No Firewire On Intel iBooks???
Friday, December 9th, 2005 by Mike Rundle
Mr. Jason O’Grady is reporting at ZDNet that the rumored Intel iBooks coming in January will not have Firewire (IEEE-1394) inputs, continuing a trend started with iPods dropping Firewire for USB 2.0. Wow, let’s hope this can’t be true, because…
Firewire hard drives, camcorders, video cameras, digital cameras, CD and DVD burners, Apple iSights, and a whole lot more won’t be directly compatible anymore. Oh, and what about target disk mode? That’s how I transfer files whenever I buy a new Mac. Yeah, smart move.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a Mac Rumors thread with so many negative comments. Wow.
If Steve Jobs pulls the plug on iBook Firewire there will be an uproar like there has never been before. Words: marked.
Reader Comments
9 Responses to “No Firewire On Intel iBooks???”
I’m a bit uncomfortable at how a lot of the commenters have already accepted the rumour as fact and are already foaming at the mouth. Even Jason O’Grady is already asking, “What’s your take on the death of FireWire?”
Maybe the rumour is untrue. Maybe it’s only semi-true and the iBooks are going to lose a Firewire port and Firewire will be available through a USB2 adapter. Maybe Steve Jobs has gone crazy and is creating an iBook that has no ports whatsoever and will never connect to anything but an iPod.
Either way, all these rumours are starting to turn a little silly. I’m starting to see why Apple took legal action despite the negative PR.
December 9th, 2005 at 3:47 am
Wow, let’s hope that’s a big false rumor. I’d never buy a computer without Firewire.
December 9th, 2005 at 10:23 am
I’m all about getting rid of Firewire, it’s just another way to screw people if they have to work on a PC. (I encountered this problem a lot in school, someone would need to bring in their hard drive to work on one of our Silicon Graphics machines, and they couldn’t) But one would think they’d phase them out a little more gradually? I wouldn’t panic, I’m sure someone will make a USB 2 to Firewire converter.
December 9th, 2005 at 10:38 am
Beth: I could see your point if Firewire weren’t, in fact, superior to USB 2 for large file transfers… like transferring to an iPod, or from a digital videocamera, and so on. Sure, USB has the market share, because PCs have it.
However, if there’s a problem here, it cuts the other way: a superior transfer technology may lose out because of market effects that don’t actually bear on which option is better. A VHS/Betamax analogue, if you will.
I suppose I agree that it would be easier if we just had USB or Firewire, not both; I just don’t think Firewire should be the one to go. :)
December 9th, 2005 at 6:14 pm
You’re saying what I’m thinking. I told you before, get out of my head! ;^)
But seriously, I’m in agreement with Jack. This is just a rumour folks. Nothing will be known for sure until the expo (or whenever the new iBook is announced). This is definitely one of the rumours that I would like to see thrown right back in the faces of the rumour mongers who started it though.
December 9th, 2005 at 7:05 pm
wtf no! Can’t be true, firewire rocks my world, my iSight, LaCie HD, elec. guitar digital converter, stereo adapter, target mode, iPod, etc….
I was hoping iBooks could finally have Firewire800 ports :(
December 10th, 2005 at 5:00 pm
even if the rumor is true or not; as far as firewire goes, i’m pretty sure 800 firewire is backwards compatible to 400. you’d just need an adapter (much like ps2 to usb).
December 13th, 2005 at 5:15 pm
With or without firewire is fine by me. Surprisingly, I rarely used it…
December 18th, 2005 at 8:35 pm
FireWire, sooner or later, will eventually die. It’s not a matter of whether, but when. Apple is getting out of its coffin to go mainstream in most aspects and connectivity is one of those. And I applaud it. Even some LaCie external hard drives (which are friendly to Apple) do not have FireWire in them any longer. As in Betamax/VHS analogue, the most used port will triumph, even if it’s worse than FireWire (and it indeed is)
December 26th, 2005 at 8:30 am
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