*** Work in AUDIO/VIDEO? FIREWIRE?**** Think again - post Oct 2007

frankiilacomposerfrankiilacomposer
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
I was going to sell my MBPro (Aug) 2.2 for a newer MBP.



Gearslutz (where many manufactures, composers, artists, recording engineers, editors go) have said that anything built after OCTOBER 2007 DOES NOT use TI (industry standard firewire chip-set) and it is causing problems.



I hope Apple Insider can get to the bottom of this.



http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music...er-2007-a.html.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    frankiilacomposerfrankiilacomposer Posts: 35member
    As a PC USER who has tens of thousands of dollars worth of sample collections, and some MACS now, I was going to trade up to a newer Macbook Pro. However, with the advent of non good graphic cards in lower end models, as well as macbooks and minis (on-board), I am wondering if it really is Apple being afraid of the PRO jumping to cheaper products vs. maybe Apple is just using cheap parts.



    Surely the market suggests that the bulk is the iPhone and iPod base, even though todays report (wall street) puts Apple as having its growth only in one product (the mac) and thus reducing its forcast from $160 per share to $115 in the next several quarters -



    In my quest to sell my MBP, today I came across this regarding CHEAPER firewire chip-sets with nothing but problems from all the major heavy hitters in the audio business.



    http://discussions.apple.com/thread....70870&#6370870



    http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music...er-2007-a.html



    It seems that after OCTOBER, Apple went with a cheaper (and no name brand) versus the industry standard, TI, otherwise known as Texas Instruments for their fire-wire chips. This is causing havoc.



    As a PC user (past tense) I have understood that if you have a working system and are merely upgrading for more FPU (plug ins) one really has to look at the specs - and running (booting) into single mode shows mine as having TI (built AUG/SEP) whereas the new ones do not.



    This is leading me to believe that Apple doesn't care if the pro jumps to cheap (i.e. putting in a good graphic card) as much as I used to think this - as I know believe that they care only about the bottom line and as a pro user that makes up a fraction of the bottom line - I think its terrible as we used to be the core of what Apple stood for. - with todays announcement of only the MAC being Apples link:

    http://www.appleinsider.com/articles...th_driver.html



    future bread and butter - one can only hope that things like better graphics cards and better firewire can be implimented onto the next set of devices.



    One can hope as the mom and pops with their iMacs will have kids who will demand better systems - - in addition, those that use the high end Mac Pro's for Pro-Tools, Avid, Final Cut (very secondary), they too have the firewire made by Texas instruments.



    Why they switched is beyond me - and perhaps this is the reason that I got a high dollar value from a listing of this 2.2 on Craigs list - it seems that if you are in the audio/video business and need a laptop, only those built prior to OCT 2007 will suffice and the value of mine just went up. No way I am selling this, especially since if I add a firmtek esata card or 7200 HD, I can surpass a dual G5 almost double with more than enough power.



    I hope they rectify this problem as this is really an issue and stems way beyond the PRO user as the MBP is supposed to fall into this unless they are trying to get you to buy into a Mac Pro.
  • Reply 2 of 5
    joe_the_dragonjoe_the_dragon Posts: 931member
    They went to pci-e based firewire in all of the new macs
  • Reply 3 of 5
    frankiilacomposerfrankiilacomposer Posts: 35member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Joe_the_dragon View Post


    They went to pci-e based firewire in all of the new macs



    Is this what happened in October? If so, then they have their work cut out for them. ASUS makes the motherboards, no? I believe ASUS acted quickly as did Giga-Byte and many others when the PC went Pci-e for the PCI cards. The first few months (2) two years ago, knowone updated their audio/video rig, and the motherboard manufactures responded rather quickly and I remember FIREWIRE being on of the issues and with PCI-E and firewire, you had to, had to, had to, look for Texas Instruments.



    If Apple is aware - which users have posted at their forum as well as complain, I hope they fixed it for the newer macbook pros. Was going to get a iMAC as well (24") but will wait. Probably a Mac Pro - and will check out the mini specs.....I read you can swap out the CPU on the mini...so we'll see.



    To be fair, and I don't know how much truth there is to this, I thought I read, if you get say a firewire drive that uses TEXAS INSTRUMENTS, you can then (e.g. hard drive) daisy chain your audio device onto it w/o problem. Again, not sure how true this is, but I do know it was months before it got solved on the PC side of things and it looks like current iMacs still use the LUCENT (tested one the other day)....



    Would like to hear/read more from those in audio and if they have a new macbook pro, how well its working with 1394 devices.



    Will update when I find out more.
  • Reply 4 of 5
    ytvytv Posts: 109member
    First time I seen the summary post first, then the novel posted 2 hours later, lol.
  • Reply 5 of 5
    frankiilacomposerfrankiilacomposer Posts: 35member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Joe_the_dragon View Post


    They went to pci-e based firewire in all of the new macs



    UPDATE - MBP (new) not on the floor yet, had an apple friend boot up, saw with my own eyes, TEXAS INSTRUMENTS, didn't say anything about 400, just MAX speed 800, so assume its all TI as having several chipsets makes no sense. Mind you, this was a 2.5 not the bottom 2.4 model.

    Nice to see 7200 as standard box now for 15"



    Pricey though, better of sticking to 256 GPU and buying your own 7200.



    Good news.
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