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ZDNet blog thinks Macintels will drop FireWire

by David Chartier Dec 9th 2005 at 8:00AM

FireWire cableMacRumors reported on a ZDNet post yesterday that thinks the Macintel iBooks, whenever they arrive, will drop FireWire support altogether. The post's author, Jason D. O'Grady, also says that a little bird told him that PowerBooks are going to drop FW400, but retain FW800 as "a concession" to video professionals.

Now I am neither a high-paid industry analyst, nor do I have little birds whispering in my ear, but to a lowly video student and Apple enthusiast such as myself, this sounds like a rumor that went just a tad over the top. Jason cites the lack of FireWire support on the latest iPods to spark off his post, but I think that decision was based on factors very irrelevant to FireWire and its intended uses. FireWire is a fantastic protocol, meant for more intense operations like video editing throughput and OS booting - two significant things that USB is all but useless at. iBooks may be Apple's "low end" portable line (I use quotes because they still rock the house), but there are plenty of video editors cranking out great work with them. Let's also not forget that the rest of the PC industry as of late has finally caught up to FireWire; it seems nearly ubiquitous on most of their hardware now.

I guess at the end of the day, I really hope Jason missed the mark, or that the bird whispering in his ear simply needs to lay off the sauce. FireWire has a number of essential uses, and it's a necessary standard in a lot of industries - just not with certain white music players that transfer a few songs from time to time. Enough with my rant though, what do you guys think: would, or should, Apple truly ditch their beloved FireWire?
 

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MacRumors reported on a ZDNet post yesterday that thinks the Macintel iBooks, whenever they arrive, will drop FireWire support altogether....
 

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Kim Kwan

People, has anybody read the system requirements for Tiger? It says 'built-in FireWire'. OK?

FireWire will live!

December 31 2005 at 5:37 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
John Robinson

I think they are full of it if it's so. I could not get a new Seagate barracuda 200 gig HD in a USB2 enclosure from CompUSDA to mount on either a G5 or a PC both at home and at CompUSA. I put the same HD into a CompUSA FW enclosure, BINGO. I mounted. I'm running. I'm working. Pow. What can I say? jr

December 12 2005 at 3:18 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ronaldo McDonaldo

i just got a hi-def cable box/dvr by motorola that has two firewire ports on the back of it...

December 10 2005 at 7:48 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Tom

I'd miss firewire badly. Why? Well, the 'ol G3 iMac has USB 1.1 and Firewire. No USB 2.0. Also, I've eaten 2 3G iPods because iTunes isn't as Firewire friendly as it once was. Trying to sync the iPods was eating the hard drives. Now I'm using a USB 2.0 cable and it works like a charm... just slowly... and without charging... Again, thanks Apple.

December 10 2005 at 12:18 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Alan

I don't think they will drop firewire, at least not for a while. Much of the audio recording industry depends on firewire audio interfaces or firewire hard drives, and I doubt that Apple would exclude all of those Mac users from being able to use these products. Apple gets a lot of its business from sound engineers... so it would not be wise to simply ditch firewire. If anything, they may slowly phase it out, or get rid of it on its base models but offer it as an upgrade.

December 09 2005 at 2:59 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
David Chartier

I know one or two comments here have mentioned that a simple adapter could let FW800 port accept a FW400 plug and it would simply step down the speed. With that in mind, I could *almost* fathom Apple dropping FW400 ports and simply using FW800 on both iBooks and PowerBooks as some kind of space and cost saving trick, but... I really don't think most people want to screw with stuff like that. They just want to plug it in and have it work, not mess with another adapter that's one more thing to carry and keep track of.

December 09 2005 at 2:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ben

I sure as hell hope they don't drop firewire. I've got a 2nd Gen iPod, 100GBof firewirehard drives and a MOTU 828 that all use firewire. Dropping firewire support would be a stupid move on Apple'spart.

December 09 2005 at 2:17 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
John Laur

People who write articles are stupid. Firewire, and more specifically FW400 ports are essential for anybody using consumer DV cameras and even the low end of the professional arena with HDV, HDVC-PRO, etc. FW800 interfaces are nice for external storage; however the legacy 100mbit mode provided on the interface is a CPU hog meaning that most Firewire 800 ports are pretty useless when connecting a camera. Dropping firewire support would immediately eliminate half of the iLife product line from running on the notebooks. You won't see it happen, period. iBooks will retain FW400 and powerbooks will retain FW400 and FW800; simple as that.

December 09 2005 at 1:46 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mark Studdock

You can pry FW400 out of my cold, dead hands...

December 09 2005 at 1:26 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Aaron

Remember though FW 800 is backwards compatible, albeit through a converter, just like 4 pin is compatible with 6 pin.

December 09 2005 at 1:02 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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