Comments on: Firewire Over Ethernet? Maybe If We Ask Loudly Enough

By: kme

kme — Sat, 30 May 2009 15:14:11 +0000

Buy the white Macbook, now on sale for $999 with one FIrewire 400 port.

By: eris

eris — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 16:20:29 +0000

I seem to have stumbled on this conversation a year too late, but…

(1) Firewire is anything but dumb. In fact it’s an extremely powerful, flexible technology.

(2) To get an idea of how powerful it is, picture a tree and turn it upside down. Any leaf on that tree is like a firewire node. Now imagine them communicating with each other — directly into each other’s memory space with little to no overhead. Now imagine being able to choose between sending a message as fast as possible or gauranteeing that it will be sent according to a pre-arranged timing (isochronous) necessary for realtime video and audio.

(3) Imagine that tree having up to 1024 branches, each branch having up to 63 leaves and each leaf having up to 2^48 of memory accessible to each other.

(4) Firewire vs Gig Ethernet is a silly argument. Firewire and Gig Ethernet can be combined using the IEEE 1394c spec. In fact 1394c Firewire over Ethernet twisted copper was designed to be cross-compatible with current gigE so that gigE equipment that wasn’t aware of 1394c traffic would *at the very least* ignore it, but definitely not break. 1394c would be incredible because you could have up to 100m of 800MBit/S realtime firewire.

(5) Maybe Apple will get smart and integrate 1394c capabilities into their ethernet ports and sell FW400/800 to 1394c adapters cheap.

By: Walt

Walt — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 23:05:05 +0000

“Would this move restore your faith in Cupertino, FireWire faithful, or is it too little, too late?”

First iMovie 08, now no FireWire port. Not a good sign that Apple is thinking about the users. The reception on my son’s iPhone is bad too.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 13:27:28 +0000

Wy does Apple not uses the iSCSI-Standard, which is already supported by many facturers? Nowbody waits for Firewire, still only 800 MBit. We need an alternative solution in small EV-Environments, so it must be cheaper than FibreChannel and much faster than Firewire800. The hardware for iSCSI is available, so what’s up, Apple?

By: John

John — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 12:32:22 +0000

Please change old junk to new HD camera and forget about FireWire 400 – this is an old, dead standard. If you can afford a new MacBook, you can afford a new camera. If not, buy a cheap PC.

By: dropbot

dropbot — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:47:31 +0000

@ Borden re: “USB connection sucks especially when you dealing with hundreds and hundreds of large size RAW files.”

I would suggest going to an Apple Store and download the files onto a new Macbook. Better to know then to assume.

By: Atlantic Wave Radio

Atlantic Wave Radio — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 08:40:29 +0000

Firewire came it didnt really wow the world apart from camcorders and now its been replaced by USB.

Why get rid of it, ok its a little premature, they should have waited a tad because USB3 is just around the corner and it will superceed firewire anyway.

Once that happens, who will want firewire? A few.

Its called progress and I am not that surprised but they are a tad ahead of themselves, should have transitioned over to USB3 and it would have seemed more sensible to the majority.

But it was going to happen, its really a matter of months is it not?

By: Borden

Borden — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 08:06:29 +0000

Apple wants more people to buy the more expensive pro model by taking the Firewire out of the Macbooks.

That sucks.. I am a photographer myself, and I really like to keep my laptops small for traveling and packing reasons. the firewire port provides much faster transfer rate when it comes to downloading photo from CF card.

USB connection sucks especially when you dealing with hundreds and hundreds of large size RAW files.

Macbook does everything that I need, but now if I wish to get a new macbook, I have to spend more in order to get the firewire port back again..

That is 100% business trick………….. Apple knows it all..

By: Daniel

Daniel — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 07:52:26 +0000

Firewire is not a “dumb” connection. In fact it is the opposite. 1394 was created well after Ethernet and is a much more capable then Ethernet. All of the IP traffic carried by Ethernet can easily be carried by 1394. What 1394 brings to the table over Ethernet is much higher performance and intelligence. It was also designed from the ground up for moving video with guaranteed quality of service (QoS). This is why 1394 is always used by professionals for moving video.

High Performance, Low Latency, Guaranteed QoS, and very low processor overhead. What’s not to love?

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 21:09:15 +0000

What part of “Firewire over Ethernet is impossible” do you not understand?

Firewire over CAT5 is NOT the same as “firewire over Ethernet.” You can NOT shoehorn Firewire into an existing Gigabit Ethernet port. This article displays a complete lack of understanding of how these interfaces work (wrt: “dumb” Ethernet). Anybody who buys a MacBook without Firewire is SOL when it comes to FireWire *FOREVER*.

Now, if the only contention over FireWire is the ability to turn the computer into an expensive portable disk drive, it’s possible to do this in EFI via USB or have it show up as some kind of NAS device via Ethernet.