Posted September 8th, 2005 @ 07:35am by Erik J. Barzeski
Question: Do you think that Firewire is dead?
My Answer: No. Digital video means too much to Apple. The nano lacks Firewire to keep the size - and price - down, and USB 2.0 is available on just about every Mac of the past, what, four or five years? So I'm not gonna agree with that drunk guy…
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Posted 08 Sep 2005 at 1:48pm #
I can't understand why Firewire 800 uses a different plug then Firewire 400. I thought that was incredibly stupid. USB 2 used the same plug as USB 1, and thus the transition was smooth as butter. With firewire, now we have basically 2 different interfaces to connect to, making things more difficult and the transition is far from seamless.
Am I missing something?
Posted 08 Sep 2005 at 2:20pm #
Firewire is definitely not dead. So far I agree with you. However, USB 2.0 has not been available for four or five years - more like two years... The Titanium PowerBooks didn't have it, the G4 towers didn't have it except for the very last update, iBooks didn't have it for a long time... So I guess there are lots of Macs out there that cannot benefit from the higher speed.
Posted 08 Sep 2005 at 2:23pm #
I've seen mixed reports about whether or not the nano supports firewire. A number of people are reporting that it works fine with all dock-compatible iPod accessories, including FireWire cables.
Other people say it doesn't, but none of them seem to have actually tried it.
I guess someone needs to go to an Apple store and give it a try to find out for sure.
Posted 08 Sep 2005 at 8:17pm #
Dustin: When you connect a usb 1.1 hub to your Mac featuring USB 2.0, all USB 2.0 devices will use 1.1 speeds anyways. IEEE tried to avoid that problem in FireWire by using another connector (there are converters available, though).
Posted 09 Sep 2005 at 8:34pm #
The iBook of just two years ago didn't have USB2, same with eMacs of the same vintage as far as I can tell from the ones at work.
Putting 46GB on using Firewire took forever, I'd hate to do 4GB on USB1.1. Yick.