[Eriamjh]

Originally Posted by csimmons

??? Of course FW 800 is backwards compatible. The adapter is necessary because the FW 800 connector is different than FW 400.

Perhaps Apple should have kept the connector the same for FW800 (like they did with USB2)?

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Eriamjh

Perhaps Apple should have kept the connector the same for FW800 (like they did with USB2)?

For technical reasons that wasn't possible. FW800 has 9 pins vs. FW 400's 6. The shielding and the plug had to change.

The dongle/cable is certainly not a real issue. The reason that FW800 didn't catch on enough to kick USB2 is that Apple didn't include it on every Mac they made, trying to treat is some exclusive professional mumbo jumbo instead of as the only lifesaver there was in fighting the USB-FW war and of course also, because they chose to be greedy and charge money. They should have learned form MS: First give it for free till everybody's hooked, then cash in when nobody can jump ship anymore. Had they installed FW800 on all Macs exclusively right from the moment the bus specs were frozen, the situation would look different now. USB would cater to the cheap crowd. Quality disks, video cameras, scanners etc. would use FW800 and nobody in his right mind would choose USB over FW for performance reasons.

I think for now, we should just be glad that we get powered 6 pin FW400 ports on every Mac (not 4 pin unpowered iLink crap like many PC notebooks) so we're not forced to use USB2 when it depends. For higher performance applications in the future, I'm hoping external SATA will take over.

[P]

Originally Posted by Simon

For technical reasons that wasn't possible. FW800 has 9 pins vs. FW 400's 6. The shielding and the plug had to change.

I belive that it would have been possible to run FW 800 over the old plug, but that the plug was chanegd due to the problem with ports burning out from plugs being forced in upside down - which was possible in the old design. When they had to change it anyway, they did some more tweaking.

[jeebus]

Originally Posted by csimmons

??? Of course FW 800 is backwards compatible. The adapter is necessary because the FW 800 connector is different than FW 400.

Yes but that is a huge pain and makes it less backwards compatible than USB 2.0. USB 2.0 would not have been nearly as successful if the connector had changed because that would require either having 2 sets of ports (1.1 and USB 2.0) or using adaptors for each port (quite a pain, especially for joe schmoe average user). Since the connector was the same, you could simply replace all USB 1.1 ports wit 2.0 ports and it would work both ways. For example on the Ti Powerbooks Apple even included an S-Video to composite adapter. Did I ever take it with me when I had my laptop? No, of course not, because it was yet another thing to carry and another thing to loose. So if I tv didn't have S-Video ports, I usually just didn't connect to it. USB 2.0 is like 802.11g while FW 800 is like 802.11a. Way bigger hassle.

For the record I should state that I do think FW 800 (and 400 for that matter) are better than USB 2.0 and I also really think people are giving WAY to much credit to these rumors about Apple dropping FW. I'm just trying to point out how it's a bigger deal than people think if the connector is changed.

[Scooterboy]

I don't think Apple will dump FW, but won't FW be less useful with no more Target Disc Mode, or FW Disc Booting? Or will EFI allow these operations?

Incidently, I use a 200 GB FW800 drive with my PowerBook. I like it so much I'm buying more of them: next up, a 600 GB LaCie Big Disk Extreme.

[piracy]

Originally Posted by P

I belive that it would have been possible to run FW 800 over the old plug, but that the plug was chanegd due to the problem with ports burning out from plugs being forced in upside down - which was possible in the old design. When they had to change it anyway, they did some more tweaking.

You are quite wrong. The plug changed because 9-pins are required for 1394b (FireWire 800). FireWire 800 most certainly could not have used the old 6-pin plug, and whether or not the old cable could be forced in upside down was about the furthest things from everyone's minds in designing the physical connectivity of 1394b.

[mduell]

I think the next popular flash card format is going to go readerless. SanDisk and Digimaster already have flash cards with an SD connector on one end and a USB connector on the other (and it still fits in an SD slot). You can't do that with Firewire due to the size of the port and the larger chip needed to run the bus.

Originally Posted by Simon

FW clearly is the superior bus technology and anybody trying to tell you USB2 is just as good is a zealot.

James Wiebe of WiebeTech, a company that makes many FW peripherals, wrote a very interesting white paper on the topic. You can read it here.

When people use terms like "clearly superior" it's a good sign that whatever they're refering to is as clear as mud. Firewire is superior for some applications, but not all and probably not even most.

The relative performance of USB2 and FW400 depends more on the implementation than anything inherent to the bus. Current Macs have pretty good FW400 chipsets and pretty bad USB2 chipsets. The third and fourth generation iPods were faster with USB than FW (see CNet for the comparison benchmarks), and they weren't pushing anywhere near the theoretical (or even practical) limit of either bus.

In many cases FW400 is just as much of a bottleneck for most external drives as USB2 is. FW800 is sufficient for one of today's top drives, but at three times the price of SATA and of course you take some performance hit compared to SATA due to the bridge chips.

Originally Posted by booboo

In the pro-audio field FireWire is the no. 1 technology for external connectivity of hardware to computer - and that includes PC's. I think there is only one USB2 device on the market, just introduced by MOTU, and there are hundreds of FireWire 400 devices. Not to mention all the DV cameras out there.

My Yamaha digital mixer uses a ground-breaking network technology for extremely reliably multi-device, multi-channel, high-performance interfacing, Apple being one of the chief architects. It's called mLAN and it runs over FireWire 400. To date, 140 companies have licensed this technology: USB2 would just not be able to carry this isynchronous high-bandwidth technology.

I'm not sure what "MOTU" is; which USB device is that "one" you're refering to: The Yamaha UW10? Or the Yamaha UW500? Or the Tascam US428? Or the Tascam US224? Or the Tascam US122? Or the Numark DXM01?

mLAN looks like a very neat idea, although I'm not convinced that isochronous bandwidth is the reason why IEEE1394 was selected over USB2.

Originally Posted by piracy

- While it certainly does NOT mean anything, it's still worth mentioning that even the Developer Transition Platform has functioning FireWire

Do you mean the x86 builds of OSX have FireWire support, or the actual $999 kit from Apple has FW ports? The latter would surprise me since I thought they were using an Intel retail motherboard (none of which have onboard IEEE1394).

Originally Posted by piracy

- FireWire is not a host-based protocol. It is peer-based. While USB connectivity REQUIRES a host (usually a computer; ever wonder why USB connectors are different?), FireWire requires no such thing. Multiple hosts - or no hosts at all - can be connected via FireWire. This is NOT POSSIBLE with USB.

Making a piece of hardware that is typically a device act like a host for USB isn't impossible or even impractical; PictBridge does that today so people can plug their cameras right into their printers.

Despite the peer or peer nature of the the Firewire bus, you can't plug an iSight (or any other Firewire (DV) camera) into a Firewire hard drive and expect recording to work; the peripherals need a computer to sit in the middle of that transaction.

What I'm getting at is that the logical arrangement of the bus has little to do with its capabilities and flexibility.

Originally Posted by piracy

- All target disk mode support - both ways - which many administrators and enterprise organizations are heavily dependent on

- Support for System Migration (the mechanism that allows people to copy data from their old computer to a new computer, introduced with Mac OS X 10.3.5 and which continues in Tiger) - how would people transfer data to a new machine?

Use USB. Many Intel based systems (like mine) can already boot from USB drives. The new Macs could fake being a device when they need to, along the lines of the USB OTG suppliment.

Originally Posted by MarkLT1

Lets see, a port that costs what, $5.00 to add on to each machine, and they are going to throw out 4 years of software R&D on one of their most popular products, just to cut out that port?

$5 sounds rather high... I'd guess it's less than a dollar for a pair of FW800 ports and the chip to run them.

Originally Posted by ibugv4

Apple will push 800 and sell $30 400 to 800 adapters for "legacy" devices, further pushing the users to the bleeding edge.

$30-40?! Try $10-15 pin converters.

Originally Posted by piracy

And this is not evolution: if I understand what you're saying correctly, USB2 is most definitely not a positive evolution from FireWire. If you think it is, then you have no idea what FireWire is or what it means. Yes, FireWire already "lost" the battle for media interconnectivity - just like the Mac "lost" on the desktop, long ago. And yet, Macs are still around, and growing in marketshare. And that's a hell of a lot more impactful market segment than whether or not Intel is going to "push" USB. Intel might want to "push" USB for various reasons, but, as I said above, 1394 adoption is *increasing*, not decreasing. And yes, it's typically on high-end products where customers are demanding and actually expect things to work properly, not by shoehorning some inferior standard (USB) into a task where it's not appropriate (realtime video transport, for one).

Last I checked USB2 provides 90% more isochronous bandwidth than even the highest HD DV standard (DVCPROHD) requires. Where is this mass adoption of Firewire that you're seeing? I'm seeing people go the other way, opting for lower cost USB enclosures for hard drives, burners, and cameras instead of Firewire.

Originally Posted by piracy

USB is a giant step backwards for everything but what most people use it for: mass storage and routine desktop peripherals. For everything else, USB is markedly worse.

Firewire offers no benefit over USB for external optical drives, mice, keyboards, joysticks, PDAs, cell phones, GPS receivers, digital cameras, flash readers, etc. For external hard drives Firewire can be faster than USB2, but that difference may not be important to most users; when you start talking about multiple drives you should be using (external) SATA if you care about performance.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by mduell

When people use terms like "clearly superior" it's a good sign that whatever they're refering to is as clear as mud. Firewire is superior for some applications, but not all and probably not even most.

How dare you attack me personally for a statement I can easily back up with facts when actually you are the one who has done nothing else on this board then spread PC fanboyism nobody asked for in the first place.

I happen to work at a lab where we rely on high bandwidth low latency image data transfer (high speed gated CCD image data) for scientific purpose. We did extensive tests with USB2 and FW400 as well as FW800 together with two companies that make such specialized cameras in order to finalize an new camera design. And with those test results in mind I made the above statement. We verified that FW has lower latency, higher bandwidth, higher sustained data rates and lower signal distortion than USB2. This could be verified with different flavors of Linux, with OS X and actually to a certain extent with XP as well. It is certainly not quite as simple as some people think when they say, that FW drivers are better on Macs and USB drivers are better on XP; although these statements are not wrong per se, they do not fully explain the differences measured. There are differences in driver implementation, but there are also inherent differences of the bus design that can't be compensated by just changing driver code (for example host dependency). So I'll repeat FW is clearly the superior technology. The only thing going for USB2 is cost. I am not arguing as a PC magazine reading teenager here, but as a scientist who relies on such busses in order to perform his research. If you do not agree, please provide facts, but don't you dare assume that I discuss FW vs. USB2 on the same level as you just because you do not know what experience I have with these busses.

That said, FW is technically superior. Since prices differ only slightly, also the price performance ratio is rather in favor of FW. The only area USB could be the better choice is where there is no FW alternative (mice, keyboards, etc.) available. You can now either think very hard about a rare exception I forgot or just apologize for the uncalled rudeness. I'll leave that decision up to you.

[piracy]

Originally Posted by mduell

Do you mean the x86 builds of OSX have FireWire support, or the actual $999 kit from Apple has FW ports? The latter would surprise me since I thought they were using an Intel retail motherboard (none of which have onboard IEEE1394).

Both.

Mac OS X for Intel has support for FireWire, and the motherboard used in the Developer Transition Platform has IEEE-1394a (6-pin) and IEEE-1394b (9-pin) ports.

But the nature of the 1394 support on the Developer Transition Platform (i.e., no booting from FireWire and FireWire 400 support only) is not indicative in any way of the state of affairs with the shipping Intel-based Macs.

Also, 6 currently shipping Intel-brand motherboards in the DG945 Series have native on-board IEEE-1394.

Last I checked USB2 provides 90% more isochronous bandwidth than even the highest HD DV standard (DVCPROHD) requires. Where is this mass adoption of Firewire that you're seeing? I'm seeing people go the other way, opting for lower cost USB enclosures for hard drives, burners, and cameras instead of Firewire.

You need only look at the growing lists at http://1394ta.org.

More products using FireWire = increased adoption.

Further, the categories you cite (except for cameras) are all areas for which USB is perfectly fine, and FireWire offers no distinct advantage: a single host to single peripheral connection. As for video cameras, if that's what you're talking about, sure they may be "lower cost". And you get what you pay for. The vast, vast majority of all DV cameras and decks now use, and will continue to use, FireWire as the transport mechanism.

Also, please direct me to an HDV camera or deck using USB2 for realtime video transport.

Firewire offers no benefit over USB for external optical drives, mice, keyboards, joysticks, PDAs, cell phones, GPS receivers, digital cameras, flash readers, etc. For external hard drives Firewire can be faster than USB2, but that difference may not be important to most users; when you start talking about multiple drives you should be using (external) SATA if you care about performance.

That's exactly what I said: for almost all of the routine uses - desktop mass storage and rudimentary and routine peripheral connectivity - FireWire has no real advantages. Where FireWire has huge advantage is in specialty applications, such as daisy chaining, peer device interconnectivity, low-latency high-speed realtime transport, low-overhead interconnectivity, etc. This allows for a myriad of novel applications (such as two peer devices communicating with one another without additional programming or jury-rigging a device to "pretend" it's a USB host or client). Sure, you can dress up USB and make it seemingly do all of these things at a significant programming and overhead cost ("cost" here doesn't necessarily mean only dollars; it also means technical elegance), like having a host masquerade as a device to emulate something like target disk mode; but why not use the standard for which all of this is built into every specification and chipset? The cost to add the additional capabilities to USB, akin to putting lipstick on a pig, would likely even offset the cost of inclusion of 1394 in the first place.

Which is exactly why FireWire is here to stay.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Simon

How dare you attack me personally for a statement I can easily back up with facts when actually you are the one who has done nothing else on this board then spread PC fanboyism nobody asked for in the first place.

I happen to work at a lab where we rely on high bandwidth low latency image data transfer (high speed gated CCD image data) for scientific purpose. We did extensive tests with USB2 and FW400 as well as FW800 together with two companies that make such specialized cameras in order to finalize an new camera design. And with those test results in mind I made the above statement. We verified that FW has lower latency, higher bandwidth, higher sustained data rates and lower signal distortion than USB2. This could be verified with different flavors of Linux, with OS X and actually to a certain extent with XP as well. It is certainly not quite as simple as some people think when they say, that FW drivers are better on Macs and USB drivers are better on XP; although these statements are not wrong per se, they do not fully explain the differences measured. There are differences in driver implementation, but there are also inherent differences of the bus design that can't be compensated by just changing driver code (for example host dependency). So I'll repeat FW is clearly the superior technology. The only thing going for USB2 is cost. I am not arguing as a PC magazine reading teenager here, but as a scientist who relies on such busses in order to perform his research. If you do not agree, please provide facts, but don't you dare assume that I discuss FW vs. USB2 on the same level as you just because you do not know what experience I have with these busses.

That said, FW is technically superior. Since prices differ only slightly, also the price performance ratio is rather in favor of FW. The only area USB could be the better choice is where there is no FW alternative (mice, keyboards, etc.) available. You can now either think very hard about a rare exception I forgot or just apologize for the uncalled rudeness. I'll leave that decision up to you.

Yow, don't take it so personally. Thread has nothing to do with Mac or PC fanboyism. I'll be happy to link to facts.

I did not and will not deny that Firewire can have lower latency, higher bandwidth, higher sustained throughput, and lower signal distortion than USB (Firewire can also be slower [see these benchmarks for three different iPods] than USB.)
But none of that makes Firewire a superior bus for any of the devices I listed (external optical drives, mice, keyboards, joysticks, PDAs, cell phones, GPS receivers, digital cameras, flash readers).

I have a hard time reading "high bandwidth low latency" and "USB" or "Firewire" in the same line. To me, high bandwith (>2Gbps) low latency (<50usec) is the realm of Infiniband and friends, not FW/USB (which are subgigabit and >1msec as far as I know).

Originally Posted by piracy

But the nature of the 1394 support on the Developer Transition Platform (i.e., no booting from FireWire and FireWire 400 support only) is not indicative in any way of the state of affairs with the shipping Intel-based Macs.

Also, 6 currently shipping Intel-brand motherboards in the DG945 Series have native on-board IEEE-1394.

Now that I look at it again, you're right, they do. While Intel doesn't have FW support in any of their chipsets, they add the controller chips to some of their desktop boards.

Originally Posted by piracy

Further, the categories you cite (except for cameras) are all areas for which USB is perfectly fine, and FireWire offers no distinct advantage: a single host to single peripheral connection. As for video cameras, if that's what you're talking about, sure they may be "lower cost". And you get what you pay for. The vast, vast majority of all DV cameras and decks now use, and will continue to use, FireWire as the transport mechanism.

Also, please direct me to an HDV camera or deck using USB2 for realtime video transport.

I was thinking digital still cameras. The digital video market is firmly entrenched in Firewire and I don't see that changing any time soon (even if a few cameras have USB and act as mass storage).

Originally Posted by piracy

This allows for a myriad of novel applications (such as two peer devices communicating with one another without additional programming or jury-rigging a device to "pretend" it's a USB host or client). Sure, you can dress up USB and make it seemingly do all of these things at a significant programming and overhead cost ("cost" here doesn't necessarily mean only dollars; it also means technical elegance), like having a host masquerade as a device to emulate something like target disk mode; but why not use the standard for which all of this is built into every specification and chipset? The cost to add the additional capabilities to USB, akin to putting lipstick on a pig, would likely even offset the cost of inclusion of 1394 in the first place.

My point was that the logical organization of the bus isn't that important. If I give you six Firewire devices (iSight, DV camera, audio interface or mixer, flash card reader, external hard drive, external optical drive) you can't plug any of them into each other and make anything useful happen. I can take any Pictbridge camera and Pictbridge printer, connect them via USB, and start making prints. Firewire can't always be peripheral to peripheral, sometimes it needs a PC in the middle; USB doesn't always have to have a PC in the middle, it can be peripheral to peripheral.

For a desktop (or laptop) computer, Firewire has its uses: DV cameras (and decks) and single external drives. For specialized component networking (mLAN, what Simon does, etc), Firewire is good. However it is not the end-all be-all bus that some people suggest it should be.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by mduell

I did not and will not deny that Firewire can have lower latency, higher bandwidth, higher sustained throughput, and lower signal distortion than USB (Firewire can also be slower [see these benchmarks for three different iPods] than USB.)

iPods? Right. Low performance application. For all I know, the memeory bandwidth of my iPod can probably hardly saturate any of these busses, so the examples are of zero interest to benchmark the busses. Those 'benchmarks' you gave are comparing different busses using different controller chips of unknown origin, on unknown platforms and all this data is given without error margins or statistics. That's great for a magazine, but has nothing to do with scientific benchmarking. Relevance: zero.

But none of that makes Firewire a superior bus for any of the devices I listed (external optical drives, mice, keyboards, joysticks, PDAs, cell phones, GPS receivers, digital cameras, flash readers).

That's not at all what this thread is about. Take that rant to another thread. This thread is about the possibility of USB2 replacing FW which from a technical point of view can be clearly answered with 'not an equal alternative'. Your low performance examples do nothing other than justify USB's use in low-end applications. Of course nobody in this thread ever asked for FW on mice or keyboards, so I suggest you stop hiding behind these rhetoric bubbles. Just because you don't use high performance applications in your den, does not mean you have an idea about what the needs of more demanding users are. That line of argument makes as much sense as saying we should use PS/2 ports for gigabit networking because PS/2 ports do a great job for mice and they're so much cheaper than CAT5 cables and shielded RJ45 plugs.

I have a hard time reading "high bandwidth low latency" and "USB" or "Firewire" in the same line. To me, high bandwith (>2Gbps) low latency (<50usec) is the realm of Infiniband and friends, not FW/USB (which are subgigabit and >1msec as far as I know).

Infiniband? Is that what google came up with? That link has even less to do with this discussion than the ones before. Infiniband is nothing you use in the applications I gave as an example. Reasons: cost, scalability, availability, etc. Infiniband is a high end networking technology we use in our clusters where there is a lot of inter-nodal communication. It has absolutely zero to do with high speed raw image transfer from imaging systems. That OTOH has everything to do with FW vs. USB performance. If you don't know what I'm talking about, why reply with anything else than a question?

There is nothing wrong with not knowing some facts. But strong language and personal attacks are certainly not the way of getting around it. And they certainly don't make you smarter either. I suggest we shake hands and get civil again and discuss the topic at hand: Can USB2 replace FW and will it happen in the near future?

[mduell]

This thread started with "Some are saying that Firewire will be gone when Apple moves to Intel. I personally hope not. The following link will let you look at what some rumors are saying. What does everybody else think."
I think that Firewire has been marginalized into two uses on the desktop (you know, the kind of machines Apple builds), and that marginalization is largely the result of the pervasiveness and performance of USB. Your comments about imaging sytems have less to do with the topic than my comments about portable music players. My comments were all in response to other comments in this thread, so if you feel they were offtopic I am not the one to talk to.

You have provided no data, no info on controller chips, no info on platforms, and no statistics or error margins. My iPod example was to show that despite the inherent superiority you claim for Firewire, it can easily be beaten by USB in a Apple consumer device. I used Infiniband as an example of a high bandwidth low latency bus because I have seen it used in imaging systems.

USB can not and will not replace Firewire in a number of applications and niches in the forseeable future. Apple will keep Firewire around in their personal computers, but they may offer fewer ports, opting instead for more USB and/or SATA.

[SirCastor]

Originally Posted by Simon

Can USB2 replace FW and will it happen in the near future?

No, and unfortunately, it seems likely. Not because of Technical superiority, but because of political and economic concerns.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by SirCastor

No, and unfortunately, it seems likely. Not because of Technical superiority, but because of political and economic concerns.

I agree 100%.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by SirCastor

No, and unfortunately, it seems likely. Not because of Technical superiority, but because of political and economic concerns.

I'm having a very hard time seeing Apple tell every consumer Mac (iMac, mini, iBook) customer to buy a new camera because their Firewire/i.Link camera can't be connected. I understand that a company makes a FW<->USB bridge for consumer DV cameras, but I would be surprised if it was more than an ugly hack with limited software compatibility; on the other hand, perhaps Apple will release an iMovie compatible version of such a device, but that still screams "kludge."

[paulc]

Mark, there's certainly a lot of past history to consider when the fruit decides to unceremoniously drop an interconnect (serial ports, ADB, SCSI). Here today, boom, gone tomorrow.

While I generally would agree that FW does have some benefits over USB2, this all very much smacks of beta vs. VHS. The "better solution" does not always prevail.

Interestingly enough, few remember that the FW interconnect was first specced out long before there ever was a shipping product. Not only that, but way back in those days they were talking about starting at 400 and going to 3200.

I do remember remarking to friends that FW's days might be numbered when the decision was made to make FW800 exclusive to only the most expensive Macs. Add in the fact that we all know there are some serious issues (write speeds) w/FW on the G5 systems that has never been addressed much less fixed, and it seems plain to me that it's days are numbered.

Notice that there is a lot of activity around eSATA? Notice barely a year ago, using SATA for external connects needed to use those wide ribbon cables... and now we have a defined connector? Notice that the guys we used to buy FW drives from are starting to sell eSATA equipment? Normally, one needed one controller per drive but we are seeing "port-multiplier" solutions now. This is where the technology focus is; there's zero on FW.

Like I said, do you really think that we'll keep seeing FW in Macs when a well documented, serious bug (write speed) has been ignored for over 2 years now?

[mduell]

Originally Posted by paulc

Interestingly enough, few remember that the FW interconnect was first specced out long before there ever was a shipping product. Not only that, but way back in those days they were talking about starting at 400 and going to 3200.

Specified before they actually built hardware, just like every other bus/interconnect in existance?
It's available at 1.6/3.2Gbps today, but since those speeds are optical only the price is ridiculous. If you need that kind of bandwidth there are a few other options that are better in some way.

Originally Posted by paulc

Add in the fact that we all know there are some serious issues (write speeds) w/FW on the G5 systems that has never been addressed much less fixed, and it seems plain to me that it's days are numbered.

Firewire write speeds are still better than the miserable implmentation of USB that they G5s are using.

Originally Posted by paulc

Notice that there is a lot of activity around eSATA? Notice barely a year ago, using SATA for external connects needed to use those wide ribbon cables... and now we have a defined connector? Notice that the guys we used to buy FW drives from are starting to sell eSATA equipment? Normally, one needed one controller per drive but we are seeing "port-multiplier" solutions now. This is where the technology focus is; there's zero on FW.

I hopped on the external SATA bandwagon when e.SATA was still a "maybe we should bother, maybe SATA is already good enough" item, and I think using the same connector for drives inside and outside the box is a good idea.

One problem with SATA is the fragmentation. You have SATA 1.5Gbps, SATA 3.0Gbps (which is not to be called SATA II), SATA with NCQ, xSATA, eSATA, etc, etc, etc. They even had to publish a naming guideline; that's a big step away from the simplicity of USB (all backward/forward compatible, same connector) and FW (all backward/forward compatible, requires pin adapters [and possibly optical/copper converters]).

[booboo]

Originally Posted by mduell

I'm not sure what "MOTU" is; which USB device is that "one" you're refering to: The Yamaha UW10? Or the Yamaha UW500? Or the Tascam US428? Or the Tascam US224? Or the Tascam US122? Or the Numark DXM01?

mLAN looks like a very neat idea, although I'm not convinced that isochronous bandwidth is the reason why IEEE1394 was selected over USB2.

Yes, there are of course plenty of USB1 audio interfacees, the development of which was largely instigated by a generation of USB-only iMac's and iBooks, but with the bandwidth limitations inherent, and latency, USB1 is suitable for no more than basic stereo I/O.

Your argument is fatuous. All the audio devices you mention are USB1 and pretty much near or at the low end of the market with very poor latency performance and limited i/o compared with any non-USB alternatves. Do you think mentioning multiple devices somehow adds credence to your POV?

'MOTU' (aka Mark Of The Unicorn) are a respected manufacturer of Mac-biased pro-audio soft and hardware, and they've been there practically from the birth of the Mac. They've just released a USB2 version of one of their entry-level audio interfaces. It would seem they're able to use USB2 as an alternative to FireWire for this device. However whether multiple devices are chainable in the way that the FireWire versions are remains unclear. I'm also doubtful that USB2 performance (latency, CPU overhead) will be as good, but we shall see.

mLAN was developed before USB2 even existed. And FireWire remains better suited to its implementation - the mLAN multiple device networking is far better suited to IEEE1394 than USB2.

On a more general level, no-one is disputing that USB is fine for basic consumer connectivity, and USB2 offers a welcome speedboost over USB1 and in some certain circumstances proves a viable alternative to good ol' FireWire400. (But in these particular areas, SATA is probably an even better solution . . . )

USB2 cannot hold a candle to FireWire400 - let alone FireWire800 - in more demanding professional (particularly multi-device) situations, or even in pro-sumer DV editing and transfer. Why deny this, when it's plainly true?

[kentuckyfried]

Is it just me, or are the iPod nanos notably slower than in syncing music and file transfers than their brethren that can access either cable?

I'm assuming the nano has USB 2.0 on it? ISn't USB2.0 supposed to be faster than firewire 400?

[SirCastor]

Originally Posted by kentuckyfried

Is it just me, or are the iPod nanos notably slower than in syncing music and file transfers than their brethren that can access either cable?

I'm assuming the nano has USB 2.0 on it? ISn't USB2.0 supposed to be faster than firewire 400?

You haven't followed any of this or any other firewire threads, have you? This has been convered a dozen times in the past month.

[kentuckyfried]

Originally Posted by SirCastor

You haven't followed any of this or any other firewire threads, have you? This has been convered a dozen times in the past month.

I apologize for asking.

When you work in a building, with no windows, and limited access to the internet, and lots of other things to do besides reading a single forum at night, it's hard to follow all the firewire threads. So what I was asking for here was maybe a brief sentence affirming, "yes, it is slower" or "no, it just seems slower but they're actually the same speed."

[mduell]

Originally Posted by booboo

USB2 cannot hold a candle to FireWire400 - let alone FireWire800 - in more demanding professional (particularly multi-device) situations, or even in pro-sumer DV editing and transfer. Why deny this, when it's plainly true?

I've never suggested that Firewire should be dropped for DV cams; given the isochronous bandwidth of USB2 (192Mbps) it could be, but I don't think that shift in the market is needed nor a good idea. For audio and video, Firewire is the industry preference. For multiple hard drives I'd use e.SATA instead of Firewire or USB.

Originally Posted by kentuckyfried

Is it just me, or are the iPod nanos notably slower than in syncing music and file transfers than their brethren that can access either cable?

I'm assuming the nano has USB 2.0 on it? ISn't USB2.0 supposed to be faster than firewire 400?

Yes, they're slower than the iPod Photo over USB2; but they are faster than the mini was.
nano: Data transfers to the USB 2.0-enabled Nano ... at about 5.3MB per second.
Photo: 7.5MB per second over USB 2.0. For those interested, over FireWire, the iPod Photo reached 2.6MB per second.
mini: Over FireWire, our songs transferred at 2.5MB per second; over USB 2.0, they synced at 6.3MB per second.

USB2 has a higher theoretical speed on paper, but the actual performance depends more on the implementation than the bus.

[SirCastor]

Originally Posted by kentuckyfried

I apologize for asking.

When you work in a building, with no windows, and limited access to the internet, and lots of other things to do besides reading a single forum at night, it's hard to follow all the firewire threads. So what I was asking for here was maybe a brief sentence affirming, "yes, it is slower" or "no, it just seems slower but they're actually the same speed."

I apoligize for being rude. This question has been a pretty heated topic over the past few weeks as we face the possiblity of losing a valuable asset (IMO) so I've not been forgiving in respect to those who may not have had the chance to scan through the threads.

For what it's worth though, A simple reply wouldn't have been enough to explain. USB2 has a higher theoretical, Firewire has better performance, USB2 This, FW that. It's a somewhat complicated issue to explain in a short space. Others have given it a lot of response.

Again, I'm sorry. I wasn't being thoughtful about yours or other's situations.

[booboo]

Originally Posted by SirCastor

. . . For what it's worth though, A simple reply wouldn't have been enough to explain. USB2 has a higher theoretical, Firewire has better performance, USB2 . . .

USB2 has a higher theoretical bandwidth for a single device (on a dedicated bus) than FireWire 400, in practice FireWire 400 has better performance . . . and we're not even talking about FireWire 800 . . . .

[ATPTourFan]

I'm fairly certain that the 9-pin mandatory plug for FW800 (IEEE1394b) is due to the necessary wiring for the new encoding scheme used to achieve speeds >400Mbps. FireWire PHYs that support the "b" spec can easily convert back to the "legacy" encoding mode used in FW400 (1394). I'm sure plenty of research went into an effort to develop the faster FW while maintaining the same pin setups, but that just wasn't possible and most likely severely limited future bandwidth jumps.

USB (any variation) uses a similar bus strategy as IDE/ATA devices... master/slave. Yes, it can handle way more "slaves" than IDE, but there's a serious problem with chains that exceed only a few devices. Those chains cannot allow devices to intercommunicate independent of the CPU and device order matters.

FW doesn't care about device order (there are some dodgy FW chips out there that do seem to disprove this, but they're not up to spec). FW data management over the bus is handled in the PHY and not in the CPU, and devices (as has been mentioned often here) are peers. It also cannot be forgotten that FW ports provide up to 45W compared to the meager offering from USB.

USB and FW don't compete in the same space. There's no way Apple will drop FW from their Macs w/ Intel inside. The cost for the 1394 PHY controller is easily justified even on the "budget" Mac mini.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by ATPTourFan

It also cannot be forgotten that FW ports provide up to 45W compared to the meager offering from USB.

How many manufacturers actually support 45W on their FW ports? Even Apple, the Firewire poster boy, only provides 7 - 15W shared among all FW ports built-in the system.

[ATPTourFan]

Originally Posted by mduell

How many manufacturers actually support 45W on their FW ports? Even Apple, the Firewire poster boy, only provides 7 - 15W shared among all FW ports built-in the system.

I said "up to", which means that there's room to grow. Manufacturers could enable 45W if their clients needed it.

Even at only 7-15W, I can power a 2.5" notebook HDD in an enclosure with one firewire cable. USB enclosures almost always require two USB ports to be consumed to power a notebook drive.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by ATPTourFan

Even at only 7-15W, I can power a 2.5" notebook HDD in an enclosure with one firewire cable. USB enclosures almost always require two USB ports to be consumed to power a notebook drive.

The majority of 2.5" USB enclosures only use up one USB port. The majority of 2.5" drives draw less power than the maximum that USB can provide with one plug; some of 7200RPM drives require more, so some enclosures have two plugs.

There are good reasons to get Firewire (like being able to boot the current Macs off of them); why create false reasons not to use USB.

[booboo]

Don't worry, FireWire ate mduell's dog, so that explains it . . .

[Dumbo]

mduell, how about you just let go? Everybody here likes FireWire and wants it to stay. Nobody agrees with your twisted ideas. You have your head so far up Intel's corporate ass you're just embarrassing yourself.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by Dumbo

mduell, how about you just let go? Everybody here likes FireWire and wants it to stay. Nobody agrees with your twisted ideas. You have your head so far up Intel's corporate ass you're just embarrassing yourself.

Perhaps you missed it when I said

Originally Posted by mduell

I've never suggested that Firewire should be dropped for DV cams ... I don't think that shift in the market is needed nor a good idea. For audio and video, Firewire is the industry preference.

Intel isn't calling for abandoning Firewire, and I can't see Apple doing it either. They may augment and partially replace it with e.SATA and USB2, but some FW ports (probably of the 800 variety) will stick around.
I'm annoyed with the FUD about USB: about power, about isochronous support, about performance, about cable lengths, about booting, etc.