Jobs responds to outrage over MacBook's missing FireWire - Page 28

It's one of those "it depends" things. I definitely wouldn't label price a non-factor or minor factor in the biz market though.

I used to work at Sony, and I remember when our dept needed some new comps. There was a significant wait before we could get the funds, and while the higher-ups wanted us to get something that "could do the job", it was pretty damn clear that we weren't being handed a blank check.

In the end, we were able to score some pretty decent midrange PC minitowers (thanks for NOT MAKING those btw, Apple, and completely taking yourself out of the running), plus a couple of lower-end iMacs (the iMacs somehow ended up going to the higher-ups... of course. ).

That wasn't too bad, but during some times our dept was shockingly price-restricted. Like the time when we asked IT for some RAM upgrades to our old, aging desktop PCs (this was before we bought the new comps). They upped us to 1GB, no prob, but when we asked to be upped to 2GB a few months later, it was no dice. And this was *RAM*, for pete's sake.

So, I'd say that businesses can most definitely be price-sensitive, but it comes and goes, depending on how the company is doing and what 'priorities of the month' are coming in from the higher-ups.

If the budget's being squeezed, you're screwed, basically, and have to wait for fatter times to get something decent. And a lot of even that depends on who you know and is dependent on your boss not being a tool.

...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/te...nted=2&_r=1&em

"when Apple drops FireWire from its bestselling machine, it's a good bet that other models will follow.)

Last week, on the phone, I got a chance to vent my unhappiness to Steve Jobs himself. I told him about my long-held intention to edit down those 100 tapes, maybe when I'm retired.

I must admit, he gave me quite a wakeup call. He pointed out that in 10 years, there won't be any machines left that can play them.

(He also mentioned that, realistically, the only time people really edit their movies is just after they've shot them. And sure enough: I've been intending to edit my tapes for 15 years now; what makes me think I'll have time to do it in the next 15?)

Mac and video fans may not like it--especially the part about having to buy a new, tapeless camcorder--but the writing is on the wall. Tape is dead; camcorder manufacturers have been saying as much for years now. And Apple is not about to preserve some legacy jack just for the sake of the dwindling MiniDV cult."

"The company points out--accurately, alas--that nobody's buying tape camcorders anymore; people either buy memory-card or hard-drive camcorders, or they just record video on their digital still cameras. All of which connect to a computer by USB."

"you can transfer huge files extremely quickly [with firewire]

Apple says, "You can do the same thing with an Ethernet cable," and that's true. But Target Disk Mode also lets you repair or recover Mac #2 if it won't start up, and there's no replacement for that tactic."

You can use a bootable hard disk or remove the drive and use an enclosure for the last part.

None of this changes the fact that people who currently own firewire devices will have to replace them. Apple should have provided a solution of some sort to allow people to use their devices. Even when they got rid of the floppy, you could buy an external one.

Even if they had something like an Elgato stick that would capture video from a camera using a hardware encoder.

I don't think firewire will be removed from the desktops if there's room for it but from the article above, it looks like Apple don't see a need for it any more. This is the beginning of the end.

It makes sense given that fast data transfer is all that's needed so we should transition to a better format. Apple know that USB 3 is on the way at 4.8Gbps and that's faster than any port we have now, even the newest firewire developments and there's supposed to be a wireless part to it.

There generally aren't firewire mice, scanners, printers, webcams etc. These are mostly USB so continuing with firewire means you always have to have two types of port. With USB3, you have one type for everything. You could even replace ethernet with a USB3 port.

It minimizes redundancy because there will rarely be a port you don't use. People won't say 'well I hardly ever use the firewire/ethernet/whatever port anyway'. If it's all USB3, no port type will go unused. I also think it will be a while before people find 4.8Gbps to be too slow. That is fast enough to fill a 1TB drive in under half an hour.

If it can act as a display output in the same way as displayport, all you'd have on a future Macbook is 4-5 USB3 ports. It could come as early as next year:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9780794-7.html

Ideally, Apple would have waited until USB3 was in place before dropping firewire but the redesign had to happen now. Intel have published the spec so it's just a matter of time:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/218886/i...face-spec.html

USB3 could be an addition used to sell the Macbook in 6 months when it will just get a CPU bump. It is the last element in the high performance agenda: fast processing (GPU, multi-core), fast storage (SSD), fast transfer (USB3).

They don't just look at the price. They must consider the depreciation from capital purchases. If they are too low, then depreciation isn't as effective. apparently, $1,500 is about the level where it really kicks in. Below that, they might actually pay more because of the depreciation factor, and how it's figured.

But as your RAM request goes, it goes back to what I always say, business rarely upgrade machines. It puts a monkey wrench in the tax and depreciation plans. The 1Gb might have gotten under the write-off, but not the 2GB.

I agree that business will rarely upgrade machines however I don't see what the specific tax troubles are. Any separate parts for upgrades are considered separate items (whether it's RAM or an LCD) and are therefore depreciated separately (from the date of purchase), while service is considered a direct cost and is written off as such.

But if you said that business can rarely be bothered upgrading a machine, then I'd agree with that... \

The other thing I don't understand is this attitude that businesses have such deep pockets that cost is not an issue... that may be so in some industries (I'm not sure which ones) but I'm working on a v. large budget project and the IT nazis are very strict with personal limits on most things. I keep asking them why my mail storage is limited to 200 MB when I can get 7GB free on the net and storage generally costs less that $1 per G... and yes I am deliberately facitious with them

PS my "up-to-date" question earlier was badly expressed... I meant upgrade, as in business want to know that when they invest in an item (in this case computer hardware/software/peripherals) and it requires upgrading, replacement (in a couple of years) or simply additional units sometime sooner, the same product and features will be available. Which is why business will rarely invest in single source items due to lack of competition and certainty of supply.

as perhaps noted previously
the fear has been around since 2005 \

Unlike machines, memory is rarely allowed to be accounted for as a capital expenditure. It's expensed. That's very different, and accounted for very differently. The tax benefits are much less.

{quote}
But if you said that business can rarely be bothered upgrading a machine, then I'd agree with that... \[/quote]

Yes, that's a big part of it as well. It's very expensive to upgrade machines, mostly from the cost of the time of the employees.

An example can be understood from the expense of lighting. While is only costs about $2.50 for a 4 foot fluorescent tube, it costs over $6 to have a person replace one. While memory is more expensive than lighting, the cost of the personell is much higher as well. It may seem that replacing two DIMMS may cost $50, but it may actually cost $100, once all the factors of time, ordering, traffic, disposal of old chips, packaging etc. are added in. Much of that is not chargable.


You've missed the point here entirely. No one has said that at all. You can't compare a company such as Google, which sells services and receives billions in ad dollars for the services it "gives" away, with the costs a company incurs for the same services, and the much more limited bandwidth is has available. In most companies, IT is a service, not a profit center. Therefor it must account for its budget differently. That's because as a service, it's purely a drain on the company. While it is obviously required, most companies look at it as something they must have, rather than a department they would like to have. It's backoffice, like accounting, which is also a negative budget area, though required.

Particularly when times are tough, companies prefer to cut where marketing and sales are not involved. So, after the 2000 question, IT budgets have been down.


Well, yes. Often, when companies do their buying budgets, they are on three year plans. One reason why Apple has often been left out of those plans is because they won't do the three year part to part guarantee other manufacturers are willing to do.

Many companies, particularly the larger ones, require that on that three year plan, all the machines they order be EXACTLY the same. Exactly! Part for part. Every cap and resistor be the same, from the same company, even.

They want to know that when they have problems with those machines, as they will, the problems will be predictable, and therefore easily repaired.

Apple doesn't do this. It keeps them out of the bidding process in many companies.

I didn't say they did. But I did say that price tends to be a major consideration, and I fully stand behind that statement.



Apparently that memo did not get through to our higher-ups... our comp buys averaged in the $1,200 range, and we were told by IT that we were somewhat "lucky" in that we got better comps than most of the teeming masses were afforded.

You might be exactly right about the depro thing, but it doesn't matter if the 'powers that be' are either unaware of the depro advantages or choose to ignore them.



I honestly got the impression that they really did not have things thought out that far. It seemed to be more just a reaction to how much money was on tap at the time. But on that one, who knows.

...

I didn't mean for my reply to look as though you said that. Sorry if it came off that way. I was just stating it up front.


Well, those numbers are just an average. Each companies points will vary somewhat. And as we know, not all people in management are as competent as others.


If a company is really being strained, then that could be a factor. But usually, companies like to work things out over a longer term. Investors like that.

Wow I wish I worked for a company that bought $1,500 computers for everyone!! My first company bought the cheapest IBM business computers (You know the ones that every MB and HD died) for about $600/ea. The last company I worked for bought new Dells recently and I priced them out online and they bought the cheapest rig that they offered, with 1GB of ram and 80GB hard drives for about $750/ea.

Granted I have only worked for 3 corporations thus far but price outweighs depreciation worries because it has to come out of someones revenue and therefore managements bonuses etc. Common it's the "Do more with less" America we live in nowadays!

Actually, price doesn't overweigh depreciation worries for most companies. The numbers I stated were from articles in Computerworld, who got them from surveying a large number of medium and large corporations.

There will always be outliers, and in a time of stress, as we've been in the past year or so, these nmbers may break towards the lower end, because of concern over current cash positions, debt, etc.

But, overall it's still correct.

actually if you look at the US Master Depreciation Guide page 125 you'll find that some computer parts count as "rotable spare parts" which can be depreciated.

So in fact from the tables, if you purchase the parts after the original machine
(and assuming you can justify that it will not be useful after the life of the machine)
you'll get at least the same depreciation rate,
possibly higher if you can use the straight line method (rate = 1/number of years).

Also, according to the guide, computers are generally assumed to be a 5 year asset (see page 93).


OK but any payment for service invoiced external should be counted as a cost - and as you point out internal IT services are treated as overheads (same thing)
- but yes wasted time by a business owner can't be counted really...


Sorry Mel I don't think I have missed the point. Lots of people keep saying
(and I'm not sure it's necessarily you who's proposing this)
"if you've got a business just buy the MBP and depreciate it" as if:

1. all businesses can afford or are willing to get a machine that expensive
2. you could be ahead in terms of depreciation by buying a more expensive item

remember that while you may end up with a bigger tax deduction over the life of a more expensive machine
the non-deducted money is still tied up for the majority of that period

so if you can deduct 17.5% per year over 5 years (just example figures from the tables - not using the straight line method),
then after Year 1 you still have 82.5% of your money tied up, not available, not earning anything.

82.5% of a $1299 MP is 1070
82.5% of a $1999 MBP is 1650

and for some businesses that $580 difference multiplied by X number of machines could be a lot

but yes, if you're just out to get the biggest deduction possible over the life of the machine
you'd buy the most expensive machine you could

I suggest buying a MBP instead of a MB. I completely agree that Target Disk Mode is a tremendous advantage in Apple laptops, and I use it all the time, but I am not convinced that it is the only solution in the MB. Of course, I admit that I like using my iPod as a portable hard drive so am happiest with a Classic, and hate the touch because I cannot dump things to it from the desktop-- I know, different topic, but I'm all for more ports and USB&Firewire. I'm the guy who actually liked the early iPods having FIrewire, but boy was I wrong and Apple right about making USB the wave of the future--- let's see speedier USB drives.

At least the lack of FW400 happened after Apple made accessing the HDD a simple task. While it was easy in the polycarb MBs, it's even easier in the [Al] MBs.

I'm glad it's easier but nothing is easier than not having to touch it at all.

David Pogue missed a great opportunity to put Steve Jobs to the sword and to tell us all about it.

There is nothing on the market that tops Firewire as a technology. Firewire has a roadmap and as a founding creator of the technology I don't think Apple should be abandoning it. USB3.0 might look good on paper but it's not here now and will have to mature.

eSATA is faster but in real terms do we really notice the difference when pitted against FW800? For many tasks there comes a time when fast is fast enough. For backups and file transfer Firewire is fast enough. eSATA was an afterthought to SATA and it shows.

However, we know that in the very near future copying data will be a waste of resources for people with networked entertainment centres.

People will be looking at ways to stream content to devices around the home over cheap cabling or wirelessly instead of copying large files all over the place and have their output equipment understand it natively.

Firewire has all of the bases covered as far as I can tell.

All new technology is a chicken and egg situation so someone has to move first to get the ball rolling. Apple really screwed up on firewire by leaving it off the first iMacs and then on licensing. However, it stuck it out and started to put ports on the market and the market (and users) responded.

It really doesn't matter that there are more USB devices on the market as Firewire is the better option NOW for many tasks. And the good news is that, mostly speaking, firewire equipped devices are just a little more expensive than their USB counterparts. Choice is good. You might sometimes have to pay a little more for firewire but it may prove to be well worth it in the end.

Another area where Apple screwed up was finding an application that took advantage of the technology. The first one that really shone came far too late and was the iPod. Yes they did the right thing in moving to USB2.0 because at the time there were less firewire ports worldwide.

In 1999 Apple put an internal port on the PowerMac and then left it to die. There was obviously a reason for that port being there but it wasn't developed further. At the time Apple was not in a healthy financial situation but they still thought it was worth putting an extra port in there.

Fast forward to 2008 and we see that firewire most definitely has its uses (over the complete spectrum of users) and Apple is bursting at the seams with cash. Firewire could be taken much further as, finally, the thing firewire is really good at (audio/video transmission) will be a reality for common users in the very near future.

You would think that Apple would not only be anxious to put firewire ports on all its macs but also to be designing products to take advantage of that situation. Instead, all indications point to firewire being left to rot. Perhaps 'rot' isn't the right word, Apple has thrown in the towel and left a lot of its own users in the lurge by giving firewire a lethal injection instead of letting it fade away (or better still, letting the market and users decide). And for what? A few dollars?

I'd love to see HANA finally get beyond the prototype stage and come to market but it looks like DLNA is getting out the gate and gaining traction first. The fact that Apple is not and has never been a member of HANA perhaps is more evidence that they're just not willing to develop it further.

For a long time I thought FW3200 would never materialise. Recently I had started to think differently (oh, no pun intended).

I can't help but think that David Pogue let us down to a degree by not putting forward a strong enough case or, if he did, not putting it into print. I can think of few people with his credibility in the macworld better postioned to get into the nitty gritty of what has really happened with this issue.

First off, let's clarify that the only FW being left off is FW400. FW800 still exists on the new MBPs.

Secondly, FW is not an ideal way "to stream content to devices around the home over cheap cabling". That would be Ethernet. Cabling is cheap and it's considerably faster than FW400 in sustained throughput.

Finally, eSATA is an after thought with is evident by the lack of power, so it's a non-starter as a replacement to FW or USB.



Apple did screw up, but not the removal of FW400 which is highly unused in favour of USB accessories, but the lack of foresight to use the same interface standard for FW400, FW800 and FW3200 for physical backwards compatibility.

I just don't get the rabid posts stating that Apple should support a dead-end interface standard for a very, very small segment of their MacBook userbase. In fact, it's an excellent reason to get rid of it on the machines that are least likely to be utilizing it.


I'm certain there are considerably less percentage of FW400 ports than their are USB ports on computers.

You would think that Apple would not only be anxious to put firewire ports on all its macs but also to be designing products to take advantage of that situation. Instead, all indications point to firewire being left to rot.[/quote]
FW400, yes; but that has been a long time coming. I have not seen any indication that Apple has removed any FW800 from their machines. If they were planning to kill FW altogether, would be so close to FW3200?

PS: Rot is not apropos, as that is what it was doing before. What Apple has done has finally unplugged FW400 from life support so it can finally rest in peace.

This is what HANA had to say on why they rejected ethernet (part of a document on why they opted for Firewire):


I can't provide a link as that snippet is from a document I have locally but it was and probably still is online. I just don't have the link at the moment.

That sounds very dated. 100BASE-T and MPEG-2? Besides that, I just don't think suggesting that homes should be wired for FW is feasible at any level and have no issues with video streaming over the internet on a so internet connection, much less any issues with 1000BASE-T and 802.11g/n network streaming media. The apps buffer enough to handle everything fine. My parents still use the very first Linksys 802.11b router with their AppleTV to buy content from iTS and to stream from their wired iMac.

i agree with most of what you're saying here although i would be careful arguing that because USB is used on most accessories, that it's all that's required on a MB.
as a lot of people have said before, there's not much area of overlap - although FW can do everything that USB can, due to the size of the port and the inflexibility of the cables most small, low CPU intensive peripherals are mostly USB

that's just the way it is and i don't see anyone feeling the need to argue FW has to prove its usefulness by doing these tasks
FW400 for a mouse is like delivering mail in a porsche... possible but why would you bother ?
(notice i said porsche and not ferrari - that would be FW3200 )

however there is a need for a more intelligent, powered type connection on a notebook which Apple 'forgot' to provide on their MBs... that is their oversight

let me put it this way:
- I for one wouldn't by a MB (or any computer) today that doesn't feature USB...
- but I wouldn't buy a notebook today that didn't feature another more intelligent connection as well (or minimum an expansion port so i could choose one)

while I agree that GigE is exactly what's required around the home (except for the lack of hot swap capability on some peripherals)
it's useless for mobile due to lack of power (ditto for ESata currently)
remembering that mobility is exactly why most purchase a notebook - and not a mac mini


not so dead end... interestingly some peripheral manufacturers say that FW400 is all that's required at this stage

I tend to think it's a chicken / egg situation with peripheral makers loathe to uprate their equipment with FW800 ports until most suitable laptops feature them...
but the notebook makers doing likewise.

so it's ended with a stand-off and the FW progression has somewhat stagnated.


actually I think the current MBs are going to be the only things left to rot
because no matter from which point of view you look at the issue is that there is no powerful mobile connection on the MBs...

in a year or so when Apple comes out with a MB update (with whatever more powerful mobile connection Apple is supporting at the time),
no one will want one of the current machines simply because it only has (very) old technology on it

i hope u don't take offense if you've just bought a MB \
but i think the resale value will be fairly low within a year
particularly when the next ones come out with either FW800 /3200, USB3, powered ESata or powered FW over GigE

i think that's when people will realise:
- what an letdown this release was
- that the MB is essentially an overweight Air
- that there's more space inside a MB for another connection than they think

Remember that there are Blu-Ray discs on the market encoded with MPEG-2. High Definition has more to do with resolution than codecs.

100BASE-T was referenced as it was/is very common and very cheap. The proposal is not to wire houses with firewire cables but to use firewire over coaxial. Of course, there are other reasons firewire was finally chosen (among them things like copy protection).

Your knowledge of SATA is weak if you think the difference in speed isn't much, or important. SATA and ESATA are four times as fast as FW 800, as a bus. Why is that important? Because FW 800 only allows the fastest HDD's to run at about 60% of their speed, while SATA allows 100%. You can use port sharing with SATA to get to almost 375 MB/s on a raid. Not with FW 800, where port sharing (which is different in FW) only goes to about 80MBs.

What is wrong with ESATA so that "it shows"?

There are many more uses for storage than moving entertainment files around a network at home.

Got mass storage, SATA is much better. That's why it's taking over, not only internally, but externally as well.

FW is getting squeezed from the low end with USB, and from the high end from SATA. FW's niche is becoming smaller all the time.

While I've been saying that Apple jumped the gun here, the handwriting is on the wall. It's just a matter of time.

FW 3200 won't be here for a bit of time yet, and it's likely we'll see 1,600 first. Not much of an advantage.

While that's happening, there are a number of newer technologies that are coming out, as extensions of other current ones that will be better still.

FW will still have a niche in the audio and video marketsfor a while. Those will continue to move away from it as well.

That's a lot of nonsense!

100MB Ethernet has rapidly become obsolete in favor of GB Ethernet, which Apple has been supplying in all their machines for seven years now.

10 GB Ethernet has arrived, and is at the stage GB Ethernet was at the same point after its introduction, which is to say, expensive, but dropping in price.

Video is moved around on Ethernet networks sucessfully in professional settings every day, and has been for years.

That document is woefully out of date.

BD hasn't used MPEG-2 since the very beginning. It would be difficult to find one with MPEG-2 encoding, and all the re-releases of those disks have been redone in H.264.


Gb Ethernet is pretty cheap these days, and outnumbers the 100MB ports out there.

Remember that all of these organizations have their own axes to grind. There are decisions being made that are less for technical reasons than for political ones.

Off topic: Have you read anything about FW over Ethernet actually coming to fruition?

It doesn't look like there is much work being done with it. Some experimental work, but I haven't seen anything really useful.

Bare Feats tests different drive transfer technologies on a new model MBP.

Interesting:

http://www.barefeats.com/mbpp10.html

Remember that the Macbook never had FW800, only 400.

What makes you think that I think the speed difference isn't much? I said eSATA was faster, in fact I think Apple is treading the road it went down before supporting USB2.0. The only losers in that situation were mac users. I'd very much like to see eSATA on Macs. What I said was that for backups etc Firewire was fast enough.


Did I say anything was wrong with eSATA? No. I said it was an afterthought with regards to SATA and it shows. If it hadn't been an afterthought things would have been planned differently. Important things like cable length and bus power.


I said in certain situations copying files around would be a waste of resources. Streaming is a better option for some media files. I never said there weren't other uses for storage. In fact I wasn't talking about storage.


What makes you think that I think otherwise?


SATA and Firewire are in different universes. Did you mean eSATA?


It seems many people agree on the first bit, myself included. I think the second bit is a harsh fact.


Like I said I had my doubts at first but maybe it will be here before we think. I've been reading that TI is moving resources away from FW which is bad news but there are others bringing FW options to market.

You say it's a lot of nonsense but three out of your four paragraphs fail to detail why. The one paragraph that might have something to do with the quote I posted is extremely vague. In those professional ethernet networks are they moving files around or streaming them?

Bandwidth and speed are important but there are other considerations that the quote specifically touched on. One thing is for sure, the more speed, space and bandwidth we have, the more someone finds a way to use it. Congestion will always be a problem to deal with.

Ok:

"SATA is faster but in real terms do we really notice the difference when pitted against FW800? "


Your sentence said it all. Now your explanation shows that you don't understand technical limitations.

What makes you think that more "planning" would have allowed them to have a cable length over six feet for E-SATA? SATA has a max cable length of about 40".

As far as bus power goes, for most implementations, it isn't needed. but Power Over SATA is coming in 2009, as is, by the way, power over Ethernet.


I can hardly find a worse way to move files around a network than FW. It simply isn't designed for it, and is much more overkill than is Ethernet, which is designed for that. The oft talked about FW over Ethernet is not a reality, and is not likely to become one, except for a few small, limited purposes.

Streaming is a waste of bandwidth. It's much easier to move the files. It takes seconds to move a GB's worth of a file, but streaming, because of the protocols needed, takes effectively more bandwidth.

Even for streaming these files around the network, GB Ethernet is better.


We can go back to the quote of yours I listed above.


SATA and E-SATA are the same thing. The only difference is in the physical layer. E-SATA includes shielded cables, and a slightly different connector.


Yes, we agree on this. The facts are something that's called reality. It's happened before, and it will happen again.


It will be here for a few specialized uses. And then it won't be here at all.

They're doing both. I do both at home here with my GB network. It works very well.


FW has congestion problems as does every other networking protocol. Bandwidth makes up for most of the problems.

Many networks are designed for one thing or another. They are not generalized networks. Home networks, for example, are usually very underutilized. GB Ethernet has a good 125 MB/s available to the users. That's way more than any possible usage on the network for most people. There are ways to double that bandwidth if required. Streaming a file that requires less than 10% of that bandwidth is not a problem at all, even with other use.

There is no point to implementing FW1600 today. None.

Either we jump from FW800 to 3200 or we wait for USB3. Apple must know which road they've decided upon.

Hopefully, they do the sane thing and make a formal announcement at MWSF.

I rented a house with three friends in college. We had a file server (like a NAS, but louder), on a gigabit network (practical maximum speed = 300Mb), and we had no problem streaming video to every computer in the house at the same time.

Pogue is one of a very small, select group of tech journalists (along with Mossberg and a couple of others) who seems to consistently get special or early access to new Apple products. I'm sure he didn't want to jeopardize that by getting into an argument with Steve, who's been known to be petty and retaliatory at times.

Still, I agree that he should've done a lot more that say he's "sad" about Apple's (rather premature) FW decision and more-or-less roll over for Jobs.



Amen to that. But since when has Apple ever consistently done the sane thing?

...

Melgross,

SATA and Firewire belong in different universes because they were designed for completely different reasons. SATA was designed to be an internal storage technology. Firewire was designed to be an external peripheral technology. They both move data over networks but from a design and planning point of view they had very different goals.

eSATA was simply an afterthought to SATA and it shows. If they had considered an external option form the start, cable length and bus power simply would not be an issues now and need to be pegged on at a later date.

In the case of HANA still more problems had to be overcome. It's one thing to send data over ethernet from computer to computer (where there are ample resources at both ends and someone can administer traffic) but something completely different to send media to audio/video equipment of all kinds where resources will be extremely limited and non-upgradeable in a non-administered environment. In those situations things have to 'just work' as Apple likes to put it.

Networks move data, that leads to congestion at some point. What is key is finding a way to guarantee QoS where necessary. Firewire has always provided for this.

I hopw we'll see some movement there. Apple does have a habit of not letting us in though, as we know.

Possibly any update we may see in the Mini will give us an idea. If they remove FW from there as well, the it's obviously goodby.

I would imagine the new Mac Pro will retain it, and the updated iMacs would also, as they just added FW 800.

But I doubt that Apple will announce anything unless it's just about to appear.

It would have been good if The new standards were ready now, rather than later in 2009.

I would have been shocked if you said you did.

You keep repeating that same line about E-SATA, can't you come up with another one? It's tiring reading it again.

SCSI was also at first, an internal implementation. It was also extended, and never had power. It was very successful despite that.

SATA is the same sort of interface. E-SATA extends it. Power is not THAT important, but is being added.

We'll even be getting power over Ethernet before too long. 10 GB Ethernet with power will be kick-ass.

The truth is that even the amount of power FW has, isn't nearly enough for most practical purposes. Most photographers in the field who shoot digital (almost all) use generators to get enough power for fashion, and other big shoots. They don't power their external drives off the internal battery of their laptops. Thats a joke!

As far as power in the studio, or any other fixed location goes, power over the bus simply isn't important.

Power Over SATA is coming out simply because few people really want to run single FW drives anymore once they compare the speeds with E-SATA. I hope you read the link I posted yesterday to Bare Feats. Even FW 400 doesn't have too much of an advantage over USB 2 for HDD's now.

It really leaves just a few things. Older camcorders, and a few new models, and a few Audio devices.

In another year or so, most of those will be on USB 2 or 3, make no mistake about that.

I bet MOTO is kicking themselves for removing the USB 2 interface now.

The problem FW has, is that it wasn't thought out too well back in the early days. In the beginning, FW was 100 Mb/s. That's all most camcorders can do, as they only have 100 Mb/s FW chips. The first FW chips couldn't even handle anything other than camcorders. It took over a year after the first implementations before that problem was resolved. It was thought that FW 400 would be all anyone would really need, so faster implementations were put on the back burner, until after USB 2 came out, and they suddenly realized that they waited too long. Then they started to work on an ambitious program.

Unfortunately, they found that FW was pretty complex, as we found out from all the problems we had with lost data, and corrupted drives. FW 800 was about two years late. 1600 should have been out over 18 months ago, and 3200 should have been here NOW, today, in machines.

They screwed the pooch, as it's said, and it isn't likely they will ever make up for it.

One of the biggest failures was not being able to convince HDD manufacturers to produce "native" FW HDD controllers, as they did with IDE, SCSI, and now SATA. That doomed the standard in the beginning.

Even Hi Def. Tv, for which FW 400 was originally part of the standard, has abandoned it a while ago.

So, while Apple did jump a bit early, the trend is already established. FW is dying. The fact that it will linger on for a while in some expensive equipment doesn't matter for the vast majority. Those needing that expensive equipment will pay for expensive computers to run it, as they always have. Everyone else will get something else.

As far as networks go, you are repeating the same errors.

Most equipment now have cpus inside that can, and do, manage data, streaming or not, priorities etc. All BD players have a computer built-in, for example. All set-top boxes are computers, etc. FW is becoming less important all around as computing is reaching the "ubiquitous" stage. That is, with everything having its own built-in intelligence.

In the end, Intel, and other cpu manufacturers win, because the cost of this intelligence has become worth pennies per device. My toaster has a four bit cpu, with its own Flash memory, and the toaster only costs about $50.

I doubt that there is a single camcorder these days without a cpu controlling its functions. Even some SLR lenses have two computers inside, and the cameras often have at least three.

The iPhone has three computer chips, and most other phones have at least one.

The argument for FW was good in the days when cpu's were expensive still, and didn't exist in most other devices. The world has changed, and so that's no longer true.

Thus, that last argument for FW has disappeared, as each device communicates around the network, and can participate in managing itself.

Ethernet has been taking over these functions too.

This will become even more obvious as time moves on.

Marvin posted the link.

Steve is right about one thing. If you let your MiniDV tapes sit a little while they keep sitting. I have a stack of 20 DV tapes sitting next to me that have been on my ToDo list...looks like a couple, three years now. I might import them SOMEDAY but EDIT them? Not too bloody likely.


The general market disagrees.


Yes. Seriously. With a multi terrabyte data store it's likely to be RAIDed.


For backups and file transfers USB2 of GigE is fast enough...note that Time Capsule has no FW interface.


This is called GigE or 802.11N


Which part of 100 Mpbs confuses you?

I don't need to. I've made my point but I'm sure some people will continue to see eSATA as an adequate substitute for Firewire. It isn't.



The BareFeats link you provided gave a great example of why power through cable can be desirable. As eSATA is only for storage I agree it's not too urgent to have it. For technologies like FW though it is desirable.


I must be getting ahead of myself. I don't know why but I thought power over ethernet already existed.



That would be a joke but power over cabling is far from unpractical. Completely the opposite in fact. The key is powering devices while connected to the mains or for very short periods. Nobody I know enjoys having to tow power bricks around with them. In fact many smaller external drives do not even ship with power bricks (some don't even have an option for a power brick) so bus power is a must.




Yes, but that's like talking about USB3.0. It's not here yet. The point of course will be moot for new MacBook owners as Apple has already hosed their options.



I'm pretty sure that firewire was projected to reach at least FW3200 right from the get go. From a Mac perspective I distinctly remember MacWorld magazine mentioning this in 1999. It definitely was quite well thought out in the early days, at least from a speed perspective. They knew where they wanted to go.

Changes were made along the way and they did take too long to finalise revisions to the spec and then it took even longer for silicon to appear and for prices to come down.


Nothing of this nature is not complex. Data loss and corrupted drives had absolutely nothing to do with firewire as a technology and absolutely everything to do with the lack of coordination between Apple and bridge producers.



Don't take this the wrong way but you yourself don't want me to tire you with my repitition of FW and eSATA being in completely different universes. Lack of native FW drives was an ENORMOUS issue (especially for mac users) but I can assure you it had nothing to do with dooming the standard. Firewire is not exclusively a storage technology. Not having native drives is irrevelant for the standard. It would have been a killer issue for eSATA as it is only a storage technology. Firewire, by nature does a lot more things than eSATA. FW does storage nicely but unfortunately has to use bridge chips.


Apple is supposed to buck trends. It doesn't need to be this way but it is this way thanks, at least in part, to Apple.


No. I am not repeating the same errors and this aspect of discussion is getting quite far off-topic.

I said that sometimes it is better to stream content rather than copy it. I said that A/V networking was a question of resources and how to make good use of them. Your TV cannot accommodate a multigigabyte file copy. Wherever possible, existing installations should be used (the coaxial reference) I said that QoS is essential. Your TV needs a guarantee that data will arrive on time and in order.

There are all manner of ways to do that but it all has to be unified in some way and has to be as seamless to the end user as possible. FW is perfectly capable of such a task and is one of the reasons HANA chose it

No part. Why do you enquire?

Let me just re-state that 100, 1000 or 10000 Mbps means little without adequate QoS built in to its DNA.

Yes, I'm aware that ethernet had some QoS patched into it. It was evaluated and discarded by HANA.

That isn't true. If you have plenty of bandwidth, then QoS is usually not needed on a home network. My parents have a 15Mbps internet connection from their cable company whilst using a Linksys original 802.11b router with a 10/100Mbps switch. The iMac connects to the switch at 100Mbps and their AppleTV connects to the router via 802.11b. They can stream media just fine from the iMac, Hulu, YouTube, and iTS over that 11Mbps wireless connection. Why do they need the overhead of QoS if it's all working well? If I were going to anything, it would be to get them an 802.11n router with a 1000BASE-T switch to match their Mac and AppleTV HW.

However, if they needed QoS, even home routers offer solutions based on HW and SW ports, and IP and MAC addresses. I'm not sure what you are getting since Ethernet has long been used for tried and true streaming and downloading and FW just doesn't have the distance and inexpensive setup as FW.