[Macworld]

Post your comments for FireWire 400 reaches the end of the line here

[Biallystock]

Just another expense, another annoyance and something else to get lost and make your day impossible.
I wouldn't mind if Apple had actually upgraded to FW3200.
Seems to me this is just backward steps with no forward. Apple seems to meandering these last 18 months, progressively getting relatively more expensive and behind on hardware.

[leicaman]

Or you can get a real cheap Firewire 400-800 cable. But that Sonnet doohickey looks pretty good for $15.

[Wabbitguy]

Pretty much makes the majority of audio recording interfaces with Firewire 400 obsolete. No idea how 800 to 400 adapters will be able to fill the void or if there are any gotchas there.
Considering the close knit relationship between Apogee and Apples Logic Studio, guess their saying you need a Mac Pro or nothing now.
Just swell.

[davekriss93]

One thing Apple has gotten pretty good at is sparking the creation of 3rd party products. For better or worse.

[trip1ex]

I wouldn't make sure I got a FW800 device. I would actually try to hold out until next year when USB3 will surely (or hopefully) be out. USB3 might be here later this year even.
And say you have to buy a device today. Don't automatically rule out FW400. FW800 is maybe 50% faster, but the question is does it matter to you?
I know in my situation FW800 wasn't much of a benefit. It backed up my hard drive hours faster, but what's 10 or 15 hours? What's 5 or 7.5 hours? It's not like I'm waiting around for my data to be backed up.
And I wasn't accessing external storage often and surely not huge files where I couldn't anything else while they transferred.
In other words don't pay a premium just because.

[MorrisTheCat]

Wabbitguy said:

Considering the close knit relationship between Apogee and Apples Logic Studio, guess their saying you need a Mac Pro or nothing now.

Just swell.

Not sure what you mean, Even the new Mac Pros intro'd today only include FW800 ports. So unless you buy the previous model or already have one, anything that might require a FW400 is obsolete.

Still, as Rob states at the end of his article. I'm just happy Apple hasn't decided to kill FW altogether? yet. I still fear that day is coming, but maybe by then we'll have something much better. USB2 just doesn't make the grade for fast file transfers.

[Photonerd]

It's called progress, and PCI cards with FW 400 are about $30, so hardly a no-win situation. In a couple years FW 800 will probably go away with the advent of USB 3... this is life in the computer world. You don't get to keep your peripherals forever, unfortunately. ;)

[KBeat]

People are trying to make a bid deal out of what essentially is a win win move on Apple's part. If you've got legacy 400 devices (which most of us do), then a $3 cable will fix your problem. If you rely on Firewire, which many in the video industry do, then this will speed up the slow adoption of the faster FW800 across new devices. USB isn't an acceptable replacement to firewire on the video front for a variety of reasons which you can read all about with a simple Google search, and personally I greatly prefer FW for the fact that I don't need a power adaptor for my external laptop drives. With both USB and eSata you need them, which is a nonstarter for remote shoots.

[hmurchison]

Jeebus some of you are confused.

If you have a FW400 device and you hook it up to a FW800 port the connection is at 400Mb speeds. You have full compatibilty and you can choose to buy an adapter or do the smarter thing and simply buy a FW800 to FW400 9pin to 6pin cable for $5 from someone like Monoprice (Google's your friend)

Stop the panicking folks. Audio interfaces will work fine and FW800 drives perform better. It's really a win/win here.

But if logic doesn't work continue to attempt to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

[papafrank]

FW800 to FW400 adaptor cables are cheap. For external hard drives and this change is a no-op. I know there were problems with ProTools and FW800 but that was fixed ages ago.

[natmusak]

Wabbitguy said:

Pretty much makes the majority of audio recording interfaces with Firewire 400 obsolete. No idea how 800 to 400 adapters will be able to fill the void or if there are any gotchas there.

Who are you, Sarah Palin!? There are no gotchas here. Firewire 400 devices are about as obsolete as mini-USB devices are (i.e., buy an adapter).

[motley]

I bought a PCI card for my Mac G5 with 2 FW400 & 3 USB ports for around $20 a few years ago. It's nice to see 4 FW800 ports on the new Macs but I'm not sure how many people will really need 4 FW800 ports.... but then again it's VERY easy to expand and add more FW400 ports if you really need them. Not sure what the big stick is here.
Apple has a history of moving IO forward. They where the first major computer company to ship CD Rom drives standard and the first company to drop the floppy. A lot of people where scratching their heads about the CD drive wondering what people where going to use it for. It was even lampooned as an automatic coffee cup holder.... and let's not forget about the heat Apple took for dropping the floppy, anyone even remember what a floppy is anymore?
My guess is that in about 6 months from now this issue will be long forgotten and people will wonder why they waisted so much time complaining about having too many FW800 ports.

[natmusak]

Biallystock said:

Seems to me this is just backward steps with no forward. Apple seems to meandering these last 18 months, progressively getting relatively more expensive and behind on hardware.

Oh yeah, moving from FW400 to FW800 on the Mac mini is totally a misstep, as is standardizing on FW800 for all Macs able to fit it.

It'd be so much better if Apple were like every other PC manufacturer that still ship VGA, only FW400 ports, analog audio, non-LED backlit screens, etc.