WUB - is this where the "abandoning FW" comes from?

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
Wireless Ultraband. Is this where the rumors of Apple abandoning FireWire comes from? Perhaps the rumors are true, and the reason being that everything will go wireless in 06?



Imagine an Airport base station with an antenna/SCART plug. You place it on top of your TV and plug it into your SCART plug, or perhaps it will only work with Apple displays.....?



Now imagine an Apple display receiving the signal through Airport "wireless" !!!

This would mean you could buy a Display from Apple and hang it on your living room wall. Sit back in your sofa. Activate frontrow with your remote. Now you have access to all your media on your computer, from your sofa, on a huge flat display!!! Imagine being able to put displays everywhere in your house simply by hanging it on the wall and everything working wirelessly!



Would this put Apple on the front seat in the run for the living room?



Keynote comming up.... fasten your seatbelts everyone, this could be a big one !





Sincerely



Zab The Fab

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 16
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    Ultrawideband, whether as Wireless USB or as Bluetooth, won't become mainstream before 2007 at the earliest.



    The FW nonsense is only from some site that shall not be named as all it cares about is being talked about.
  • Reply 2 of 16
    For the last time: Firewire = DV Camera interface. Apple has a big push in home video editing and DVD creation. Ergo, Apple will drop Firewire when video cameras drop Firewire. End of discussion.



    - Jasen.
  • Reply 3 of 16
    Quote:

    Originally posted by jasenj1

    For the last time: Firewire = DV Camera interface. Apple has a big push in home video editing and DVD creation. Ergo, Apple will drop Firewire when video cameras drop Firewire. End of discussion.



    - Jasen.




    There are some cameras that do not have Firewire on the market today, more on the DVD camcorders than on miniDV or other formats. I would imagine the trend for lower cost camcorders will be to move to USB 2. The JVC that I just bought has both, and on a PC can transfer video over both connections. On a Mac you can only use Firewire with iMovie, but can set it up for streaming on the USB 2 and transfer digital stills. I think that there was a lot of hope for Firewire, and it is a good connection but the broader range of products have not come out to support it, and Apple's move away from it for the iPod could be taken a a sign.
  • Reply 4 of 16
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by @homenow

    There are some cameras that do not have Firewire on the market today, more on the DVD camcorders than on miniDV or other formats. I would imagine the trend for lower cost camcorders will be to move to USB 2. The JVC that I just bought has both, and on a PC can transfer video over both connections. On a Mac you can only use Firewire with iMovie, but can set it up for streaming on the USB 2 and transfer digital stills. I think that there was a lot of hope for Firewire, and it is a good connection but the broader range of products have not come out to support it, and Apple's move away from it for the iPod could be taken a a sign.



    Using USB to transfer video is stupid. Apple is not moving away from Firewire. Mac users have become far more gullible about silly rumors from sites that jumped the shark years ago.



    FW is the preffered method for connecting a digital camera. The DVD cams have usb because they record in MPEG2 and have no timecode to transfer anyways.
  • Reply 5 of 16
    fran441fran441 Posts: 3,715member
    Firewire was dealt a major blow when Apple announced the switch to Intel. Intel's USB 2 is going to be central on the Mac motherboards that they produce and you might see 1 Firewire port on the first Intel Macs but I doubt it will be for long.



    Apple itself has embraced the move to USB 2. Look at the iPods now. They come with a USB cable. If Apple really wanted to continue the push of Firewire, iPods would ship with a FW cable and an optional cheap USB cable could be purchased separately. Instead, I have to either settle for normal USB transfer speed or buy an expensive FW cable to hook up my new iPod to my Mac using Firewire since my Powerbook does not have a USB 2 port.



    Apple is trying to make their products as mainstream as possible, and this means they are going to sacrifice their own technology (in this case Firewire) to try and increase market share. We saw this happen once already, anyone remember that Apple abandoned the old serial ports in favor of USB?



    Plus, since Apple abandoned the PPC, why is it hard to imagine they will abandon Firewire?
  • Reply 6 of 16
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    Quote:

    Plus, since Apple abandoned the PPC, why is it hard to imagine they will abandon Firewire?



    Simple. Firewire is not a host based connection as USB is. Thus Firewire is going to remain the standard for video products at the low end.



    Audio interfaces perform better with Firewire because of its better isynchronous performance.



    Sony Vaio and Toshiba laptops all have FW on their midrange and high end products.



    O'Grady hasn't been right in years and is in MOSR territory now.



    The iPod eschewing FW for USB makes sense for cost reasons. Ridding the computer of FW makes no sense when there are plenty of FW products that exist with no end in site.
  • Reply 7 of 16
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Fran441

    Apple is trying to make their products as mainstream as possible, and this means they are going to sacrifice their own technology (in this case Firewire) to try and increase market share. We saw this happen once already, anyone remember that Apple abandoned the old serial ports in favor of USB?



    Plus, since Apple abandoned the PPC, why is it hard to imagine they will abandon Firewire?




    Intel has a nice firewire chip for their motherboards. What makes you think that Apple wouldn't use it. The switch to Intel has nothing to do with Firewire. Apple won't abandon Firewire in the near future. Of course, in the future, they may very well, but as stated earlier, only after the DV market has abandoned it.
  • Reply 8 of 16
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    Not again.



    1) FireWire provided no actual benefit over USB 2 for iPods. USB 2 is vastly more popular than FireWire on the average computer people hook up an iPod to. Since the hard drives and flash memory chips have nowhere near the speed of FireWire 400 or USB 2, there is simply no noticeable difference.



    Yes, it means that modern Macs cannot boot off the iPods (older Macs can boot off USB 2, newer ones can't any more), but that was never an advertised feature, not to mention the drives are very slow and optimized for low, infrequent usage. Booting off an iPod



    2) FireWire has various advantages that USB can never replace, especially when it comes to video editing.
  • Reply 9 of 16
    It seams I'll have to simplify my post



    ? Is FireWire (cable) being replaced with FireWire (WireLess) ?

    ? Will we see Apple displays with this new WUB (WireLess UltraBand) so we can simply plug our display into a powersocket and get the video signal wireless?



    It seams my post was misunderstood. I was not asking if FireWire was better than USB2, BUT, if FireWIre cable would be replaced with FW Wireless.







    Sincerely



    Zab The Fab
  • Reply 10 of 16
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    My take is that FW400 is being dropped in favor of FW800 (or wireless) by default... and somehow the last part got lost in communication somewhere.



    At *MOST* I *might* be able to see the iBooks losing FW since they are the low end consumer product, but nothing else. It just doesn't make sense.
  • Reply 11 of 16
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Zab The Fab

    It seams I'll have to simplify my post



    ? Is FireWire (cable) being replaced with FireWire (WireLess) ?



    No. Wireless is always an addition, not a replacement. WiFi does not replace Ethernet. Bluetooth does not replace USB.



    Quote:

    ? Will we see Apple displays with this new WUB (WireLess UltraBand) so we can simply plug our display into a powersocket and get the video signal wireless?



    No. UWB (UltraWideBand) provides nowhere near the necessary bandwidth.
  • Reply 12 of 16
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Kickaha

    At *MOST* I *might* be able to see the iBooks losing FW since they are the low end consumer product, but nothing else. It just doesn't make sense.



    Consider that the (later) iMac G3s were marketed for "Desktop Video" capability. iBooks these days are far more well-equipped. Wouldn't it be strange of Apple to drop that capability?



    iMovie does not support USB-based video input (to my knowledge).
  • Reply 13 of 16
    e1618978e1618978 Posts: 6,075member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Chucker

    No. Wireless is always an addition, not a replacement. WiFi does not replace Ethernet. Bluetooth does not replace USB.



    No. UWB (UltraWideBand) provides nowhere near the necessary bandwidth.




    UWB is scaleable from 100 Mb/s to 2000 Mb/s - I think it is plenty fast to send video to a TV or computer monitor.



    In fact, that is one of the example applications on the intel UWB page:



    http://www.intel.com/technology/comms/uwb/
  • Reply 14 of 16
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    Both USB and Bluetooth would be implemented with UWB at 480 MBit/s. That's fast enough to send a very high-quality compressed video stream, but hardly for a monitor.
  • Reply 15 of 16
    e1618978e1618978 Posts: 6,075member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Chucker

    Both USB and Bluetooth would be implemented with UWB at 480 MBit/s. That's fast enough to send a very high-quality compressed video stream, but hardly for a monitor.



    Using MPEG2, 1920x1152 at 60Hz uses only 80 Mbits/sec, and even less if you use MPEG4.
  • Reply 16 of 16
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by e1618978

    Using MPEG2, 1920x1152 at 60Hz uses only 80 Mbits/sec, and even less if you use MPEG4.



    You were obviously missing my "That's fast enough to send a very high-quality compressed video stream" part.



    For uncompressed, it's not enough. That's why DVI, UDI, HDMI all have vastly higher bandwidth.
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