There is a thread that is almost a year old speculating about wireless firewire [
http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...eless+firewire ]
I found it because news of Apple’s IP over firewire got me thinking
A little more searching and I see that public announcements of wireless firewire technology are pretty old too
jan 2000 -
http://www.nec.co.jp/press/en/0001/2602.html
may 2001 -
http://developer.intel.com/technology/1394/
dec 2001 -
http://www.osopinion.com/perl/story/15463.html
june 2002 -
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_...fm?NewsID=4848
there are lots more
… so where is it then ??
Of the various proposals the firewire / wi-fi [firewi-fi - sorry couldn’t help it] combination seems most interesting and the IP angle starts to make more sense
Ironically Intel’s article is particularly enlightening
They point out the issue of the cost of integrating firewire to wireless on a third party piece of hardware like a DV camera
Has Apple thought of a possible solution - and could it bring us back to the iPod yet again?
First imagine firewire[less] enabled computer clusters, streaming video and internet capable home appliances
Now manufacturers could be encouraged to release each of these types of hardware firewireless enabled
… or not
What if you could take your DV camera or set top box and plug an attachment into its standard firewire port which would give it wireless capabilities
keep imagining further possibilities with firewire’s [under-used] features - daisychaining, peer-to-peer computerless connections, power management
… and definite new possibilities - rendezvous, 802.11a + g, 1394b
and things can get quite exciting indeed
What if your iPod could ENABLE all of that
That would be your digital hub
OK so iPod is not wireless itself yet but it is begging to be
It would be great if Apple did not force us to buy a new one but introduced a snap-on port replicator-type thing that gave it wireless capability
The relative benefits of airport and bluetooth have been discussed here too
Perhaps it could do with both
Bluetooth is a natural choice for many things
_ input [which it desperately needs] - probably via a digital pen
[see
http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...highlight=iPen and
http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=118631 ]
_ wireless headset [note: NOT headPHONE]
_ pair with your mobile [use your iPod like you can use Address Book now - lookup contact and dial, ‘caller ID’/picture, SMS messaging]
… a bluetooth hub
Airport / 802.11-whatever would make it into a wireless networking hub
Maybe this stretches iPod’s too far but I have a feeling that a lot of it is possible
Everything I own is portable because at the moment I need it to be
Microsoft ‘corridor warriors’ have Tablet PC’s
Apple could skip over the iPod and make one themselves doing all of the above and more
… but you can’t beat the portability that iPod provides
iPod users are already road warriors
It could make corridors look quite boring indeed
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