Son, you might think FireWire is pretty fast, but you ain’t seen nothing yet. FireWire’s 400 Mbps speed is great for high-bandwidth uses and it puts USB2 to shame most of the time. And that’s before we even start talking about FireWire 800, though I’ll have to confess that I’ve never even had the privilege of owning a FireWire 800 machine.
Then again, FireWire 800 is about to start looking pretty poky. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (better known by its super-sekrit codename, IEEE), not content to merely step FireWire, aka IEEE 1394, to its subsequent iteration, has approved the next two versions of the specification: FireWire 1600 and FireWire 3200. That means speeds of up to 3.2 Gbps. The new versions will be fully backwards compatible with the existing FireWire 400 and 800 implementation, but will use the FireWire 800 connector shape.
FireWire 1600 and 3200 are expected to be available in October of this year, which gets them out of the gate slightly before USB3.0 and its top speed of 4.8 Gbps makes its appearance by the end of the year. Will we see FireWire 1600 and 3200 in the next-generation of Macs? The iPhone and latest iPod models have all eschewed FireWire in favor of USB, despite the fact that it was Apple who created the FireWire protocol. The two have co-habited on most Macs, despite the fact that FireWire 800 has only made inroads on about half of existing models.
[via Gizmodo]
Considering FW 800 is backwards compatible with FW 400 I think its time for Apple to forgo FW 400 ports on their machines and make them all FW 800 and include an adaptor for those that have FW 400 devices. I've been using a FW 800 external drive on my 15" PB for years and won't even consider a new machine with out it. Fortunately, the new iMacs have FW 800 now. Its time they all do.
FW800 is not backwards compatible with FW400.
I'd have better luck forcing my FW400 cable into a USB port...
I'm sorry but firewire is just too useful to drop from future Macs. Almost every firewire storage device has a builtin 1 port hub, allowing the user to daisy chain drives. I also don't think I could get along with out target disk mode, which for me is the fastest, safest way to backup a notebook.
I'm sorry but firewire is just too useful to drop from future Macs. Almost every firewire storage device has a builtin 1 port hub, allowing the user to daisy chain drives. I also don't think I could get along with out target disk mode, which for me is the fastest, safest way to backup a notebook.
@James Madley: Perhaps I should clarify the "backwards compatibility." The *plugs* are not backwards compatible, but the protocol is. If you plug a FW400 device into a FW800 port (using the adapter cable with a FW800 connector on one end and a FW400 connector on the other), it will work fine.