[Biallystock]

KBeat

I believe a major misstep on Apple's part was not to make the FW800 port backwardly compatible.

The fact that USB did this made the upgrade fairly smooth.

For a long time there were no adaptor cables or adaptors and you could not take one FW peripheral and connect to the alternate speed port. Now that there are cables and adaptors available it is all a little too late, too cumbersome and too expensive.

I can buy an 8Gb USB Flash Drive for less than a FW adaptor cable. The Flash Drive is actually an asset, the cable only stops my drive's connection from being a liability.

This lesson should have been burnt into the forehead of every technology companies forehead. Does anyone remember Syquest and its mad proliferation of incompatible disks? I warned their sales manager at a Technology Expo when it happened exactly where that would lead. I got a hostile brush off, and customers then dropped what was obviously a dumb idea. Not withstanding the manager's blind certainty that it didn't matter.

[doglesby]

Biallystock said:

I believe a major misstep on Apple's part was not to make the FW800 port backwardly compatible.

It is backward compatible. There are three extra pins. And it isn't Apple, IEEE 1394--that means it's an IEEE standard.

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The fact that USB did this made the upgrade fairly smooth.

Unless you know people who got a USB drive unaware that they had USB 1.1 ports. At least with a different connector it's readily apparent that you can't drive your FW 800 device at full speed on FW 400 ports (which are still plenty fast). Plenty of people were perplexed why the data transfers were so slow when they plugged a USB 2 drive to a 12 Mbps USB 1.1 port. My Dad did that a couple years back and I had to do a google search to determine what kind of USB ports his iMac had.

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For a long time there were no adaptor cables or adaptors and you could not take one FW peripheral and connect to the alternate speed port. Now that there are cables and adaptors available it is all a little too late, too cumbersome and too expensive.

The cables were always available and they aren't expensive. And to my knowledge, it wasn't until the Unibody MBP was introduced that Apple sold a machine with only FW 800 ports. Before now, iMacs and Mac Pros had both 400 and 800 ports, obviating the issue.

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I can buy an 8Gb USB Flash Drive for less than a FW adaptor cable. The Flash Drive is actually an asset, the cable only stops my drive's connection from being a liability.

This lesson should have been burnt into the forehead of every technology companies forehead. Does anyone remember Syquest and its mad proliferation of incompatible disks? I warned their sales manager at a Technology Expo when it happened exactly where that would lead. I got a hostile brush off, and customers then dropped what was obviously a dumb idea. Not withstanding the manager's blind certainty that it didn't matter.

The difference is that your investment in FW 400 devices is not flushed down the toilet. Hell, I connected my FW 400 drive to my MBP without any new cables or anything.

[KBeat]

Biallystock said:

KBeat

I believe a major misstep on Apple's part was not to make the FW800 port backwardly compatible.

The fact that USB did this made the upgrade fairly smooth.

For a long time there were no adaptor cables or adaptors and you could not take one FW peripheral and connect to the alternate speed port. Now that there are cables and adaptors available it is all a little too late, too cumbersome and too expensive.

I can buy an 8Gb USB Flash Drive for less than a FW adaptor cable. The Flash Drive is actually an asset, the cable only stops my drive's connection from being a liability.

This lesson should have been burnt into the forehead of every technology companies forehead. Does anyone remember Syquest and its mad proliferation of incompatible disks? I warned their sales manager at a Technology Expo when it happened exactly where that would lead. I got a hostile brush off, and customers then dropped what was obviously a dumb idea. Not withstanding the manager's blind certainty that it didn't matter.

I still don't follow. You can pick up a 6' FW800 to FW400 cable for around $3 on monoprice.com. I don't see getting much cheaper than that for a flash drive, and at $3 price is not a barrier to FW800 adoption.

I remember the SyQuest debacle well, and in fact still have a 200 MB classic SyQuest drive kicking around. The analogy isn't valid however as every firewire device is fully backward compatible with the 800 port. I've got a Canon HD camcorder with a 4 pin FW port, 6 FW800 drives, and a couple of FW400 drives. Everyone of my devices connects fine to my new Unibody MacBook Pro and my entire expenditure to make that happen was under $4 after tax.

Sure, it'd be great if every single firewire port was identical regardless of speed or power, but they aren't, and neither are USB ports for that matter which also have variations requiring different cables. Yet all it takes to overcome this "limitation" is a $3 cable. I don't see that this is a major misstep on Apple's part. Standardizing FW across their lineup makes sense.

[Biallystock]

Well I was at Waterloo, with my $8 brolly with the pointy steel tip, in 1985, but it was a little too late for Napoleon and the French.

If they had only known and hung on they wouldn't have chucked in the towel.

There is a little old matter of timing and available resources when you need them.

I can still stick my USB1 or 2 Flash Drive in any current standard USB port or even my old ones without a secondary cable or adaptor at extra expense. You are telling me that is irrelevant to its success?

I checked out monoprice.com but couldn't get a freight price because they only ship to the USA & Canada.

Nor to several years in the past.

[KBeat]

Biallystock said:

Well I was at Waterloo, with my brolly with the pointy steel tip, in 1985, but it was a little too late for Napoleon and the French.

If they had only known and hung on they wouldn't have chucked in the towel.

There is a little old matter of timing and available resources when you need them.

I can still stick my USB1 or 2 Flash Drive in any current standard USB port or even my old ones without a secondary cable or adaptor at extra expense. You are telling me that is irrelevant to its success?

FWIW my opinion of the consumer success of USB over Firewire (professionals still rely heavily on firewire) had to do with Apple's exorbitantly high licensing fee for firewire at a time when USB2 was around the corner. USB 2 was "good enough" and far cheaper to license. It had little to nothing to do with port compatibility. Apple mended their ways, but it was too late.

[Mandrin]

This forum is not for political views. I get enough of that from the news media! Stay to the subject.