“Apple Inc. customers, unhappy that the company dropped FireWire from its newest notebooks, are venting their frustrations on the company’s support forum in several hundred messages,” Gregg Keizer reports for Computerworld. “Within minutes of Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrapping up a launch event in Cupertino, Calif., users started several threads on the company’s support forum blasting the omission of a FireWire port on the new MacBook laptop.”
“‘Apple really screwed up with no FireWire port,’ said Russ Tolman, who inaugurated a thread that by Thursday had collected more than 200 messages and been viewed over 5,000 times,” Keizer reports. “Ironically, Apple has been one of the biggest boosters of the spec and was one of the primary drivers of the technology when it began development in the late 1980s.”
“Although the upper-end MacBook Pro — which Apple also revamped and relaunched Tuesday — includes a FireWire 800 port, users,” Keizer reports. “Others pointed out that the previous-generation MacBook, which Apple is still selling at a reduced price of $999, includes a FireWire port.”
“Apple has ditched technologies before, most notably when it was one of the first computer makers to abandon the 3.5-in. floppy drive in favor of an internal CD-ROM drive,” Keizer reports.
Full article here.
As we wrote yesterday, in a paragraph some seem to have missed (we suspect temporary rage-induced blindness):
“We’re still trying to figure out how Apple, among other concerns, plans to resolve the dichotomy between MacBooks that ship with iMovie and the lack of a FireWire port for DV cameras; the few relatively expensive solutions we’ve found so far (USB to FireWire DV Adapter) are all Windows-only. Surely Apple doesn’t expect hundreds of thousands of potential MacBook buyers who also own cameras equipped with FireWire to go buy new USB 2 cameras, right? Some other solution must exist or be in the works, right, Apple?”
To say nothing of existing FireWire drives and other peripherals.
Hello, Apple?
I see a refurb MacBook Pro is $1349 on the Apple website. For those worried about Firewire, that may be the way to go for now.
elgarak is mistaken when he says that all the Sony HD cameras are USB only. If he means Hard Drive and flash based video cameras, he is correct, but if he means Hi Def cameras, he is incorrect.
The tape based Hi Def Sony cameras and the DV (standard def) Sony cameras all use Firewire ONLY for the transfer of video. They use USB for the transfer of stills.
Millions of brand new consumer and prosumer video cameras in both Standard Def and Hi Def rely on only firewire for video transfer.
The Hard Drive (HD) video cameras in both standard and Hi Definition use USB only to transfer the video – but these are only a fraction of the installed base and a minority of the new sales.
These flash and hard drive cameras have not yet settled on a standard CODEC and as a result none of the major editing software like iMovie, Final Cut and Premiere (Windows) are able to import straight from the cameras. The video has to be converted via proprietary software – and it is a disaster in terms of frame drops and sound out of sync.
Don’t take my word for it – buy a flash based hi def camera of any make and take it to the Apple store and ask them “show me how you import this to iMovie”… and watch the fun.
The exclusion of firewire on the MacBooks effectively shut out millions or perhaps tens of millions of firewire camera owners – many of whom purchased the latest cameras yesterday.
That doesn’t even count those of us with firewire hard drives.
The lack of firewire will be a deal killer for any of the millions and millions of people who own firewire based cameras and hard drives.
Apple blew it and they blew it big time.
I’m waiting for the first class-action suit when thousands of folks in the next few weeks accept Apple’s advertising at face value and are not told “this computer doesn’t work with 99% of the installed base of video cameras”.
You just watch.
Not here. I’m RAGING over the loss of the matte screen on the MacBook Pro and the iMac. It’s RAGE. Causes my blood pressure to rise.
Most polls show that around 40% of users like matte. I’ve seen several on the web, and they’re all around 40%. So how can Steve say that the majority like gloss. Well, 60% is a majority. But it shows Steve cannot care less, because he knows we’re not going to leave for Windows.
I’m not going back to Windows. But I sure am going to try and keep my matte iMac and matte MBP alive as long as possible. Hoping they’ll last 10 years. I simply cannot, cannot use glossy screens.
I have tried my friend’s gloss iMac. When the iMac has the room’s windows to its side, the gloss screen is totally magnificent, better than matte in its clarity and color. But turn it around with the windows it its rear, and, for me, it is un-usable. I JUST CANNOT WRITE FOR HOURS AND HOURS A DAY ON MICROSOFT WORD, TEXT, NOT PHOTOS AN MOVIES, WITH ALL THAT REFLECTION. PLEASE LISTEN APPLE.
I too was upset at first, but thinking it over
– I do 100% of my video editing at a desk at home on the iMac
– you can always import your raw DV at home and bring the files with you
– if you really NEED to edit on the fly, on the road, you’re a power user and most likely getting a MBP
– most consumers are starting to switch over to their digital cameras for video and there is no hinderance for importing. Case in point are the new high end DSLR that capture HD video.
I agree that for students who are in college and will most likely only have one laptop, the MB will hinder their work flow. If video is that important, you’ll have to suffer and buy the MBP.
it’s in the firewire spec that a ethernet port can be used in place of an actual firewire port but what that requires hardware/software wise is unknown and there’s certainly no solutions out there for any platform to do this
While I understand why people are upset, I think they are missing the point of what Apple needs to do to support multiple laptop configurations at different price points. Let’s say I buy a car. I’d like the base model but want the big engine and leather seats. Well, guess what? The car maker says that I need the Sport model to get the bigger engine. If I want the leather seats, I need to upgrade to the Luxury model. They certainly could have made both the bigger engine and the leather seats available in the base model but then what would differentiate the base model from the Sport and Luxury models?
If you look at Apple’s laptops, screen size, processor speed and graphics performance are the main tools Apple has to create discrete models. I think what Apple is saying is that those features alone aren’t enough to justify the price differences that exist between the MacBooks and the MacBook Pros. So, in order to support those differences, they need to add (or subtract) features like Firewire, graphics cards and expansion slots.
Maybe the question people should be asking is how many more people are likely to buy a MacBook Pro now that would have bought a MacBook if it included Firewire. After all, Apple is a business and their goal is to make money.
The argument people seem to be making is that Firewire, like USB, should be on every computer. I tend to agree but I also know that if Firewire was included on the MacBook, I’d buy one instead of the MacBook Pro and Apple would be out about $1,000. If you were Apple, what would you do?
Virtually every consumer grade camcorder sold today uses USB and not FireWire. If you don’t believe me, just go to Best Buy or Fry’s and look for yourself.
If you’re using a pro grade camcorder, you don’t need to be buying a MacBook anyway, that’s what a MacBook Pro is for.
The main concern is regarding enclosures and external peripherals that you ALREADY own that are firewire. Using that older firewire video camera as an alternative to the fixed iSight camera is no longer an option, for one. Your external FireWire had drives are also out the window.
You don’t need FireWire, unless you’ve already been using FireWire and already own FireWire devices.
Responding to “ARGH!”… you’re just coming to the realization that Steve is a control freak now? What about mighty mouse. Steve is so adamantly against Apple making a 2 button mouse that he gave us what is essentially a 2 button mouse, but with only one button. Control freak, yes. Without it, no iPhone, no mighty mouse, no iSight, no multi-touch trackpad, no OS X, no stock prices higher than $20 a share.
Also, very few cars sporting the white Apple sticker. It has become cool to be an Apple fan now. Not that many “White Apple” fans had the Rainbow Apple stickers. That culture was changed by that control freak.
So by your argument, Apple is really telling folks who want FW to get a MacBook Pro. Sounds like a huge price increase to me, since the true replacement for the old MacBook is the new MacBook Pro.
unless I am mistaken, a new MacBook Pro, even without Firewire can use an expresscard with FW800 or FW400 ports to access Firewire devices and drives. This only leaves out the MacBooks that don’t have an expresscard slot.
For those of you that say all\most new video camera’s have USB. I say I can only afford 1 device replacement this year so I guess it will have to be the Video Camera in preparation for the MacBook as I can not do it in the reverse order and keep working.
Target Disk Mode is a life saver. Yes, this isn’t the first time that we’ve lost technology to the switching crowd that isn’t using it. But dumbing dow a system and raising the prices is pretty lo-res.
Hey, by late 2009, USB 2 also will be dead, and new cameras and storage devices will use USB 3. Also, another Web site reported today that some time ago, Apple applied for a patent to migrate Target Disk Mode to eSATA drives.
Back when Apple switched to Intel processors, I think the two companies must have come to some agreement for Apple to throw its support behind USB, and eventually phase out FireWire. If true, I’m sure Apple got something out of it…
@ Rog
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8671528&type=product&id=1197074520970
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8682829&type=product&id=1198286370318
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8671332&type=product&id=1197074520368
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8718694&type=product&id=1200703056029
The last link says “For easy image transfer” with USB. Not video.
@elgarak
Target Disk Mode is too fantastic to lose. Yes, you can boot from a USB disk, and we will have to find ways to make that work. Maybe apple can update the firmware of their machines to allow a pass-thru so that you can do a target disk mode in USB.
The reason that Target Disk Mode is so good, is because you don’t have to spend the extra money on an external HD. There are two main instances I use Target Disk Mode. First, if my Mac OS crashes and won’t boot, I can use another Mac in my office to look at my HD w/out any extra work and ever perform permission repairs to my disk and get it working. Basically, it’s the equivalent of taking your hard drive out and sticking it in another machine to work on it, all with a single cable and no work.
The second place I have used target disk mode is for ridiculously sized file transfers. I have a bunch of office files for some work we were doing that exceeded 30 GB of data. I needed to get them to another guy in my office and our external portable HDD’s were full and we were in somewhat of a hurry, so network xfer wasn’t going to work. Thanks to target disk mode, I was able to connect to his HD and xfer in just about 10 minutes.
That is the power of FireWire and that is mainly what I use it for. I don’t have any peripherals that are firewire only, just Target Disk Mode.
PetitionOnline – fill in the petition
if you feel the need for FW to be supported
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/MB1394/petition.html
Also there are many DV cams with USB wich is used only for the pictures, and no way to output DV. Some of my friends have JVC and panasonics like that (they were the inexpensive models)
for those bitching about no matte screens and the super glare. here you now have the best of both worlds.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/TR410LL/A?mco=MTIxODk3Mw
i’m if you search around you can find cheaper.
My Sony movie DV camera is Firewire only!
“The second place I have used target disk mode is for ridiculously sized file transfers. I have a bunch of office files for some work we were doing that exceeded 30 GB of data. I needed to get them to another guy in my office and our external portable HDD’s were full and we were in somewhat of a hurry, so network xfer wasn’t going to work. Thanks to target disk mode, I was able to connect to his HD and xfer in just about 10 minutes.
First – I’m definitely one who wants to keep FW, a superior technology… but I have a dumb question? Isn’t it possible to connect two Macs via ethernet port and transfer files directly? I’m sure there’s something I’m missing, but I would appreciate someone explaining it to me.
re: Sony:
I meant their <a >High Definition lineup for Consumers</a>. And I forgot to add “FW only”
Two DV cameras in there. The top-of-line is FW only (iLink in Sony lingo). The other one is USB/FW. The other cameras are non-tape formats, and all have USB.
@ripper Yep he could have just connected them with a ethernet cable and put in ip’s and subnets ex)
Computer 1:
192.168.1.100
255.255.255.0
Computer 2:
192.168.1.101
255.255.255.0
then started up file sharing.
link
Also Target Disk mode is great for applying an image to a machine also for upgrading it if your drive is borked.
“. . . avoid having a glossy screen shoved down my throat.”
That sounds like Rage Against the Macs sheen.
@ ripper, jonahan
Doable, but nowhere near as easy or fast as TDM. Most people don’t have a crossover cable available, so they’re going to go through a hub or switch. That will limit them to 100mbit Ethernet unless they have a gigabit switch.
So it’ll be 4-8 times slower than Firewire 400/800.