[that1guy]

dgrizzle said:

I have 9+ terabytes of external storage on my MacBook Pro, plus audio interfaces. Where does all this plug in on the new MacBook Pro?

Wherever you like. I'm amazed at the amount of people complaining about not being able to plug in their $$$$ items of equipment into the MacBookPro because it only has a single firewire 800 port. Why can't you buy a firewire cardbus card, which will give you an extra two firewire 400 ports, for less than $100 ?

[dgrizzle]

What is a "firewire cardbus card"? If you are referring to the ExpressCard/32 slot of the PowerBook, mine is already occupied by a 2-port eSATA adapter, each port with a terabyte drive attached.

[that1guy]

dgrizzle said:

What is a "firewire cardbus card"? If you are referring to the ExpressCard/32 slot of the PowerBook, mine is already occupied by a 2-port eSATA adapter, each port with a terabyte drive attached.

Powerbook doesn't have ExpressCard. Moving on, your answer confirms my suspicions. You're part of the 10% bitchin about the MacBook Pro who should actually have bought a MacPro, rather than try and stuff ridiculous amounts of items into the MacBook Pro. It's not like you can really use it as a laptop when it's chained to the desk like that...

[wolfe]

My firewire line ends at a four pin camcorder. :D

[richcon]

dgrizzle said:

Worse still, it will no longer be possible to run pro audio interfaces on Firewire 400 (I use MOTU 828mkII and t.c. electronic PowerCore X8) while keeping hard disks separate on Firewire 800 and eSATA (via an ExpressCard/34 on my MacBook Pro).

Then the obvious question is, why not record audio to an eSATA drive? You say you've got two of them hooked in already. You can daisy-chain a third, or get a 5-port eSATA hub (~$100) to hook extra drives into.

I think having multiple FireWire ports is a huge benefit as well. My 2008 MacBook Pro has one 400 and one 800 port, and I sometimes use both of them, like when I'm transferring footage from a P2 camcorder to a hard drive on a film set. I do hope that Apple releases a MBP with two FireWire ports before it's time for me to upgrade again. But it's not like there aren't other less convenient solutions were I to get a new MBP today.

[dgrizzle]

That's my point - I use all ports all the time - Firewire 400, Firewire 800, and eSATA.

Currently, I'm running audio interfaces (MOTU and PowerCore - an external 8 CPU audio DSP) on the Firewire 400 bus.

These devices are Firewire 400. Sure, I can put them on the Firewire 800 bus, but then that bus will run at Firewire 400 speed.

And besides, I will tell you, despite the marketing hype, once you get 5 or 6 external Firewire 800 hard drives mounted simultaneously, they don't always play well together. Even though my current Firewire 800 bus is all OWC drives, they won't all mount at the same time. Might be chipset conflicts on various Firewire controllers, I don't know. The drives were not all bought at the same time, so there may be mixed revisions in the Firewire chips.

[dgrizzle]

I have a Mac Pro. Lots of pro audio and video people have a travel kit built around a MacBook Pro. All my stuff fits in a road case. Sorry for the slip on MacBook -- I travel with multiple laptops.

[richcon]

I was talking about putting your drives on a 5-port eSATA hub, not a FireWire hub (which wouldn't make as much sense since they'd slow down your audio interface).

[Fixx]

I hope removing FW400 means there will be more FW800 drives with lower prices hitting the market.

[mdawson]

I am at a loss at some of the responses to the FireWire 400 threads of the past day. Obviously, quite a few people are posting on a tech board without a clue about the technology of which they write. The abandonment of FireWire 400 was to be expected and it is not as if Apple abandoned FireWire altogether, although that sentiment has come up one too many times.

Apple drops FireWire support from the iPod. ?Oh god, they are abandoning FireWire.?
Apple introduces MacBooks without FireWire. ?Oh god, they are abandoning FireWire.?

I was not too happy with that decision in either instance, and voiced as much on these boards, but I never subscribed to the silly notion that Apple was outright abandoning what is the far better interface for high-speed devices.

Now there is the issue of people posting that they have all these FireWire 400 devices that they now cannot easily use to which I have to say on what planet? As others have pointed out, FireWire 400/800 cables are readily available and have been pretty much since FireWire 800 was introduced. FireWire was designed from the outset to expand beyond the original 400 Mbps protocol. The only change from the original protocol, beyond higher throughput, was the pin configuration for the IEEE-1394b. FireWire 800 is otherwise completely backward compatible with FireWire 400.

As to performance reduction, it has long been documented that having FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 devices on the same bus will not impact the performance of the latter as long as the FireWire 400 devices are not put ahead of the FireWire 800 devices in the chain. That matter was brought up on a regular basis when the first Power Macs with FireWire 800 hit the market.

Noise. Please. FireWire is a purely digital signal and the only degradation would result either from a poorly designed cable, or running a cable that is longer than the IEEE-1394 specification supports. Having FireWire 400 devices chained along with FireWire 800 does not cause signal degradation or noise. At worst a performance reduction will be introduced as a result of putting a FireWire 400 device in the chain between a FireWire 800 device and the computer.

[KBeat]

mdawson said:

I am at a loss at some of the responses to the FireWire 400 threads of the past day.
Now there is the issue of people posting that they have all these FireWire 400 devices that they now cannot easily use to which I have to say on what planet? As others have pointed out, FireWire 400/800 cables are readily available and have been pretty much since FireWire 800 was introduced.

Yeah, it's a very odd response that seems more knee jerk than thought out. I wonder why there wasn't an outcry over the fact that Apple never included the smaller 4 pin FW400 port on Macs. I mean, isn't that what many devices, including most camcorders, use? People didn't care because it's no problem to use a 6 pin to 4 pin firewire cable. Now, for some strange reason, using a 9 pin FW800 to 6 pin FW400 $5.00 cable has everyone's panties in a bunch. Go figure.

[bynkii]

Wabbitguy said:

Contrary to your thinking, in certain areas Firewire 400 devices are far from obsolete. For example in recording studios. There are a large number of audio interfaces that use Firewire 400. These interfaces can cost a lot more than any Mac does as well (the Mac is actually the cheap part).

And none of those are obsolete or won't work. You'll just have to buy a different cable to connect to the Mac. Really. Not.That.Hard.

Quote

One the fantastic advantages of the Mac was that we have always been able just plug and play. Now we're going to have to add a card or adapter of some sort, which admittedly seems to be able to be doable but until I talk to someone with the same gear as we have who actually has done it and knows, it's a wait and see situation for me.

Did all your existing computers just melt? Explode? Did the Apple Ninjas come in and steal them all?

No

They did not. However, if you have any Mac "pro" gear made since...well the Intel Transition at least, and earlier depending on the hardware, you have Firewire 800 ports now, you can test your gear out now.

This really is not rocket science. I used to work with rocket scientists, and they assured me, whatever this is, it's not rocket scientists. I don't know any, nor am I a brain surgeon, but I'll guess this isn't brain surgery either.

[bynkii]

reflexologist said:

FW800. Half the time to download images from cameras, copy files between drives, watch TV & video without blips. Naughty Apple. Listen to the Luddites and halt progress today!

Only if the device is set to run at max rate. If it's set to run at 100Mbps, then you can attach it to FW800 all day, it will run at it's assigned rate.

FW is not ethernet, devices don't run at the max speed of the bus until saturation.

[mdawson]

Quote

KBeat wrote:

>

Quote

I wonder why there wasn't an outcry over the fact that Apple never included the smaller 4 pin FW400 port on Macs.

And if Apple did put the 4-pin FireWire 400 ports on Macs, then people would have (rightfully) been outraged because they would not have the ability to use bus-powered devices. The reactions here are indeed knee-jerk. No one bemoans the fact that computers no longer include USB 1.1 ports despite the fact that a number number of devices (e.g., keyboards, mice, etc.) do not require USB 2 bandwidth. The same people also do not seem to have an issue with the fact that a bus that was never designed for peer-to-peer or high-speed connectivity is being pushed where FireWire should rightfully dominate.