[CharlesS]

Once upon a time, I was considering writing an app to make this easier, but now that FireWire seems to be on the way out, it may be a waste of time...

[Eug]

Well, FWIW, those FireWire-enabled PVRs are ubiquitous in North America. You'd be a hero in Mac-land if you could make it easy.

[CharlesS]

But what good would it be if no one could use it?

Today FW is gone from the MacBook. How long until it's gone from the rest of the line?

[Eug]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

But what good would it be if no one could use it?

Today FW is gone from the MacBook. How long until it's gone from the rest of the line?

Well, I personally think it will be many years until FW is gone from the Pro line, cuz FW is ingrained into pro usage, esp. in video and music.

But I see you point. People doing H.264 rips from PVRs are simply going to buy PCs to do it, cuz the MacBook no longer has FW.

[Maflynn]

The more I hear people complain and also talk with the salesmen at the apple store the more I wonder if apple will reverse its direction and offer FW on the MB in 09. While we can say that FW in the consumer segment is dead or this or that, does not change the fact that people still want/need it and don't want to buy a MBP to get it.

[fisherKing]

what i hate is, i'll go & buy a macbook, give up my firewire peripherals, and in february (or whenever), there will be a new macbook WITH firewire... wish apple had not done this (but of course, they have...)

[iREZ]

mbp is a prime example of this and it happened to me. went with a fw400 external instead of a fw800 because...i didn't have fw800, only to see apple release the next revision WITH fw800. so lame and a higher ram ceiling but that's a different story.

[Hawkeye_a]

I *WANT* to buy this new MacBook so badly, my mouse pointers been hovering over the 'place order' button for like 2 days now. But the exclusion of a FW400/800 is just nagging at the back of my mind, cause knowing Apple the next time they upgrade the MacBook, i can just picture Jobs coming on stage and saying...."the number 1 requested feature was FireWire, so we built in FW800 into every Mac we make including the MacBook", and then i know ill be pissed off wishing i waited.

I love the design, size, weight and performance of the 13.3" and i dont want the 15" jus cuase its less portable for me.

Ugh. this is ridiculous.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by iREZ 

mbp is a prime example of this and it happened to me. went with a fw400 external instead of a fw800 because...i didn't have fw800, only to see apple release the next revision WITH fw800. so lame and a higher ram ceiling but that's a different story.

Dude, you buy a $10 converter cable. The two specs are compatible, it's just a 9 pin to 6 pin converter cable you need.

[iREZ]

yeah...i know, thing is i wanted the speed of fw800, but because i didn't have one i figured why pay more for a FW800 drive when the FW400 drive was cheaper and i couldn't take advantage of fw800 anyway with my old machine.

[Eug]

That's the same reason I never bought FW800 drives... but now I have FW800 on my iMac.

[P]

The motherboard is pretty full, so... Which port should be removed to make room for Firewire? One of the USB ports? Obviously it would be a better solution to have two USB ports on top of each other, but let's say that that's not possible. Is it good trade?

[fisherKing]

Originally Posted by P 

The motherboard is pretty full, so... Which port should be removed to make room for Firewire? One of the USB ports? Obviously it would be a better solution to have two USB ports on top of each other, but let's say that that's not possible. Is it good trade?

looking at the macbook itself, there's plenty of room for one more port (i mean, my 12" powerbook had 6 ports...including 2 usb and one firewire, plus audio in and audio out ports...and a kensington lock)

[iREZ]

i don't know too much about the insides of my notebooks, but i believe its more a question of whether apple wants to more so than if apple can.

and yes IMHO 1 usb2.0 +1 fw400 > 2 usb2.0

[B Gallagher]

Originally Posted by iREZ 

IMHO 1 usb2.0 +1 fw400 > 2 usb2.0

Agreed. That's what hubs are for. I have two USB ports on my MBP, but in actual fact have about 6 devices plugged in.

[Hawkeye_a]

Originally Posted by iREZ 

and yes IMHO 1 usb2.0 +1 fw400 > 2 usb2.0

Yup. i'd have bought a MBAL by now if it had 1 FW400/800 and 1 USB2.0. i cant justify buying this product, and the MBP is too big and expensive for my needs.

FW integration into iMovie and the OS was one of the main value-adds and distinctive features over a Windows box imo.

[Ted L. Nancy]

I am glad Apple took FW off the MacBook.

I hope "Steve" doesn't change his mind and put it "back."

People are not going to buy a PC just because the MacBook lacks FW.

2 USB ports is perfect. We shouldn't give one up for FW400 or 800.

Quit complaining.

Geez.

[Eug]

Hmmm... My MacBook... which has the exact same footprint as the AluMacBook...

...has two USB 2.0 ports and FW400.

[fisherKing]

Originally Posted by Ted L. Nancy 

I am glad Apple took FW off the MacBook.

I hope "Steve" doesn't change his mind and put it "back."

People are not going to buy a PC just because the MacBook lacks FW.

2 USB ports is perfect. We shouldn't give one up for FW400 or 800.

Quit complaining.

Geez.

i don't think anyone wants the macbook to lose a usb port. but why can't all the firewire users 'complain'?
those of us who use: firewire drives, firewire cameras, or firewire audio interfaces have a right to be upset, and a right to voice our upset...

[iDaver]

The new MacBook looks awesome. Without Firewire it's just a netbook.

Firewire ain't coming back though. It'll be completely dead in a couple of years. Apple must think USB 3 has great potential, to be killing off their own Firewire technology.

Do you think any company will make or develop Firewire products from now on? Not likely.

[Big Mac]

Firewire 400 is definitely dead, but there is no evidence yet to jump to the conclusion that Firewire 800 is dying. If that were true, Apple would have removed both ports from the MBP and really pissed us all off.

[CharlesS]

Actually, removing FW from the MacBook Pro wouldn't have been as bad, since we'd just be able to re-add it with an ExpressCard anyway (of course, Target Disk Mode would probably be lost).

[iDaver]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Firewire 400 is definitely dead, but there is no evidence yet to jump to the conclusion that Firewire 800 is dying. If that were true, Apple would have removed both ports from the MBP and really pissed us all off.

Mark my words. Two years, tops and all Firewire will be gone from all Macs. The writing's on the wall. They haven't done it now because a phase out will reduce the shock.

If this is not true, Apple better make a public statement, and soon.

I sure wouldn't invest in the technology if I was a developer.

[Big Mac]

I guess we'll have to see. I hope you're wrong.

[CharlesS]

I hope he's wrong, too - but I fear he's probably right.

The MBP does have ExpressCard, though - and once USB 3.0 and eSATA are standard, it won't sting quite as badly. Apple needs to come up with some way to implement TDM, though.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by iDaver 

Do you think any company will make or develop Firewire products from now on? Not likely.

Name a similarly modular alternative for audio or video.

Until you can, there will be Firewire.

[hsl]

Can we have a petition that asks for a MBP without firewire too? ;-)

[Hawkeye_a]

I hooked up our camcorder(HDD based) via USB2.0. I navigated trough the filesystem to see a custom file format being used to store the video. iMovie would not recognize it or import video. The camcorder does have a FW port, which worked seamlessly with iMovie.

The inability to import and edit home movies on a $1299+ machine in 2008 qualifies as a major deal breaker to me. it's not a lack of technical specification, but rather a lack of basic functionality which cannot be compromised with.

Given the plethora of ports on Windows PC notebooks, i see no reason why Apple needs to make it's offering even more minimalist while compromising on functionality.(edit:with no viable alternative to accomplish the function....at least when they did away with floppies, they were zipdrives, CD burners, etc available).

What can i say ? i tried.
I cannot recommend this machine to anyone looking to get a laptop in 2008/2009.

[Big Mac]

Yes! Another one joins the Firewire Resistance Team.

[hsl]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Apple would have removed both ports from the MBP and really pissed us all off.

both Ports?

[issa]

Originally Posted by hsl 

Can we have a petition that asks for a MBP without firewire too? ;-)

I believe all you have to do is hit the magic button and start one.

Then "duck and cover".

[analogika]

Originally Posted by hsl 

both Ports?

Both FW 400 and FW 800.

As it is, they've removed the FW 400 (which doesn't matter in terms of performance, since both ports were running off the same single controller chip in the previous version, anyway).

[hsl]

Ah, I thought that the person I quoted thought that FW400 was still on the MBP

[Hawkeye_a]

Originally Posted by iDaver 

The new MacBook looks awesome. Without Firewire it's just a netbook.

Firewire ain't coming back though. It'll be completely dead in a couple of years. Apple must think USB 3 has great potential, to be killing off their own Firewire technology.

Do you think any company will make or develop Firewire products from now on? Not likely.

I agree. the MB looks awesome, with every other feature being in the sweet spot.

Its not about FireWire literally. it's about being able to seamlessly import and edit video on your home computer/laptop. I dont dispute that FW400 is probably on the way out. but until most camcorders have a new standard for transferring content, and iMovie and the OS actually supports that new standard, why do away with FW400 (on a consumer machine) ?

DVDs are on the way out as well, i could have told you that 10 years ago, but until a new format becomes ubiquitous it would make no sense to remove DVD drives.

If Apple is really so forward thinking(and this isnt just a marketing strategy to get the mac faithful to pony up for a MBP), they would have abandoned DVD drives when HDDVD threw in the towel and incorporated BR-DVDs into all their machines, but they didnt.

No FireWire....or rather no viable alternative, given the majority of consumer level camcorders today, was in my opinion a serious mistake, which will lead to a lot of dissatisfied first time Mac buyers when they try to hook up their camcorders to the new MacBook, especially since home movie editing is almost synonymous with Macs.

This has the potential of becoming a PR nightmare for Apple, all because they didnt include a FW400 port.

[hsl]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a 

DVDs are on the way out as well, i could have told you that 10 years ago, but until a new format becomes ubiquitous it would make no sense to remove DVD drives.

Well, they started that with the Air, I love it, optical drives (even blu-ray) are so over. Too bad they don't have the option to buy a MacBook or MacBook Pro with out an optical drive. I never use them, I always use networked storage, images on USB drives, etc. I'm glad I don't use cd's & dvd's anymore. jeej for cloud computing!

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a 

If Apple is really so forward thinking(and this isnt just a marketing strategy to get the mac faithful to pony up for a MBP), they would have abandoned DVD drives when HDDVD threw in the towel and incorporated BR-DVDs into all their machines, but they didnt.

again,... Apple is probably aiming for cloud computing.. it's the future.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a 

This has the potential of becoming a PR nightmare for Apple, all because they didnt include a FW400 port.

Don't be silly.

Really.

This is an issue for a handful of people, and it's mentioned in all the major-news-outlet reviews I've read so far, but it's FAR from a big deal, given the size of the market and the fact that most people who *need* Firewire are MacBook Pro users, anyway.

[Big Mac]

Whether or not the MB has Firewire has nothing to do with crap-level consumer USB camcorders using proprietary formats that are incompatible with iMovie, to whatever extent that occurs. Just so that we're clear.

[Ted L. Nancy]

Die FireWire! DIE!

[Hawkeye_a]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Whether or not the MB has Firewire has nothing to do with crap-level consumer USB camcorders using proprietary formats that are incompatible with iMovie, to whatever extent that occurs. Just so that we're clear.

Oh i agree the camcorder im referring to isnt great. it does have FW and USB2.0 and my point is, when i did want to import the video onto my Mac, it worked with FireWire and Not USB2.0.

A few years ago, all Macs had FW and camcorders had FW, iMovie recognized most of em. then some camcorders got USB and didnt work with iMovie.... the solution....buy camcorders with FireWire if you want to edit on the Mac. Now the MacBook has no firewire, and probably wont recognize the USB camcorders. So if someone wanted to do video editing on a Mac, they probably should not get this machine.

We managed to go from an almost near seamless video editing solution for consumers on every Mac, to such a complicated mess. 1. the companies that manufacture camcorders with USB2.0 are making it complicated, and 2. with the exclusion of FireWire from the MacBook, Apple seems to have abandoned video editing on that class of machine all together.

I dont care if it's FireWire, USB, Intel, PopwerPC, etc... thats all inconsequential, as long as the box does what i want it to do. And in this case,if i were to get a MBA or MBal, video editing has been made that much harder(if not impossible).

HSL: why have USB ? get rid of that too....if cloud computing is the 'next big thing'... get rid of HDD, why beat around the bush with these technologies ? the fact is most people need them in order to accomplish what they bought these boxes for. a "consumer" level laptop that cannot connect to most camcorders out there ? doesnt that seem a tab odd ? with the MBA sure, it's the machine people on the bleeding edge of technology lust for, and dont mind giving up features in order to say...'i have the thinnest/lightest' notebook. thats all well and good. but the average joe/ college student/home user probably wants to say 'it's so easy to eit home movies on my new laptop'. how is that possible with the MacBookAL ? Do away with all ports and drives for all i care... just let me edit and share my movies. is that solution available with the MBA/MBal ?

Video editing was and still is such a huge value add on the mac especially since the competition has yet to catch up. doing away with that simplicity seems a bit too 'un-Mac' and .... risky.

when they did away with floppies im sure some people complained, but the solution was...'here you can buy this external USB floppy drive'.

With this lack of FW400, what do you tell consumers who want to get that content onto their Macs ? is there even a solution apart from...buy a Mac with FW, import the video and transfer the project over ? or buy a new camcorder and forget about those old memories on your old camcorder ?

In the intro video Ive goes on about how simple they made it by taking out stuff that was not necessary, thats a nice design philosophy. But do consumers want Gb Ethernet, backlit keyboards, optical audio-in ? or to edit home movies ?

I browzed through the camcorders on Apple's website....the sub-$1k cannon models...will any of them work with the new MBal ?

[Big Mac]

The new Canon models are USB based, and if they're being promoted on Apple's site you can be reasonably sure they're iMovie compatible. Of course, I agree with your general contention.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a 

it's about being able to seamlessly import and edit video on your home computer/laptop.

iMovie 08 with a USB flash card reader an a Canon HF100 works great.

Originally Posted by hsl 

Well, they started that with the Air, I love it, optical drives (even blu-ray) are so over. Too bad they don't have the option to buy a MacBook or MacBook Pro with out an optical drive.

Here's to that!

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Whether or not the MB has Firewire has nothing to do with crap-level consumer USB camcorders using proprietary formats that are incompatible with iMovie, to whatever extent that occurs. Just so that we're clear.

The crap-level USB camcorders (Flip and friends) have nothing to do with the USB/flash or HDD/AVCHD camcorders that are available and comparable in terms of price/size/features/quality to the FW400/tape/DV or HDV. iMovie's lack of native support for AVCHD is unfortunate, requiring users to balloon the file sizes with transcoding, although the importing/transcoding process is smooth.

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a 

Oh i agree the camcorder im referring to isnt great. it does have FW and USB2.0 and my point is, when i did want to import the video onto my Mac, it worked with FireWire and Not USB2.0.

We managed to go from an almost near seamless video editing solution for consumers on every Mac, to such a complicated mess. 1. the companies that manufacture camcorders with USB2.0 are making it complicated, and 2. with the exclusion of FireWire from the MacBook, Apple seems to have abandoned video editing on that class of machine all together.

With this lack of FW400, what do you tell consumers who want to get that content onto their Macs ? is there even a solution apart from...buy a Mac with FW, import the video and transfer the project over ? or buy a new camcorder and forget about those old memories on your old camcorder ?

I browzed through the camcorders on Apple's website....the sub-$1k cannon models...will any of them work with the new MBal ?

What camera do you have?

The process is seamless with cameras like the Canon HF100.

Use your old Mac with FW to transfer your content from tape and pick up a modern camcorder.

Yes, the HF100/HF10/etc will work with any Intel Mac and iMovie '08.

[Hawkeye_a]

To clarify:
i tried using the camcorder (JVC gz-mg335 Link..... i know the JVCs are notoriously bad to use with Macs) using USB with:
-iMac 20" CoreDuo (Tiger, iMovie HD)
-MacBook Core2Duo (Leopard iMovie08)

It didnt work in either case.

When i hooked up using FireWire, it worked just fine. i find myself reading specifications and checking compatibility, etc... like i would if was using a WindowsPC Vista/XP. Unnecessarily complicated.

And yeah, its good to see Apple listing the USB camcorders that are supported, so i guess it's no different for new Mac buyers who can check the compatibility there. ( http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1014#2 ) Compare the 'list' for FireWire supported camcorders to the USB list.

So let me get this straight:
FireWire for tape-based camcorders ?
USB for tapeless camcorders ?

It will be interesting to see if Apple abandons FW on the next iMac.

[mduell]

Your link says the camera supports USB mass storage... did you follow the directions from Apple or try something else? I realize its not on Apple's compatibility list, but I don't know if that list is exhaustive.

In general, yes, Firewire is for tape-based cameras that have to import in realtime while USB is more common for consumer level cameras with random-access storage (usually a hard drive or flash (built in or on a card)) that allow you to import faster; Firewire can be and is used for the latter sometimes, but is generally skipped due to cost and lack of demand.

[Hawkeye_a]

First off, my apologies for going off on a rant guys. just got a little befuddled.

Just want this MacBook so bad(that i think im gonna get it tonight), and was annoyed that my external DVD drive will become obsolete and there might be a camcorder issue as well.

mduell, i tried importing the video over USB just as i would over FW400 on 2 different systems. didnt work, so i tried navigating the file system of the camcorder and found a different filetype alltogether. Every place i looked it says its easy to import into iMove...over FireWire, with no mention of USB. But some places mention the format on the camcorder is MPEG2(which iMovie apparently supports).

So yeah, im sorta at witts end.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by mduell 

Use your old Mac with FW to transfer your content from tape and pick up a modern camcorder.

That makes it sound like there are no "modern" miniDV camcorders. The deficient link in the chain here is a crippled MacBook, not miniDV equipment.

[CharlesS]

Mac: Hi, I'm a Mac,

PC: and I'm a PC.

Mac: So how're you doing, PC?

PC: Well, not so great. I was trying to transfer some video off of my camcorder, but it turns out that I need to buy a $30 FireWire card for that.

Mac: Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, PC. You see, every Mac comes with everything you need to talk to your camcorders, and use them with iMovie. It's real easy.

PC: Oh say, could you import just a little video off this camcorder for me then, and transfer it to me? I'd appreciate it a lot.

Mac: Sure, let me see this camcorder... uh...

PC: What's the matter?

Mac: ... I don't appear to have a FireWire port. That's odd.

PC: Well don't worry about that. You can just add it with a $30 FireWire card. You see, every laptop comes with an ExpressCard slot.

Mac: Uh...

PC: Oh, come ON.

Mac: <quietly backs away from camera>

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

That makes it sound like there are no "modern" miniDV camcorders. The deficient link in the chain here is a crippled MacBook, not miniDV equipment.

MPEG2 era codecs and forced realtime importing aren't aspects of modern consumer camcorders in my book.

[camerachris]

Originally Posted by mduell 

MPEG2 era codecs and forced realtime importing aren't aspects of modern consumer camcorders in my book.

The codec itself is in many ways irrelevant. What matters is the quality. DV encoding is much higher quality than the AVC variants that are used on the USB cameras (btw, DV encoding is intra-frame and has almost nothing in common with the temporal codec MPEG2, which primarily compresses by looking for redundancies over time).

USB camcorders may be "modern" from the standpoint that they have recent production dates, but they are not better or more "modern" in terms of video quality. DV encodes standard definition at 25Mb/s (even higher then ATSC HD rates of 19.3Mb/s), so the compression is minimal and the quality is very high. Once imported and edited in iMovie, you can compress the h*ll out of it if you want, but at least you have a high quality starting point and can make the choice. These "modern" camcorders compress video too much to make sure it will fit on SD cards, and you can never get the quality back.

I still use my Canon Elura, and can't imagine making a move for quite some time. I guess not until SD cards are big enough to increase the encoded data rates to ensure high quality. The problem with the modern camcorders isn't the codec (usually AVC varient), but the low bit rate requirements to use solid state storage.

[analogika]

Be that as it may, the consumer market is ruled by "good enough" and price.

Ergo, no Firewire on the MacBook.

[camerachris]

Originally Posted by analogika 

Be that as it may, the consumer market is ruled by "good enough" and price.

Ergo, no Firewire on the MacBook.

IMHO, anyone that is of the mindset that "good enough" is the way to go will be buying $500 PC laptops (that often do have FW), rather then $1300 models.


More specifically on the camcorder, the Elura was around $500 a few years ago - I would hope its even cheaper today. Are there really substantially cheaper camcorders out there (i.e., USB), regardless of quality?

I still maintain that Apple pushed iMovie for 7 or 8 years on consumers, and during almost the entire time the only mechanism to import video was Firewire. Dropping FW says to me that either no one really used their machines for home video editing (and iMovie was just a marketing ploy), or Apple is telling everyone that followed their lead, tough luck. All of you with your 7+ years of investing in FW equipment and hooking them to the mac - one of the features we always said that made mac different - well, you should go out an buy all your equipment anew... ugh.