All my external hard drives have had USB and FW connectivity. It’s just a matter of using the USB connector.

Apple knows it all.. This is a very simple business trick..

Read the apple message:” Hi guys, if you want the Firewire port, go Pro and spend more…”

That sucks.

Slow USB was a Chipset issue of the PowerPC Macs.
It’s been resolved with the transition to Intel.

USB performance on the first MacBook Pro was double that of the single and Quad Core Powermacs in some situations.

USB being slow is on PPC is one of the things that helped to spread the myth in the Apple community that you need to buy the more expensive hard drives, because FireWire is so much better.

It is better for some things.
But not necessary for a lot of things.
You don’t need FireWire for your external HardDrive at home. USB good enough.

And instead of having ANOTHER standard, having ANOTHER type of devices, I’d be really happy with getting rid of FireWire and finally have everything on USB. On one connector which you can find on every computer.

It’s just like Beta and VHS. Or HD DVD and BlueRay.
Get over it.

Firewire didn’t make it into the iBook or iMac line until a couple revisions down the line the original couple iMacs and original iBook were USB-only. One could argue that perhaps Apple put firewire in when most consumer DV cameras started supporting it. And then took it out when most consumer DV cameras moved to USB2.

I remember people freaking out that they couldn’t use their SCSI scanners and hard drives and serial port printers when the iMac came out, saying that apple was forcing them to get higher powered Macs when they wanted the iMac. No, they were just making the iMac, and saving everybody a few bucks by leaving out extra ports.

Apple does this from time to time. Every time you remove a feature, it’s painful for the people who relied on it. But Apple’s not forcing you to buy a new Macbook. The old ones are a heck of a deal. And you get a ton of bang for your buck w/ the Pro line.

I see a lot of you post old benchmarks done on PowerPC Macs.
USB WAS slower back then.

It is much faster on the Intel Macs.

I’ve got a MacBook Pro, I am a graphic designer and I’ve never needed either FireWire or the Express Card Slot.

the FireWire “Tax” doesn’t make ANY sense ANYMORE for external storage or cameras.

Yep i kne this, but what Apple should have done is include a FW800 port in the MacBook. Because that way you get FW400 and FW800 by just switching cables.
In the MAcBook Pro getting both FW400 and FW800 would be nice too ; )

That being said, I guess Apple wants me to buy the newish Airport HD and do the backups wirelessly.

I like Eric’s point on this. He needed FW, and got a machine that addressed that need and ended up with something that was much better for his money than he had previously.

I agree I was being simplistic. FireWire is widely used and will be missed from the cheaper Macbook. Thanks. But I really can’t see this as the start of Apple dropping Firewire from all products.

Eric

Also there was question of speed comparision between USB and Fireware. From my tests is somewhere between 10-20% diffrence in speed, but also computer is much more responsive if you copying between firewire HD then between USB.

Firewire is cheap, universal (well, not now obviously) and useful to Mac users.

There has been a tendency among those who are supporting Apple on this move to associate FW with one use, be it CamCorders, TDM, Hard Drives etc.

The point is that FW is all of those and more to lot’s of users. Firewire is used in audio (not only pro audio), cameras (not point and shoot but for things like astronomy hobbyists) instrumentation and lot’s of other uses.

Also, there is no such thing as a ‘pro machine’ these days. People now have multiple computers and many ‘non pros’ have Mac Pros and many ‘Pros’ have non-pro hardware.

People buy what they need or what they feel they need. It would help a lot if they could count on the same ports across whatever systems they are using. Trying to shove FW into a ‘pro only’ hole just doesn’t make sense. FW is for everybody and has been for most mac users for many years.

And as for the loss of target disk mode, buy a £20 caddy, and take the disk out – they’ve made that really easy. And a Firewire 800-400 converter cable is really cheap, so no loss there either. I just hope to God that the Airport signal is better than my Powerbook G4, which sucked.

This case is different as no such alternative has been given (it doesn’t exist anyway) so it is a step back. eSATA may be faster in some situations but eSATA wasn’t designed from the ground up to be external. The ‘e’ part was tagged on very late in the day and it shows. USB2.0 doesn’t even come close to matching FW.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say Apple is full of idiots but they have made very stupid mistakes in the past. Those mistakes were detrimental to the company and sometimes put right. The original iPhone pricing is an example of a stupid decision. Apple was derided when it announced pricing and then had to hastily cut prices two months later

I contend the suggestion that only a ’small percentage’ of mac users want FW so we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one.

Later today there is a conference call and this issue will raise its head. I wonder what they’ll offer in the way of an explanation?

You probably already knew this, but I think it should be noted that’s comparing Firewire 800 vs. USB 2.0, not Firewire 400, which is what the Macbook had.