HTNut

This sort of applies to HD technical, but is firewire dead? Saw a blog post today FireWire Dead? questioning why most of Apple's newer devices aren't even equipped with the port. I've seen less Home Theater products supporting firewire too.

bicker

I've tried to use the FireWire port on a DVR, before. It's darned hard. It's just not a very user-friendly connection IMHO.

NYCLA*

No, it's not dead. As far as Apple, they were the initiator of the standard and the biggest contributor and collect royalties from every other manufacturer that use it. All of Apple's computers, save for the MacBook Air, have at least one FireWire 400 or FireWire 800 port. Apple switched from FireWire to USB 2.0 for it's iPods due to the desire to widen the iPod market to Windows PC users (When the iPod initially debuted, it was a Mac only device, and used FireWire). This was because, while FireWire had always been standard on Mac hardware, it was not standard on your average generic PC hardware.

In addition, that blog post you read was originally posted on December 8th, 2005, nearly four years ago (and your other link is from December 19th, 2005).

HTNut

Which brings me to my point. If Apple stopped using Firewire ports on some of their devices, and those articles were written some time back.....where is Firewire today? I remember back 6-8 years ago when Hard Drives were mostly made with both USB and Firewire connections along with other external devices. Now you're lucky to find Firewire on anything these days.

NYCLA*

Acutally, that's not true. The best quality external hard drives are quad interfaces, offering USB 2.0, FireWire 400, FireWire 800, and eSata connections. It's the cheap drives that aren't offering FireWire. DV cameras also still use FireWire (though there are some that are using USB 2.0, I've heard). In addition, there is a fundamental difference between USB and FireWire. While USB is good at transporting data in short bursts, FireWire is better at sustained, uninterrupted data transfer, which is why it was used in DV cameras. Also, while USB 2.0, at 480Mbits, is faster than FireWire 400, at 400 Mbits, FireWire 800 is faster still at 786 Mbits. You can also network over FireWire. And remember, Apple only switched it's iPod's to USB 2.0 from FW 400 for marketing purposes. All Apple Desktop and laptop machines (save for the MacBook Air) include FireWire, including the Xserve.