Who needs USB 2.0? Apple announcing Firewire2 (1 Viewer)

[Patrick Larkin]

Apparently, news of Firewire2 has leaked out before being officially announced today at Macworld.
USB 2.0 was the speed king for a few months and now will be not only overtaken by Firewire2, but thoroughly trounced in speed.
Smartdisk has already announced a Firewire 2 hard disk capable of throughput up to 800Mbps.
ITWorld Story

 

[MikeAlletto]

Unfortunately a USB 2.0 pci card can be gotten for $25 but a firewire card costs $50. I bet firewire 2 card will cost even more. Devices aren't going to sell if the pci cards cost so much. Firewire is awesome, but the price has got to come down if it is going to survive.

 

[JasenP]

Until it's cheap for the PC it will be a niche. Sounds good though, I just hope it catches on.

 

[Joseph S]

Firewire PCI cards are available for $25. I think I only paid $19 for the one in my HTPC.

 

[Patrick Larkin]

Cards? We don't need no stinkin' cards!

Built in Firewire 800 in all Macs by summer, I'm sure. And just like Apple's introduction of USB and Firewire spurned thousands of peripherals, so will Apple's intro of Firewire 800.

Firewire is awesome, but the price has got to come down if it is going to survive.

We are talking Firewire 800. Twice the speed of Firewire and USB 2.0 will speak for itself.

 

[MikeAlletto]

We are talking Firewire 800. Twice the speed of Firewire and USB 2.0 will speak for itself.

I know, and I still say until price comes down it won't go anywhere beyond apple hardware. Their adoption of firewire hasn't had the same effect as their early adoption of USB did. The only reason firewire (1) is starting to pick up is because of sony and their camcorders (and everyone else's camcorders). I have a feeling firewire b will be the same way. Everyone is just now getting into firewire a and just starting USB 2, I really doubt we'll see a jump for devices to firewire b until at least a year or more.

I hate to say it, but until intel offers firewire b on their chipsets it won't go anywhere besides apple's domain.

 

[Patrick Larkin]

Firewire picked up on the PC only because of camcorders. (although, the pcs still have no good software to deal with the raw dv). In the Mac world, there is a vast array of Firewire based hard disks, tape drives, and anything else that requires a huge pipe to move data. Not to mention the iPod which seemed to even win over some PC diehards.

FW800 is only on the most elite Mac there is so even Apple knows its a year away from mass adoption. But if you've ever slurped in DV from a DV camcorder, you'll agree that doing it in half the time is a MAJOR improvement. Its only a matter of time before all Macs and iPods are FW800.

I hate to say it, but until intel offers firewire b on their chipsets it won't go anywhere besides apple's domain.

Switch!

 

[MikeAlletto]

Their may be a ton of firewire peripherals but is anyone actually buying them? I still know many mac people and they don't own any firewire stuff.

Switch!

Hehehe...actually I switched the other way about 3 years ago because I could build a (at that time) top of the line PC for about a grand. I couldn't get anywhere near that price for a top of the line mac, much less build my own, and I was pissed about it too. I would love to buy a new apple laptop and I still occassionally use my wallstreet one, but it is slowly dieing (crashes and locks up constantly for no reason, battery sometimes doesn't charge, and the hardware itself does very wierd things sometimes just when shutting down), but the whole $3200 for top of the line and $2500? (is that what its at? I closed the apple store window) for the next step down is still WAYYY to expensive.

 

[Michael*K]

I'm a big FW800 backer. That said, I don't see how you are going to "slurp" DV from a camcorder any faster unless the camcorders are redesigned. The video still needs to be imported from the camera in real time, which it currently does under FW400.

 

[MikeM]

I hate to say it, but until intel offers firewire b on their chipsets it won't go anywhere besides apple's domain.

Naaah, it'll have nothing to do with Intel, it'll have to do with actual firewire devices, camcorders, MP3 players, etc. Once people buy items with Firewire 800, they'll need the speed. Then the PC cards get cheaper due to volume, and the cycle grows.

By the way, I'm writing this using apple's new Safai browser. Wow, it's great so far! The quote button even works on the HTF! I never had that thing work for me with Explorer! Niiiiicceee....

 

[Kelley_B]

Man a firewire 800 iPod would be sweet.

 

[Michael*K]

Man a firewire 800 iPod would be sweet.

I think this will be implemented in the next revision of the iPod, especially since support for video playback (think HUGE file sizes) will be a near certainty.

 

[Chris Svencer]

Probably a Stupid Question....but with max read/write speeds on most hard drives at 100MB/s...how much does it matter if your external crap can run at 480 or even 800 MB/s? Won't the bottleneck be in the PC? Or am I missing something?
-Svence

 

[GeorgeTW]

I bought a fw pci card for my legacy Mac for $19. Works perfectly, fast as my scsi internals.

USB 2.0 is still a serial connection, and tasks the cpu accordingly.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

FW800 is only on the most elite Mac there is so even Apple knows its a year away from mass adoption. But if you've ever slurped in DV from a DV camcorder, you'll agree that doing it in half the time is a MAJOR improvement.

Except that no DV camcorders will transfer footage at anything other than realtime, nor are they likely to anytime soon.

 

[MikeM]

Except that no DV camcorders will transfer footage at anything other than realtime, nor are they likely to anytime soon.

For now...

 

[Jeff Kleist]

Alright, let me amend that to

"No DV product that you are likely to be able to afford during the useful lifespan of Firewire 800 and/or the DV format"

 

[MikeAlletto]

Probably a Stupid Question....but with max read/write speeds on most hard drives at 100MB/s...how much does it matter if your external crap can run at 480 or even 800 MB/s? Won't the bottleneck be in the PC? Or am I missing something?

Not a stupid question. There is nothing special in those hard drives that comes anywhere near being able to take advantage of the bandwidth of firewire. They are just regular harddrives with a firewire interface card stuck on the back.

 

[GeorgeTW]

The first generation of portable firewire drives allowed footage to be recorded straight from the camcorder. They even got their power straight from the camera. Has that feature been removed?

 

[Jeff Kleist]

No, that's a feature of firewire, carrying device power on the bus

The tape storage drives basically just take the incoming datastream and write it to disc. You are still limited by your playback mechanism