, it wouldn't be compatible with Windows. But OTOH, Windows would end up being the one that's not compatible with anything. Heh.
From what I understand, Mac OS X is something like 99% POSIX compliant. If anyone wants to drop into a console, they'll suddenly be able to run the vast majority of Unix apps out there. That IS what you wanted, yes?
Intel doesn't like FireWire because it didn't come up with it.
USB 2.0 will be an improvement but it still won't be a bus like FireWire which can be used for peer-to-peer networking. Plus, DV cameras all have FireWire. By the time USB 2.0 comes out, do you think Sony et al. will have any interest in changing their hardware standard for a similar-but-not-better technology? Didn't think so.
There are some interesting portable FireWire hard drives available today from VST Technologies and LaCie; hot-swappable, plug and play 36GB drives with serious transfer speed, anyone? USB hard drives are convenient but tooo sloooow.
Hey, can we get some quotes from Intel on how AMD's dead, too? How many folks would credit that, and why do you credit this?
well i've done my share of reading on both topics, and usb 2 isn't even due for another year...and that's from intel who always delivers it's products on time (cough) firewire is standard on all compaq's and apple machines now (as much as i think compaq really sucks it does have firewire) in general firewire has much more potential than USB 2.0 and it's actually here now..instead of a year (cough)
none of my html tags were implemented (first paragraph and one word were suppoed to be in italics). Is Slashdot wigging out? (yes I did double check my tags)
Exactly that. The technology that prevails will be simply a combination of advertising/pushing the product and the descision of the mainstream customer. (the customer of course being under the influence of advertising and will of course most likely presume the other technology is inferior). I wonder how many normal people (I nearly said "us") get to use BOTH technologies and make a personal informed descision.
What if there is a hub further down stream (say a monintor)? The connector on that hub may be more convienent to reach. Here the problem can be intermittant when you plug/unplug a slow speed device periodically.
:)
First off, this is going to start another Apple jihad of posts.
:)
Second off, its crap. Even M$ has support for it, you CAN get pci cards for it, there ARE drivers etc etc etc.
/bleh ignorant original post
Anonymous Coward, get it?
Anonymous Coward, get it?
Not bad spelling, bad typing
I'm getting so tired of trying to read through 280 other posts just to see if my point has been made already or not.
Some notes:
- FireWire is just getting started. They only showed up in Apple machines in January.
- FireWire is widely used in consumer video cameras
- Of course Intel wants USB over FireWire -- it's their standard!
- FireWire is hardly Apple-only. I know at least Sony has it on their machines
- USB 2.0 is still a ways off. FireWire is here today, and anybody can have it.
- As I understand it, FireWire 2.0 will be 800Mb/s, vs the current 400.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
You mean FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array). A PGA won't necessarily be reprogrammable on the fly.
As for your idea, basically it's just silly. You still need physical line layer interfaces and connectors for each of these technologies; you can't drive Ethernet or USB or FireWire directly from FPGA pins.
So if you're going to have some dedicated support circuitry for each interface you want to support, why not dedicate some silicon to the back ends too? It's probably cheaper than this hypothetical FPGA solution. (FPGAs are massively less efficient than dedicated silicon.)
Hmmm. And me that thought everyone was able to see through this one when USB 2.0 was first announced. Ah well...
First let's get it clear it's megaBIT not MB (megaBYTE). Meaning that it's going to be about as fast as FireWire is today.
Second USB 2.0 specs was first released just after Apple made it 'expensive' to make FireWire ports.
Third the specs are clearly a bit too ambiguous. They want to make USB both back AND forward compatible on the same cheap (read: low-quality) cables and connectors they use today.
And then there is the fact that USB 2.0 is not going to hit computers before 2001. At that time FireWire should have reached at LEAST 800 megabit (it's in the works).
And finally FireWire is a lot better suited for highspeed transfers since it reserves 20% for datatransfers as opposed to USB's 10% (you can see how that counts on a chain with many devices that makes a lot of isynchronous traffic that's what the other %'es are used for if needed)
Intel can't make money from Firewire. They make money from USB usage. So why would they want to support something like Firewire. If anybody should be angry, the operating systems manufacturers and software/hardware companies making money off of Firewire should be furious. This leads to less usage by Wintel.
There are a number of drawbacks with USB compared to 1394, including the very low speed of the 1.0 version compared to firewire. Firewire right now is 40 times faster than USB and is suitable for high speed peripherals like disk drives. USB right now is only useful for printers mice and modems while firewire can be used for all applications except high speed disks/arrays. In addition the fact that firewire is standard on all Apple machines right now gives it a 7% market penetration. The speed business is important in the video field; pro cameras scanners, etc. come with firewire interfaces, NOT serial or USB. Firewire devices also have the ability to communicate between each other without CPU involvement (probably why Intel hates fireware - doesn't load down the CPU driving users to purchase faster CPUs). USB's also require daisy chained hubs to connect devices, while Firewire does not. This makes USB look cheap up front, but in reality once you get beyond a coouple of devices the Firewire scheme is cheaper to the end user. Ultimately USB will lose the speed race to Firewire because of the media - Firewire is a 6 wire balanced line, while USB is a four wire unbalanced signalling and depends on CPU intervention for data transmission. Apple's license for the technology isn't much, either, about $1 per port. Ultimately I think both standards will coexist - USB vs. Firewire is much like IDE vs. SCSI. SCSI is ultimately more capable and is preferred in applications where users realy care about performance while IDE is aimed at giving decent performance at a low low price - great for the typical desktop Intel clone where the user really doesn't care about real performance.
3? Three! why 3?
O.K. so it's a step in the right direction, but it's only a step.
We have 100Mbit and 1Gbit networking technologies available now.
We have storage devices getting IPv6 into there standards.
We have an IP stack implemented on a $1 component.
I want my devices to talk IP based protocols, and I want 1 type of connector.
Before you reply with short sighted objections, yes right now it's not cost effective, but it will be. Yes, yes, yes I understand that there still has to be a networking protocol underneath IP (hell, run IP over firewire or USB if you like).
Congratulations to both Intel and Apple, because to some degree they are canibalising existing revenue streams by backing these technologies.
However, both of them are better of with these technologies than devices connecting using IP based protocols, because that is totally open and outside there control. Consumers are better off with IP. Once a device talks an IP based protocol, the complexity of the interoperability problem drops by an order of magnitude. Microsofts universal plug and play initive is nice, but lets cut out the middleman and stick these devices on the network and be done with it.
IP everywhere. get it. say it. make it your matra.
I thought the combination of USB and Firewire made a nice separation between low-speed and high-speed device needs.
Again Apple mistakenly assumed that better tech would win, and when most hardware manufacturers balked at the $1/port fee based on their patent, they chuckled and said to themselves "they'll be back, you just wait and see." We should know next week if their still chuckling of if they're a little more conciliatory.
The store and forward network devices that operate at these speeds are not free. How much will the box that connects my $400 PC to my $20 keyboard cost me? How about $420?!? Consider a 5 port 100 MB/sec network switch runs $300 - $2,100 today... Remember this USB 2.0 baby had to handle 480 MB/sec.
http://www.patents.ibm.com
and search on universal serial bus. You'll find patents for USB speakers, USB microphones, USB connectors, etc....
Firewire is getting low support for 2 reasons - Apple is doing goofy things with the licensing of the patent and no one is sure what the heck is going on. and 2) firewire is intended as a replacement for scsi/ide buses and those systems are coping with current systems pretty well.
Until current needs of average users exceeds the capabilities of scsi or ide you won't see a demand for firewire. and without demand....
kevin
FireWire is out. Apple is charging too much and won't let anyone call it FireWire.
What can replace it?
USB 2.0 has great speeds for current devices. It will be a household item with in a year. Only two companies I know make PCs with FireWire. That would be Sony and Compaq. Sony does it because of the Sony Handy Cam. Compaq happens to be a major supporter of USB 2.0.....I seem to think they won't support FireWire much longer as they have to ADD core logic to use it.
NGIO and FutureIO are competing bus standards, but rumor has it they are about to merge. How many of you actually knew that NGIO supports 2GB/sec and FutureIO supports 10GB/sec? How about this....BOTH busses are on a 4 wire design and are ment to allow network adapters, memory, video, and multiple CPU subsystems to connect OUTSIDE of a computer and be Plug and Play!
Thats right, its again an extension cable, PnP design boasting up to 10GB/sec due out next year.
I don't see FireWire staying around much longer.
Apple has always been and always will be too damn proprietary. Go Be, I hope you find a better life on IBM's PPC computers as they are more open. Go eMachines, your machine is better upgradable and has a cool CD player. Jobs will burn in hell.
www.atacomm.com - The Leader in VoIP Product Distributi
That's like saying that riding lawnmowers are going to replace cars. They're not for the same things! USB is a great replacement for serial, parallel, ADB, PS2 ports, etc. FireWire, on the other hand, brings new features to peripherals, like real-time non-linear video and peer-to-peer connections at ridiculously high speeds (sans hub). The rise of one doesn't mean the fall of the other.
Why would I burn a CD just to move one or two files over to another computer? That's just a big waste of time and money. Besides, floppy drives are what, $20? CD writers are still $200-$800. The only thing I'd replace a floppy with right now is an LS-120, or some other "superdisk" that also has the capability to read/write legacy 1.44MB floppies. Apple is trying to be a trailblazer and save money at the same time, but it's still too early to wipe the floppy from the configuration.
Boy, they sure are dying, aren't they?
They sure don't know what their doing, do they?
They sure aren't selling any computers, are they?
They sure are screwing up yet again, aren't they?
Steve Jobs sure doesn't have a clue, does he?
People sure aren't buying iMacs, are they?
The new G4's sure are slow, aren't they?
Now we can add: Firewire sure will die because Intel says it will, won't it?
--- "It's not enough that I succeed...everyone else must fail."
The coolest thing I have seen in a while was when Jobs showed off Firewire at the May developers conference, he hot plugged two computers in to one digital camera and both computers pulled the video full screen real time. I just do not think USB is got the balls to compete with that.
I don't know if the speed is up to it, but would it be possible to produce a PCMCIA card with a FireWire port? I would have liked to have got one of the Sony Ultralights, but Sony doesn't have a computing division in Australia. Instead, I've got a little Sharp Ultralight, and I'd like to be able to add a FireWire port onto it, mostly for hard drive expansion...
TIA,
CJ.
Fortunately for us poor consumers, there are companies out there willing to build add-on/in FireWire solutions. Our company is using some of them to interface to Kodak / Canon pro digital cameras. In fact, for folks interested in motherboards which support FireWire (besides those they can get from a PC mfr like Sony), I just stumbled across the new ASUS P3B-1394 motherboard! Frankly, I gotta laugh at Intel for releasing a sel-serving quote like "1394 deployment into the PC platform has proceeded more slowly than expected," - if they're too cowardly to take the lumps supporting a new technology in their own chipsets, then they should keep their mouths shut.
>Why would I burn a CD just to move one or two files over to another computer?
.5K available!
You're missing the point. The point is that if two systems are close to one another they should be networked to each other, eliminating the need for a floppy. The advantages of networking systems together outweigh you shelling out $40 (two floppy drives) instead of $80 (two NICs).
And if the systems aren't close to one another, email it. Really, it isn't that big of a deal. Unless you're so cheap you bought 2400bps modems?!
The only time I *ever* use floppies is as a LAN boot disk. That's it. And I only use that for initial setup, once the install files are on the HD it goes away. Nothing else that I could use a removeable media for would *fit* inside 1.44M. Hell, that boot disk only has
Remember, just because you're stuck in a "floppy" mode of operation doesn't mean that it's the right thing to do. Occasionally you do need to examine the "why" of how things are being done.
Moof!
Sony have also embrased FireWire for both their computers AND their hi-fi equipment (mostly DV camaras but in Japan they are using it to transfer music downloaded from a satelite dish to a 4x MiniDisk recorder). And they have talked about how they are going to bind the home entertainment system together with FireWire (or iLink or whatever they call it to get clear of trademark fees to Apple ;)
Hmm... The article seems to be.. yellow journalism.
Sony camcoders have DV ports which are the firewire ports.
Firewire on PC aren't popular because the firewire
devices/controllers are expensive. But there are devices for professional video folks.
Firewire can't be as popular as the USB. Because the Firewire is for professionals.
It's too early to say that Firewire is dying.
...you damned will better have ability to crank out the atom based parts required to implement your "standard".
Aside from that fact, it is important to remember:
1 - Apple is a contracting nitch company
2 - Apple has made an effort to keep hardware closed
3 - firewire is unsustanable with Apple's shipping numbers and dressing the "standard" up in IEEE cloathing does very little to increase sustainability.
Finally, standards are not the type of thing to attach emotions to. If a good standard fails due to poor execution... so what... that's life and if you look at all the crap standards we're stuck with due to poor execution in the past, well, you realize that the technical merit of a standard is of very little importance in the end game (despite whatever illusions of grandure the standards creators and engineers may have about their pet projects).
This is nothing new. We've all seen good technologies die before they're ever put to good use. It happens in an industry that's moving so fast. Look at DVD. Nobody wants to support it just yet. It's also a good technology, but I think that something bigger and better will come along, and dethrone it, before it even gets a chance to takeoff.
Yes, it's possible, and yes it's been done. For the PowerBook G3, Digital Origin is shipping MobileDV (http://www.digitalorigin.com/products/mobiledv/ov erview.html), a PC Card Firewire interface. A Windows version will follow soon.
usb isn't at peak speed yet it will reach 240 mbps soon that's a good reason for people to jump on usb
Only two months ago I bought a digital 8 based camcorder, thinking that with big names like Sony, Adaptec and the IEEE behind Firewire, there would be strong support for this interface for years to com.
:)
;)
Are these organizations going to let the adopters of this technology be orphaned, like Betamax users were? Sony in particular has staked a great deal in making Firewire - or I-link as they prefer to call it, a success. It seems to me that rather than having to re-tool their entire line of camcorders with USB they will put the pressure on certain people to follow through with support for Firewire. Of course, they could just bring out a really cheap I-link apapter for the PC - I wouldn't complain
What are the possibilities for a Firewire USB convertor? This may be how this mess eventually gets sorted out.
BTW, anybody heard of an insurance company that offers "Early Adopter Insurance"?
It'll reach a speed next year that Firewire already beats, and *that's* a good reason to go with it?
Boy are you an easy mark!
The point is that USB is a toy, not a tool, and Firewire, on the other hand, has greater capability.
The reality is that as poor as USB is, it could be outdone by asynchronous communications over RS-485. Lest you feel too empowered by your prose, I would point out that I have been designing hardware for 30 years now, and USB is the most disappointing "technology" I have seen.
--- Bill
Devices on USB specify their bandwidth requirements. With Windows 2000 I can view which devices have what bandwidth....if I try to use a device and there is no bandwidth left I need to disable on of the others.
(For example, its hard to run my speakers and my camera at once)
www.atacomm.com - The Leader in VoIP Product Distributi
>> obviously it is not too early, the iMac is a huge success
When you submit a standard to IEEE, you agree to let people use any of your relavent patents for free or for a 'reasonable' fee. If Firewire takes off, it is unlikely that an increased fee would be reasonable.
On the other hand, Intel controls USB and is under no obligation to keep the price down.
I would not choose firewire, either, but at least (unlike USB) it can make it to the next room. USB is as sorry a concept as I have seen. Did we really need a new technology for connecting keyboards and mice? I think not.
--- Bill
Yes, because FireWire is NOT computer controlled , its peer to peer, meaning each device has its own microcomputer in it with more complicated software.
USB is simple enough where each USB controller chip has a small microcontroller w/ integrated rom and ram and that can control the entire device.
www.atacomm.com - The Leader in VoIP Product Distributi
I'm sorry, but for transferring small files across non-networked machines, floppies are still the best way.
For archival purposes, CD-R is nice, but CD-RW isn't really a good (or cheap) alternative for small file transfer. But Zip and Jaz are too unreliable and non-ubiquitous. ORB isn't ubiquitous either.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Firewire is a lot better than USB and is being adopted outside of the computer industry much faster. Firewire does not need to be hooked up to a computer so it can connect a digital VCR to one of the many Digital TV standards. Intel has chosen to try to push their format instead of embracing Firewire as they once claimed. The problem with USB 2.0 is that it will be significantly slower than FW even at it's maximum speed and it's going to be slow. More companies are beginning to support FW and that will likely to continue. Intel might be an industry giant but there's more to the industry than just them. Of course FW probably doesn't matter much to most Linux/BSD people since it won't be supported on those OS's for a while. Also there's one thing that I heard a lot of here. Apple charges a 25 cent licensing fee per FW port -- not exactly enough to bankrupt a company or a product. If you want to know why so many FW peripherals are much more expensive it's due to the fact that FW isn't natively supported by the hardware. The FW drives that so many called outrageously expensive don't really use FW they are IDE drives with an IDE to firewire connector. FW can also be used internally as a faster solution for internal drives and a replacement for SCSI. FW is also the basis of the high-end peripheral system "device bay" which allows for plug and play drives that are easily swappable. Device bay if it ever gets around will need the bandwidth of Firewire. Anyone wanting a good comparison of USB 2.0 vs Firewire should read http://www.mackido.com/Hardware/USB20.html the article was written before Intel's latest announcements regarding USB 2.0 but most of the information is still very accurate.
You seem to miss an important point.
Basically EtherNet, USB and 1394 are all serial busses. So the only difference is that EtherNet don't supply power to the nodes?
Implementation is EVERYTHING here. 1394 have a protocol that makes it a 'better tech'(tm) since it's better engeneered (it's more flexible that USB and better suited for highspeed transfers)
Just because Intel decides to go and Not use it doesnt mean it isn't going anywhere fast.
Epson just announced a new printer, where its 299 for the 100base t option or 199 for the FireWire option.
Besides, Firewire is meant for Peer to Peer transmissions, ie you copy a file from one FireWire drive to Another, they do it by themselves, without having to go the computer.
USB is Host-Client, and there is no way it will achieve those "specs" of firewire, considering firewire will be at 800Mbps by the time USB gets to 240Mbps.
For more indepth look:
http://www.mackido.com/Hardware/USB20.html
It has to do with ease of support, ease of implementation, ease of licensing, and the established marketing presence of competing products. As for this last, Firewire was attempting to compete with several well-established niche products by being a potent generic product. But SCSI has the high-end HDD market sewn up; Ethernet-10/100 dominates LANspace. There is a lot of justifiable reluctance towards replacing open standards that have twenty or thirty years of continual testing and refinement behind them with newfangled anything.
This leaves low-end peripherals and monitors. Monitors chew up so much real-time bandwidth there's no point in making them share a wire with anything else. But there are still mice, keyboards, scanners, printers, modems, PDAs and digital cameras. USB is is gradually integrating these, so you can replace four interfaces with one, much to the joy of motherboard manufacturers. USB is small and simple and cheap to implement, and most importantly, it is there now.
Creating universal solutions is a tricky business. USB made the sensible compromise of focusing on a small set of connectivity roles, rather than all roles, which Firewire evidently wanted to do. But just because a Mack truck can haul everything a minivan can doesn't mean you want to pay for one, let alone drive it around town all the time.
--
This is not my sandwich.
Assuming i spelt that right...this looks like it might be intels stragety to get rid of it to affect Apple. Look how they used scare tactices against motherboard manufactures with AMD. Look how they do stuff that microsoft is guilty of...i'm not saying they are bad...but they are trying to control the market too much and it needs to stop.
JediLuke
JediLuke
-Do or Do Not, There is no Try
the only reason firewire hard drives are so expensive and slow is that they have to switch from an ATA interface to a firewire interface. Since apple is including internal firewire ports on the G4, I hope drive makers will be encouraged to make a direct interface drive. Anyway, the connectors on USB suck for high-speed signaling; USB was never designed for this, and it is good for what it does ( I saw this on MacKido) and they have to support older devices. Why does Intel stretch bad standards? Because Apple is charging too much for their interface. ...Anyway, the mackido article is interesting.
rather than worry about whether or not Intel supports firewire and if in choosing not to support it, why not question whether or not AMD will support firewire?
Lately, Intel has been doing a couple of stupid things, and the company that has been the quickest to take advantage of those things has been AMD, especially with their new Athlon systems. I think that if AMD chooses to support Firewire in their next systems, as well as IBM supporting the technology, and maybe if Apple decides to stop being morons about it, this technology will prosper and make intel look like morons for choosing not to support it.
The only thing that Intel is doing by not supporting Firewire is limiting their machines and limiting the users that purchase them.
You're right. USB is a great solution for low-end, low-bandwidth peripherals. Ethernet is great for networking. But until USB 2.0, even Intel was puching Firewire as the standard port for high-bandwidth peripherals. This includes digital cameras, external hard drives, digital video, some scanners, and similar devices. Firewires is (IIRC) several times as fast as most SCSI implementations, and has the advantages of dedicated bandwidth, plug-and-play, hot-swappable design, no terminators or SCSI id's to fool with, and peer-to-peer architecture that allows any device on the bus to communicate with any other. In other words, Firewire is a lot better than SCSI for high-end HDD's.
Firewire was *not* aimed to do everything under the sun. It is positioned to work in concert with USB and ethernet: USB for the low end, ethernet for networking, and Firewire for high-bandwidth devices. That's how Apple's professional desktops are designed, and within a year all of Apple's other products will be as well (iMac in a few weeks, PowerBooks in a few months, iBook might be a while yet.) USB 2.0 is attempting to be all things to all people, and as a result it is going to be mediocre all around. Firewire is simply a better technology targeted at high-bandwidth multimedia and storage devices.
Isn't that just soooo easy.
What happened Intel? You already had a board with firewire on it? Remember?
Maybe intel couldn't figure out how to make it work? It certainly wouldn't be the first time that happened...
But I forgot, if it isn't free or open, it must suck...like those nice open and bug free PIII chips...yes sir, free and open.
Please don't forget the Patent Pool formed by Apple, Compaq, Matsushita (Panasonic), Philips, Sony and Toshiba
-- Are you an EFF member yet?
is something that even if the computer industry completely ignores it, will still prosper for a very long time. The main advantage of FW besides it's speed is that it's a peer to peer connection which means a host doesn't have to be present. This companies build digital camcorders that plug directly into Tivo-like recording devices or digital VCRs or even DVD-R devices. I really hope it doesn't get ignored by the computer industry because it is in my opinion a great replacement for SCSI (yes I know FireWire is basically UltraSCSI-3).
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Nope. Almost a year ago, Apple settled with everyone by lowering the licensing drastically.
This article talks in-depth about how badly USB 2.0 will handle heavy traffic.
Here is a particularly interesting note:
There is another issue there as well. If you are going to keep backwards compatibility, then all your older or slow speed devices (like Printers and Keyboards) will slow down the bus. If you have a on slow device (say a printer) that is talking at 12Mbps and taking 50% of the total bandwidth and another device (say a Disk Drive) trying to talk at 240Mbps and they split the bus (each gets 50% of the time) -- then the fast device can really only get about 120Mbps (or less). The slow device is actually stealing 120Mb of potential bandwidth (50% of the time) even if it is only sending 6Mb of data in that time. Now imagine that you have 15 slow devices and one fast one (a not so uncommon scenario)
Sony, the oft-forgotten codeveloper of IEEE 1394, markets its FireWire technology as iLink (since Apple owns the FireWire trademark). Most, if not all, Sony DV cams come with iLink, and most DV cams come with some form of 1394 capability. Check out 1394ta.org, Apple's FireWire Site, and Sony's site for more 1394 info and devices.
Remember, this is Sony we're talking about. They are far larger than Intel and I doubt they'll let a technology they helped develop just die. PSX2's going to have FireWire ports for external hard drives and stuff, I don't know about USB2. I doubt FireWire's going anywhere.
rooooar
Wrong, they chose a name and they're charging people for it. IEEE 1394 is free to implement by anyone who wants to do it.
The good news here is for those doing the OS drivers. This is one less set of drivers we're going to have to write an debug. Firewire was quite a hefty stack of specifications. At the end of the day, I'd prefer if people stopped designing new networks like Firewire and just settled with IP.
On a different topic, doesn't USB have some bandwidth guarantees? The host polls the USB network for data and events at regular (1ms) intervals. During this poll, the host determines what portion of the response frame comes from each device. This would seem to provide some bandwidth guarantees.
What's the issue here? Firewire (though its been around a while) is just breaking into the market. Think how long it took USB to take off. Expect firewire to grow. If you don't believe it, maybe your suffering from malnutrition and a lack of sunlight.
This really boils down to cost and application. For most of the applications that a serial bus would be good for, USB is enough, and its damn cheap to implement. You can get a device USB interface for under a dollar. You can realistically make price competitive keyboards, mice, modems, etc..
:-).
Firewire does do somethings though that USB can't touch, storage, video and other HIGH bandwidth functions. Although the price on these items are high and for all but the video editing equipment, not justified. Why would I get a firewire drive when for the same price I can get a UW/2 SCSI drive (Note: I haven't checked in a few months).
This is because firewire is just to darn expensive to implement in standard devices. Look at the specs, it's not a walk in the park for the design engineer. Granted if USB 2.0 were here today it would not be much better, but taking the power requirements out will make it the low cost solution that may just work tomorrow when compared to the all in one cable of firewire.
Then again all of our devices may be wireless in five years. Those interfaces are getting dirt cheap (sort of
I'd certainly take that as a point that firewire isn't being ignored. Isn't Sony also using it as the linkage for their high-end consumer audio/video equipment (Minidisc for example)?
I've lusted after a VIAO 505 and a Digital8 camcorder for a while now... I'm just waiting for things to mature a bit more -- especially battery life.
The Firewire is out there...
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
the Not Invented Here syndrome.
Sorry about that, here's the post, the way I intended it to be:
I think that if AMD chooses to support Firewire in their next systems, as well as IBM supporting the technology, and maybe if Apple decides to stop being morons about it, this technology will prosper and make intel look like morons for choosing not to support it.
They stopped being morons back in May. Check out:
http://www.1394ta.org/Press/1999.05.12.htm
Whenever a single company tries to control an important standard and loses the market, I think that's a good sign. Let's hope other companies notice.
MacKiDo has this article about USB 2.0 and Firewire. It's on the long side and tends to look at things from a Mac perspective, but is a really good read nonetheless.
2^5
The following are not synonyms for "dying;" please make a note of them:
FireWire exists, works, and appears to be the leading candidate for a purpose-designed high-speed peripheral bus that is not a kludge (or worse, a promised kludge) on somebody's cash-cow chip set. This seems to me to be a Good Thing.
I hope the jockeying between Apple and the licensees stops: It's bad for the Good Thing, and good for the FUDders. I don't know whether stopping means Apple admits that $1/port is a bad deal, or the licensees admit it's a good deal. I don't think anyone else can claim to know, either.
I agree with jht; my experience of InfoWorld's default mindset is that nothing can survive outside the shadow of "safe," "responsible" companies like Microsoft and Intel. That's their market: When they shifted to their current format in the mid-80's, their lead editorial explicitly said they wanted to be an indispensible resource to the IT professional who didn't want to get fired.
I have no argument with people whose first priority is to avoid risks. But that sort of mindset does not produce the kinds of judgments most Slashdotters would necessarily respect.
You can daisychain a bunch of computers together with cheap 1394 cables and run IP between them at 400Mbps. Look ma, no hub!
Try that with any flavor of USB...
...where the sun doesn't shine.
Slashodt provides links and information to news. Just because they miught not report the kind of news you want to read, in the manner that you may want to read them, doesn't mean they are Wintel minions.
That's just plain juveniel and idiotic.
Harry
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG19990 827S0032
Basically, it looks like several companies banded together to produce 1394 transmissions at 2.4 gigahertz. Let's see USB 2.0 do that.
Firewire isn't going anywhere, this is more lame "news" from an increasingly biased source (Infoworld).
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
I'm sorry, but I can plug USB devices in my DSS decoder...
Like a camera or a keyboard...
Check your references before opening typing...
AMD does not make systems or chipsets (any more; they made the 750 just to jumpstart the Athlon motherboard makers).
If you want 1394 in your Athlon system, talk to VIA, ALi, SiS, Asus, Gigabyte, IBM, Compaq, etc.
copied from News.com
Dateline : Cupertino, CA
In stunning news today, Apple Computer, Inc. announed that since its computers will not be using Intel chips, this may be the end of the line for Merced as we know it.
"I just don't see how Merced can survive" said one industry analyst. "I mean, if even ONE person doesn't have an Intel processor shoved up his ass, then that's one more person contributing to the demise of Intel!"
Sources at Apple, who refused to be named, said that "this all could have been avoided" if only Intel were gracious and forgiving enough to allow a non-Intel designed standard to have made it to market.
It is believed that IEEE 1394 is the standard the source was referring to.
"Does Apple even make real computers? How can you listen to the company that makes those Apple 2's anyway!" said John Kissass from Dataquest. "Really, i mean, if Apple" he chuckled, "says that the sky was some strange color, and Microsoft and Intel tell you the truth about our green sky, who are _you_ going to believe?"
It is not known if Intel is planning on closing its doors forever because of this staggaring announcementm suffice to say that even one person making up their own mind and not using Intel standards could spell the end of the WinTel reign, its possible that, somehow, Intel will make it through the day.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
No-one at all can say which is dead, and which is not. Just as many posters before me have noted. Look at AMD and Intel. Everyone said Intel ruled the market and AMD would crumble at their feet. Yet AMD has just released a processor that blows the _current_ Pentium III's out of the water. This kind of thing happens so many times. Unless your the proud owner of a time machine, you and no-one else knows whats dead, till its dead.
You must also remember that USB and FireWire while being similar, are not one in the same. FireWire components can exist WITHOUT a computer. So you can (conceptually) go out and have a Sony HandiCam with firewire, plug it into a VCR with FireWire and transfer all your video, at very high speed to the VCR, or vice versa. Or any other number of components you have can talk to eachother with FireWire without the need to have a computer. And since PC's can support FireWire, you can also plug that same cable into your computer and do all the same there.
With USB (currently) you are usually always plugging the USB component into the computer. Not hooking one component to the other. This means, that if you go out and buy a product with USB on it, your ONLY use for it is with your computer. Now, I understand that many, many people have computers these days, but there are still many that dont have a computer at all. With USB components you have just lost this entire segment of the market. FireWire currently has its obvious andvatagaes, and like it or not, DOES have some large backers such as Apple, Microsoft, Sony and Compaq to name a few. These companies as Im sure you will agree are NOT small time. Yes they have all seen their fair share of their products that don't succeed. But FireWire is certainly far from dead.
Regardless of both these things, I would like to see some kind of standard come into place. I own both USB products and FireWire products and would like to see one single standard, or a possible interopability. But until then, or until one is entirely phased out, no-one can say who is 'king'.
-
aphex
I Steal Music!
IEEE 1394 (I won't use the FW term as it is a trademark) has been chosen as the connector for digital video, namely HDTV, now called Digital Television, plus all digital broadcast editing interconnects are going to use IEEE 1394 if they are not already doing so.
What is hurting the computer implementation is the perception that licening costs too much, and Apple's 1$ fee wasn't much when they tried, but they bowed to pressure to have that fee included with other licences, in a package of 25 cents per port.
USB is an industry developed standard, so that means no one has particular dominance in setting up the standard. A problem is that it is supposedly a true bus, versus a switch architecture. I don't know if I believe this, as hub chips I've looked up can somehow connect devices of varying speeds on different links, each link having its own set of pins on the chip.
Still, IEEE 1394 looks like a far better choice for video, scanning, digital A/V, as you supposedly get guarantied bandwidth, good data rates and bounded latencies. You can get real-time transfers for audio on USB, but it looks like a b!tch to design and program for.
> Some times these damn tech companys really piss me off, The way they play
> politics with these types of things, instaid of giving us good technology.
> *sigh*
Get a clue!
Apple *IS* giving the consumer good technology, but they are also, finally, doing something about having their technology ripped off by everyone left and right without paying Apple for their R&D.
Apple has invested some serious dollars in creating a standard (IEEE.1394) that is openly usable, and porvides high-performance for data exchange. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to see a DV camcorder that doesn't have FireWire ports built-in these days.
At the very least, they can expect an infinitessimal royalty payment for those that use those ports to add far more value to their product than the measly $1 Apple charges.
Of course, no one in the PC world overcharges, or tries to squelch competition with unrealistic licensing fees.... Think M$.
Harry
> But Apple will never learn. And with Steve
> "Reality Distortion Field" Jobs back in the
> saddle, it will stay mired in the business
> practices of the bad old 80s
That's right - that's why Apple is doing so well, because they are doing everything wrong.
It cost Apple millions to implement and design FireWire, and a $1 per prot fee, especially for exclusively high-end devices, is pretty reasonable.
Harry
Yeah, that would fucking bite...
Moo.
1. Digital camcorders
Go to any good electronics store today, and look at the digital cameras. Notice anything? Almost every single one has a FireWire port. Now, how many have USB ports?
2. USB reqires a computer
To use USB, there must be a computer (or at least an intelligent hub) in order to allow transmisions; you can't just go camera to camera. FireWire makes no such demand: you can easily connect two cameras directly, with no hub whatsoever.
3. FireWire isn't at peak speed yet.
FireWire currently travels at only 400 Mbps. However, the maximum rate is 1200 Mbps. I don't see USB matching that for awhile.
4. FireWire can fork.
With FireWire, I can use a splitting cable and channel my camcorder into two computers simultaneously, and broadcasting only one set of data. Try that with USB!
5. FireWire guarantees speed.
FireWire can say to a device, "You need a constant 200 Mbps data flow? Sure!" Whereas with USB, it's more like, "well, if your friends don't hog the bus too much, I'll see what I can do." No promised rates.
With all of these merrits, I don't think USB 2.0 will be a problem for awhile.
And they might bump it up if they think it has a chance of becoming the main marketplace standard again... who trusts them anymore?
It's high time someone stopped putting many different breeds of IO ports on systems. You only need one, and that goes into a PGA (Programmable Gate Array). Download any interface specification you like into the beast and it can pretend to be a FireWire port, USB port, Appletalk, multiple serial interface, IrDA, BlueTooth, you name it you've got it. Your interface design can now be Open Source.
:v)
You'd need a programmable clock chip and maybe a couple of interesting driver chips too of course.
I used to prototype Ethernet chips on PGAs and I can't see anything wrong with this picture.
Vik
At the very least, they can expect an infinitessimal royalty payment for those that use those ports to add far more value to their product than the measly $1 Apple charges. Not even. It's 25 cents per systems, no matter how many firewire ports or chipsets you use.
It surprises me we don't have an entire thread of 300+ comments of people complaing about big bad evil Intel not supporting something (in this case FireWire) or throw in some comments about their new case designs, or their The PIII will make the Internet faster commercial. Almost everytime we have an Apple news item, no matter what the item is, these same things come up. "Oh man, the new Apple designs are too pretty. I want a machine! I want my case covered with mouse traps and radioactive waste! A REAL man's machine!" Or about their commercials "Pfft, fastest personal computer my ass. I haven't been able to run benchmarks myself, nor third party companies, but I'll assume Apple is completly lying and then complain about it and then say processor X is actually the fastest in personal computers although no real tests have proven so!" Now Apple is trying to support things like USP, AGP, etc. so people won't have to buy special, Apple specific, hardware anymore. Of course things like this, and their semi attempts at moving towards open source with some products, are completly ignored because the color of cases is far more important! But if someone on the PC side does similar things (minus MS of course, everyone's favorite enemy) as people complain about Apple (making visually pleasing case designs, corny commercials/marketing, not supporting thing X), people don't even say anything (on the whole). Sure some people bring it up, just as their are Apple users who are really critical and unbiased towards Apple.
There's lot of problems like these. Like being uncritical of Linux, just like some Mac fans defend the Mac OS even though it is poor by today's standards. People thinking the world revolves around their personal interests and the yare the smartest people in the world. "Pfft, who needs a GUI? I can get so much more done and fast with vi!" Forgetting, of course, many people use computers for graphic design and publishing...yet people try to even stretch that, believing somehow they'd be more productive if they used graphic design apps in a CLUI. Kind of like how some people say you don't need a CLUI at all, not realizing many programmers are much more productive under a CLUI than using a GUI.
I think there should be a class in school where the yteach you to look at situations from many perspectives and also always consider being in the other person's shoes. It really helps a person. Rather than being stuck in an existence where you can't escape the reality from your own little box, nor even conceive that perhaps people are different than you and have different needs and likes.
So Intel (the maker of USB 2, a competitor to FireWire when it's released in another year and a half or so), gets to decide that FireWire is dying?
How about the SEVEN MILLION FireWire camcorders sold last year?
How about the TWO MILLION Macs sold with FireWire last year?
How about the THREE MILLION PCs that have FireWire installed (built-in and aftermarket) that were sold last year?
Leave it to Intel to declare something dead they can't make money on.
Oh- and as far as that massive $1 per port FireWire licensing fee... do you think that's really making any difference to anyone?
Someone said USB has been out for many years and gained popularity with the iMac. Others said firewire is still new and will catch up. Firewire has been the replacement for scsi for so long (it was out before USB), that if it hasn't caught on already it's over. Apple has done nothing to offer firewire in its systems, which would have been perfect for use with mini Dv cameras, until 2 years after they emerged. They could have offered add in boards and hoped to get industry support. If you don't bet anything on something you've developed then no one else will. It's Apple's fault that they still don't have firewire built-in in powerbooks and imacs. Stop blaming others and face that.
In a related story, Intel also gave out a press release that the Athlon chip, by competitor AMD, is also a dead issue.
"I mean, how menay people do you know who own machines with Athlons in them?" said an unnamed Intel spokesman. "In another year or so, Intel will be selling chips at least that fast, and if we ever get Merced to work, it might be that fast, too."
That should NOT be a score zero.
And BTW, the Firewire licensing fee is now $0.25/device, rather than $1/port as it used to be.
--
This space unintentionally left unblank.
Obviously the guy who wrote the InfoWorld article didn't even read the article he cited. See for yourself.h tm
Go read the original press release from Intel at:
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/initiatives/usb.
Let me call you attention to the last paragraph:
1394
Intel has been strongly committed for several years to the 1394 high-speed serial bus as the recommended connection between a PC and new digital AV consumer electronics (CE) equipment being developed in Japan and elsewhere. Intel sees 1394 as a "digital convergence pipe" connecting the PC to the world of digital CE, including digital camcorders, digital VHS, set-top boxes, and digital TV. 1394 allows the PC to participate and add value to consumer electronics equipment, and it brings rich audio/video data types to the PC. Intel sees convergence connectivity growing significantly in importance to the PC over time as the wealth of available 1394 devices increases.
-
Read that last sentence carefully. Somehow, I don't read this as a declaration that firewire is dead, or even sick. The problem lies with biased reporting and provocative headlines, not with the technology or even the marketing.
People should not fear their government. Governments should fear their people.
Here is a quote from Intel's own web site. Although Firewire can do much more than Intel would make you think.
>>>>>
Intel has been strongly committed for several years to the 1394 high-speed serial bus as the
recommended connection between a PC and new digital AV consumer electronics (CE)
equipment being developed in Japan and elsewhere. Intel sees 1394 as a "digital
convergence pipe" connecting the PC to the world of digital CE, including digital camcorders,
digital VHS, set-top boxes, and digital TV. 1394 allows the PC to participate and add value to
consumer electronics equipment, and it brings rich audio/video data types to the PC. Intel
sees convergence connectivity growing significantly in importance to the PC over time as the
wealth of available 1394 devices increases.
>>>>>
All this from the same press release that brought on this discussion.
It's mandatory to wash your hands before returning to the land of Dairy Queen.
yeah apple made really started using usb, there are some incredible minds at apple. I just wish they'd stop programming for mac os and do some work on linux. They're already using unix as the base for their server os, they should just take the linux kernel and port most of their utilities to it, then sell imacs with linux/mac os on them. Those would turn some heads, rock solid reliability combined with a userfriendly interface. I can only dream of what they'll come up with next, think of all that they've brought to the mass market guis(yes i know xerox made them first but apple made them popular), mice, pdas etc. If they'd port their software to linux/unix we'd finally have a mac os that's compatable with the rest of the world.
char *stupidsig = "this is my dumb sig";
apple proprietary:
vga
usb
ata/66
scsi
1/8" headphone jack
1/8" microphone jack
RCA L/R/V jacks
S-VHS jack
CD-ROM
DVD-ROM
10/100 10bT Ethernet
IEEE 802.11 AirPort
RJ-11 V.90 modem
3 prong power cable
i think that being propietary is okay so long as you can use everyone else's stuff with yours.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
That article was written well before Intel decided to quadruple the bandwidth of USB-2. Also, USB doesn't cost a buck a port to Apple, and the cables can be much longer.
Speed vs. Flexibility
An article on Computer Design's Electronic Systems page mentioned some factors that portray Firewire in a slightly different light when making comparisions in speed. But the firewire technology exists in consumer electronics as well, all without a Personal Computer in the midst, so Firewire appears a lot more flexible and transparent than USB at the moment.
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
... but IEE1394 will live as long as there are DV people out there who want to load video from their cams into their NLE rigs. Also, IEEE1394 is being touted as the Next Big Video Component Connector for home DTV systems. Imagine hooking your Canon XL1 (or my dinky little TRV103) right into your IEEE1394-equipped DVD-RAM or SDTV set?
Screw Apple, I hate 'em, but you can use a different connector and name and not pay the FireWire(tm) tax, just like Sony did with i.Link.. IIRC the Sony connector is 4 pins while the FireWire(tm) connector is 6, but a simple converter cable handles that.
Cheers(tm),
Firewire (also called IEEE 1394 or 1394) is not proprietary. Sony and Compaq use it on some of their PC models and 1394 has already been decided as a standard for HDTV and DV and all of the consumer electronic stuff(TVs, DVD players, stereos, digital cameras, etc.). It's going to take a long time until 1394 becomes obiqutous, but look at how long USB took awhile to catch up. BTW, the mindless Apple-bashing is becoming tiredsome. If people are morons for using a platform, than you got some issues. I mean, you don't see people going "Ohh, look at those Panasonic TV watchers, I hate them, Sony makes better TVs"
Because Firewire isn't controlled by them! ... ... .. well they will be, once again, controlled by a second class bus ... as long as Intel ( a fan of seconds choices) dominate the PC market... .. or an IEEE bus controling every hardware u have at home/office??" ...
A read and article at the IEEE1394 that Firewire will archive 800 MB per sec. within a year... by that time USB 2.0 will be on 480 MB per sec.( best hopped rate ), so USB will still be slower
As far as I see, USB will be the standart for PC IO connections. It'll be used from Keyboards to web cams,and some cool speakers.
But it'll not be much used in storage tough.
Why? Simple sync! (Try to hook up 4 USB devices and see the degradation on bandwith due to lost sync.)
As for Firewire ( aka i.link or IEEE1394 ), it will continue to be used com consumer eletronics ( from VCR to HANDCAMS, HI-FI to Speakers )and quick storage ( the best HD today can't keep up with the bus .
So people in the media buzz. will continue to use Firewire on Apples,non-liner video editing, Cams and the like
As for the rest os the perifericals
Once again, the question rises : "What do U prefer? An intel bus controling PC hardware
I know what my answer is
Interestingly, the audiophile industry has expressed interest in firwire. So has the home theater market. the idea was as long as all the components were daisy-chained together, it didn't matter how they were connected to each other, the system would be able to sort itself out.
The 80's rule.
1 - Apple is a contracting nitch company
Hardly. Expanding marketshare, cool hardware, and their stock is up about $30 this year.
2 - Apple has made an effort to keep hardware closed
If you're referring to the G4 and the firmware update issue, Apple did that so they'd have enough chips for their big rollout this month; they will release another patch allowing upgrades once they have enough G4's.
3 - firewire is unsustanable with Apple's shipping numbers and dressing the "standard" up in IEEE cloathing does very little to increase sustainability.
So what if Intel doesn't like it? Other big companies like Compaq, Sony and more importantly Microsoft do.
Even Apple is trying to get away from ADB. I don't think his point was anything near saying ADB is superior to USB. Perhaps he meant USB is really a more modern ADB and it's not something that's sooo special. Plus new Apple computers support both USB and FireWire, so whether or not Intel supports FireWire is irellevant to people who own newer Apple computers. People dependent on Intel in this case are the ones who will be losing out (which is a very large percentage of the personal computer market). However, many of them don't mess with digital video and such...they'll just lose having that option because of one company on the platform that's supposedly so much more open and fair (good for the consumer).