

Jobs responds to outrage over MacBook's missing FireWire - echair
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/10/16/jobs_responds_to_outrage_over_macbooks_missing_firewire.html

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ajross
This is just a small-scale repetition of the utter freakout that happened when
they went with Intel CPUs. It's the flipside of the religious mania that Apple
produces in its customers. A distinguishing technical feature (PowerPC,
FireWire) is taken in by the acolyte and interpreted not simply as a
difference, but as a _fundamental_ difference between the wonderful Apple
stuff and the junk in the rest of the world. The fact that CPUs and high speed
peripheral interconnect standards are more or less interchangeable in the
modern world gets lost in the mix.

~~~
mechanical_fish
I'm not sure I'd characterize the switch to Intel as an "utter freakout" -- my
impression is that the doubters quieted down fairly fast once they got a look
at the demos of the compatibility layer and the relative ease of cross-
compiling. And while the switch to Intel now looks like a no-brainer,
hindsight is always 20-20. That said, I'll agree -- to the extent that people
freaked out about the Intel transition, it might be fair to call it an example
of "religious mania".

But complaints about Firewire aren't about religion. Firewire and USB 2.0 are
only "interchangeable" _if you don't already own thousands of dollars' worth
of Firewire-only peripherals_. Which quite a few people do.

Yes, there are probably converters out there somewhere, or there will be. But
will they affect latency? Will they affect driver stability? The owners of
$1200 audio interfaces worry about such things. A lot.

Of course, this is not yet the end of the world. As the article points out,
Apple still offers Firewire on the MacBook Pro. Moreover, they are _still
selling_ machines like my white Macbook, with Firewire, _for less money_ than
the new Macbooks. So it's not as if Firewire is being phased out tomorrow. But
I don't blame customers for pushing back. If people can convince Apple to keep
Firewire around for an additional year, that's one more year that I don't have
to spend several hundred bucks to replace my Firewire-based audio interface
and hard drive enclosures.

~~~
cstejerean
The owners of $1200 audio interfaces should probably consider getting a
Macbook Pro. The Macbook line is apparently not targeted at people that need
professional audio equipment. Some people didn't seem to understand that and
it looks like Apple wanted to make it more clear.

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gstar
Target disk mode saved my ass just last night.

But I'm all for progress. Also, if you consider the waste that went into
fitting almost every single mac since 1999 with unused firewire ports, it
makes you cringe.

If you have a pro audio interface or pro camcorder, you probably want a
macbook pro anyway (just a shame they don't do one in 13")

~~~
tlrobinson
Target Disk Mode is indeed an awesome feature of every Mac with Firewire since
~2000.

Someone should hack together a "USB Target Disk Mode" live-CD based on Linux
or something. Surely it's possible.

Or not? I'm not to familiar with the USB protocol, but isn't there a
distinction between hosts and devices, hence the asymmetry of USB cables?
(unlike Firewire)

~~~
iigs
It would be trivial to beat the 400/480/800mbit of FW/USB/FW800 with a LiveCD,
and all of the pieces are more or less already there. Use the Gig-E wired
ethernet connection.

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charlesju
I think this was a necessary transition for Macs to take. There is no reason
to have so many different ports serving the same purpose. You can do
everything with USB 2.0 that you can do with Firewire. USB has essentially won
the war, supporting Firewire would just perpetuate this unnecessary battle
even longer. In the long run, this is better for the consumer.

~~~
kylec
The only thing I use FireWire for, Target Disk Mode, cannot be done with USB.
This omission has made the new MacBooks a lot less appealing.

~~~
kqr2
An alternative is to use an ethernet cross-over cable and just use standard
file transfer methods.

Or perhaps someone will write an os x driver to take advantage of usb-usb (aka
usb bridge / networking) cables that work for PCs.

[http://en.kioskea.net/faq/sujet-345-how-to-connect-two-
compu...](http://en.kioskea.net/faq/sujet-345-how-to-connect-two-computers-
with-a-usb-cable)

The advantage of these solutions is that you can work with other non mac os x
computers.

~~~
Angostura
Sorry - how exactly do you mount the disk of an unbootable Mac on another
machine, via an Ethernet cable?

~~~
iigs
The protocol you'd use is iSCSI. You could hack this together with commercial
iSCSI initiators on the working machine, and some kind of LiveCD target, but
Apple would need to release an initiator in OSX to make it slick and easy.
There is one for Windows, Linux, and the BSDs, and Solaris, so asking for this
feature in OSX doesn't seem entirely unreasonable.

~~~
jeromewbrock
look up openfiler

<http://www.openfiler.com/>

put that on a boot cd and you're all set.

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ashishk
It's hard to get everything right.

Apple has messed up a few times (firewire and the mini slot on the macbook
pros that were never used). But overall, they make great machines.

~~~
lyime
I don't think taking out firewire would be a mess up. I am pretty sure quite a
bit of thought went into this decision. Apple brings changes into its products
quite slowly. I am not surprised at all that Apple is letting firewire go.

~~~
ashishk
Totally agree. I meant putting it in might have been a mess up.

Apple was really pushing firewire hard with the early generation iPods. If I
recall correctly, they only accepted firewire. I don't think that worked out
too well, because they eventually accepted USB as well.

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weegee
if Apple had added an additional USB 2.0 port, that would have been better,
than just removing the Firewire port altogether and leaving just two USB 2.0
ports. I would need a hub if I were to upgrade to this MacBook, which now I
don't plan to do. I'll just be using my Dec '06 MacBook for a few more years I
guess, which isn't really a bad thing either as it is a very nice Mac indeed.

~~~
axod
The less ports the better. Ports look ugly. If you have that many peripherals
that need to be attached at the same time, a hub is probably best.

