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)
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?
Because you'll start to see the benifits when you start adding drives. Unless you have an UW SCSI card for each hard drive, your total data bandwidth is limited to 20 megabytes per second. With that 1600 megabits of bandwidth, all your drives can operate at full speed at the same time.
Yes, regular SCSI is going to keep advancing, but Firewire has all of the benifits of SCSI (its actually based on SCSI) but none of the drawbacks. No SCSI termination or ID's to mess with, up to 67 devices per Firewire bus, peer to peer operation, much longer cables, you don't have to worry about sheilding, etc.
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.
Cool, I'm glad prices are falling that fast. Internal or external?
What you Apple bashers need to realize is that you can have 67 devices per firewire bus, and it is possible to do RAID with it. So if you ran out and bought a 10 gig hard drive every three months, in two years you would have 80 gigs to store all your mp3's. And thats not even counting how much capacity will rise in relation to cost.
Never thought I'd see Slashdot help spread FUD
on
Is firewire dying?
·
· Score: 3
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?
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.0083% of the cost.
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)?
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.
Oh yeah, 25 cents per system is unbearable
on
Is firewire dying?
·
· Score: 1
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.
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).
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.
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.. snip This is because firewire is just to darn expensive to implement in standard devices.
Dude, its a whopping 2 bucks for a firewire port. So while it might save you a little money on mice, keyboards and printers there's no reason not to use firewire on scanners, hard drives or Orb drives.
Remember how long Starcraft was delayed? Remember how Bizzard said it would be a simultaneous release for both Mac and PC? Remember how it then took more than a year?
Hope you still want the Linux version when it comes out in 2006.
If consider the (way too short, IMHO) lifespan of games, most people propably won't even remember C&C2 a year from know.
Depends on how good the game is. I still play more Quake 1 than Quake 3, becuase the weaps in Quake 3 suck ass. I still play C&C, and would probably play Marathon if I could find some people to network with.
Tiberian Sun brings nothing new to the genre
Westwood didn't reinvent the wheel like Bungie did with Myth, but there are some nice new features. Burrowing tanks, rivers thaw and freeze over, shifting from night to day are all new. What is new is variable terrain and how it slows down units to varying degrees (hopefully no more tank rushes).
I did enjoy starcraft because unlike tiberian sun it was atleast a bit different.
Starcraft is really Warcraft3: Lost in Space. The only thing that got was changed in Starcraft was unit differentiation. Similar graphics, same annoying low resolution, same BS about having to research everything all over again for each frikken level, if the AI doesn't know where stuff is on a level it runs around like a headless chicken.......
Even if that is true, Apple could have made it impossible (or at least extremely difficult) hardware wise to upgrade the chip, instead of doing it with Firmware.
All the Apple haters here need to cool down before they hyperventalate themselves out of their chairs.
The Blue and White Macs only came out this spring. Apple knew that the G4's would be comming out this year, so if they really wanted to prevent cpu upgrading they would have put the damned processor on the motherboard and not on a zif socket.
I've heard two reasons why Apple did this:
1. To make sure they were the only source of G4 systems for their big rollout in Seybold.
2. G4's are going to be in high demand, so they ensured that they would have enough until supply caught up.
I would bet money that Apple will release another firmware update to allow G4 upgrading, probably early next year, once the G4 hype has faded and there is a good supply of the chips. Even if that doesn't happen, Apple never said these systems would be upgradable.
If you want a G4 chip, you have to buy it in a G4 Mac. How is this any different than the requirement that you have to buy a G4 system to get that 22" Apple Cinema Display? I didn't see any mass flaming on that discussion.
Of course you PC weenies can build a dual x86 system for less money than a new Powermac, because Apple is an OEM. You would pay similar prices for a proffesional system from Dell or Compaq, but I don't see you bitching at them.
Slashdot Mirror
:)
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)
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?
Because you'll start to see the benifits when you start adding drives. Unless you have an UW SCSI card for each hard drive, your total data bandwidth is limited to 20 megabytes per second. With that 1600 megabits of bandwidth, all your drives can operate at full speed at the same time.
Yes, regular SCSI is going to keep advancing, but Firewire has all of the benifits of SCSI (its actually based on SCSI) but none of the drawbacks. No SCSI termination or ID's to mess with, up to 67 devices per Firewire bus, peer to peer operation, much longer cables, you don't have to worry about sheilding, etc.
Don't worry, somebody came around and did that already. :) Just hope they also bumbed down all the "C&C sucks!" flames.
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.
lacie has a 20GB firewire drive for 500 buckeroos
Cool, I'm glad prices are falling that fast. Internal or external?
What you Apple bashers need to realize is that you can have 67 devices per firewire bus, and it is possible to do RAID with it. So if you ran out and bought a 10 gig hard drive every three months, in two years you would have 80 gigs to store all your mp3's. And thats not even counting how much capacity will rise in relation to cost.
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)?
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.
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.
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).
who trusts them anymore?
Oh yeah, Microsoft and Intel are so much more reliable.
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.
FireWire is supposed to be supported in the 2.4 linux kernel
Are you sure? Didn't Linus make some derogatory statements towards Firewire at Linux Expo?
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.. snip This is because firewire is just to darn expensive to implement in standard devices.
Dude, its a whopping 2 bucks for a firewire port. So while it might save you a little money on mice, keyboards and printers there's no reason not to use firewire on scanners, hard drives or Orb drives.
Blizzard has never released a game that didn't truely kick ass.
Starcraft and Brood War sucked ass. Hard.
Remember how long Starcraft was delayed? Remember how Bizzard said it would be a simultaneous release for both Mac and PC? Remember how it then took more than a year?
Hope you still want the Linux version when it comes out in 2006.
while WC3 looks (allmost) revolutionary
Yeah, it's Starcrap plus DiaBlow plus that junked Warcraft storyline!
If consider the (way too short, IMHO) lifespan of games, most people propably won't even remember C&C2 a year from know.
Depends on how good the game is. I still play more Quake 1 than Quake 3, becuase the weaps in Quake 3 suck ass. I still play C&C, and would probably play Marathon if I could find some people to network with.
Tiberian Sun brings nothing new to the genre
Westwood didn't reinvent the wheel like Bungie did with Myth, but there are some nice new features. Burrowing tanks, rivers thaw and freeze over, shifting from night to day are all new. What is new is variable terrain and how it slows down units to varying degrees (hopefully no more tank rushes).
I did enjoy starcraft because unlike tiberian sun it was atleast a bit different.
Starcraft is really Warcraft3: Lost in Space. The only thing that got was changed in Starcraft was unit differentiation. Similar graphics, same annoying low resolution, same BS about having to research everything all over again for each frikken level, if the AI doesn't know where stuff is on a level it runs around like a headless chicken.......
Even if that is true, Apple could have made it impossible (or at least extremely difficult) hardware wise to upgrade the chip, instead of doing it with Firmware.
All the Apple haters here need to cool down before they hyperventalate themselves out of their chairs.
The Blue and White Macs only came out this spring. Apple knew that the G4's would be comming out this year, so if they really wanted to prevent cpu upgrading they would have put the damned processor on the motherboard and not on a zif socket.
I've heard two reasons why Apple did this:
1. To make sure they were the only source of G4 systems for their big rollout in Seybold.
2. G4's are going to be in high demand, so they ensured that they would have enough until supply caught up.
I would bet money that Apple will release another firmware update to allow G4 upgrading, probably early next year, once the G4 hype has faded and there is a good supply of the chips. Even if that doesn't happen, Apple never said these systems would be upgradable.
If you want a G4 chip, you have to buy it in a G4 Mac. How is this any different than the requirement that you have to buy a G4 system to get that 22" Apple Cinema Display? I didn't see any mass flaming on that discussion.
Apple at WWDC 1997 PROMISED that Rhapsody would run on ANY MACHINE SOLD BY APPLE IN 1997.
That they did, and AFAIK RDR2 runs on all computers made in 97. However, since OS X isn't Rhapsody, they aren't breaking any promises.
You don't get it: Apple impaired the ability of G3's already bought and paid for to upgrade.
Apple never said these machines would be upgradable. So peevishness agains Apple is perfectly fine, but hatred is not.
And my 486es don't even have heat sinks on them. What's your point?
Oh yeah, your 486 is really comparable to a modern processor like the G4, a P3 or a K7. Why didn't you just throw in an 8086 for good measure?
Of course you PC weenies can build a dual x86 system for less money than a new Powermac, because Apple is an OEM. You would pay similar prices for a proffesional system from Dell or Compaq, but I don't see you bitching at them.