A FireWire story

Firewire will always be for pros. When we do video at a datacenter, we will use firewire. Not only is does it use less CPU, but the sustained rate is better, it also works over longer distances much better. USB is for consumers, and such and I welcome the improvements, but when you need to rely on critical data firewire is how you go.

Well I have never really liked USB other than the fact it's much better than serial or parallel. The connectors are awful. At a glance they look completely symmetrical so to this day I still often try and plug them in the wrong way (especially when reaching behind a PC). USB has a much more limited 5v. I think it's silly for external devices to require power bricks. Firewire has much better connectors and they feel so much more solid. Firewire supports up to 12v so many more devices can be powered off of the port rather than using an extra plug. You can daisy chain firewire devices much like SCSI.

It's too bad firewire has fallen in favour over the years. It's much more difficult to get external drives that support firewire. PC motherboard makers are still including a firewire port much of the time so there's still some hope.

The reason iPod went USB only wasn't that USB was a superior technology. USB chips are cheaper than Firewire and USB 2.0 is "good enough" for what the iPod needs.

Indeed, USB 2.0 is "good enough" for many applications (printing, scanning, casual hard drive use, thumb drives, etc).

Firewire is a better technology, but only a few specific target markets "need" FW.

Matt, glad you found time to swallow that dictionary before you wrote this, but as others have pointed out, if you don't use the big words correctly, you'd be better off sticking to the smaller ones.

If all we talk about is a device to a PC (slave-to-master) then USB will be the dominant interface. FW400/800 will still be required for accurate video frame syncs and edits on the PC. USB will never match that even USB3 fiber or what not.

When a decoupled "peer-to-peer" communications is needed then here is where FW400/800/S3200 will shine. I think someone mentioned the "bidirectional" stream capability of FW. I believe he was referring to the isochronous streaming or "guaranteed" bandwidth-as-available at the time of request. Only FW have this option. The usual asynchoronous (USB's) is also available as the default mode.

Yeah, seems like a lot of bull but it does work and work very well that any serious video enthusiasts - from the daddy-cams, home hobyists, semi-to-pro videocam where every bit of frame accuracy counts.

Have anyone done iMovie with USB? Not if that videocam is equipped with FW. And that is the point for FW. You actually don't need the PC/MAC to have the FW cam to upload to a FW storage. Only if you need to edit the footage.

So, will this FW S3200 succeed over USB3 or eSATA? They all will succeed. They are not competing as a complete replacement of the others but in a complementary way.

You can think of USB1/2/3 for device-to-PC, FW for video and "peer-to-peer" device comms, and eSATA for local storage.

Although, they do have overlaps in capabilities, they are all complementary and I can't see any of them not coexisting with the others in the future - by Apple, Sony, HP, Dell or any serious hardware makers wanting to attract my $$$.

Ah! I have waited some 30 years to stumble across the word synecdoche in someone else's print.

My day is complete and I thank you!

:)

I also have several FW800 drives and don't want them to become extinct. Long live FW3200 and its (apparent) backwards compatibility.

It's a shame that FW is losing out to USB

--especially when I have about 8 devices that use USB and 1 (my LaCie external hard drive) that uses FireWire.
USB hubs never seem to work right for me.

Question: Why did FireWire never catch on with PC makers in a big way? I wonder...

Apple couldn't limit the iPod to FW and lose out on the PC market, thats old Apple thinking and we see where it got them in the past. As somewhat of a side affect Apple made the USB format all the more commonplace. Ultimately, you win some, you lose some, just like a soldier diving on a grenade to save his sergeant (figure of speech of course), FW has taken a hit so that the Apple business model of brand name saturation could begin with the introduction of the iPod into the mainstream market.

If FW truly wants to survive, it needs to adopt another one of Apple's strategies: Absorbing the competition's offerings so that the fear of losing any advantages by switching over to an Apple product become non-existent. By this I mean an FW device that can act as a USB device by way of an adaptor of some sort.

If you're going to use a ten-dollar word like "synecdoche", make sure you're using it correctly.

syn·ec·do·che (sĭ-něk'də-kē)
n. A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole (as hand for sailor), the whole for a part (as the law for police officer), the specific for the general (as cutthroat for assassin), the general for the specific (as thief for pickpocket), or the material for the thing made from it (as steel for sword).

Going USB-only on iPods was a huge mistake. I hate waiting for our newer iPod to sync, as opposed to my 1st gen. which is still going strong. I also hate waiting for USB scanners to chug along as they wait for the data to be xferred. Apple needs to get back on the FireWire wagon, and support any new FireWire developments.