IEEE has approved IEEE 1394, “Standard for High Performance Serial Bus.” The revised specification combines and incorporates all previous IEEE 1394 standards developed since 1994.
Commercially known under the brand names of FireWire and i.LINK, the IEEE 1394 standard provides specifications for a high-speed serial bus which supports both asynchronous and isochronous communication and integrates well with most IEEE standard 32-bit and 64-bit parallel buses. More than 500 million IEEE 1394 ports have been produced since the standard was first published in 1995.
MacDailyNews Note: Apple’s Macs with FireWire 400 ports that support IEEE 1394a can operate at up to 400 megabits per second and Macs that include FireWire 800 ports that support IEEE 1394b operate at up to 800 megabits per second.
“The new standard includes all of the amendments, enhancements and more than 100 errata which have been added to the base standard over the last 12 years,” said Les Baxter, chair of the working group which developed the standard, in the press release. “This update provides developers with a single document they can rely upon for all of their application needs.”
The 1394-2008 standard updates and revises all prior 1394 standards, including 1394a, 1394b, 1394c, enhanced UTP, and the 1394 beta plus PHY-Link interface. It also incorporates the complete specifications for S1600 (1.6 Gigabit/second bandwidth) and for S3200, which provides 3.2 Gigabit/second speeds.
The standard is expected to be available this October.
Source: IEEE Standards Association
Apple’s FireWire information is here.
[Attribution 9 to 5 Mac. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Judge Bork” for the heads up.]
now THAT’S snappy!!!
hmmm, will apple use this or stick with USelessB?
“will apple use this”
Will anyone use this? When even Apple started dumping Firewire from products, that was the indication it was all over for Firewire.
My new iMac came with both 400/800 so I don’t know WTF Obsolete is talking about.
Damnit Apple! When the iPod was firewire based it was awesome. My first rev iPod was unique and the speed at which it uploaded and downloaded music was much snappier than old stupid USB.
Good can we allow FireWire on the “iProducts” again? USB is crap and slow. My iPhone won’t even accept a FireWire connection.
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“Obsolete” is referring to the loss of the FireWire connector on iPods, which switched to USB because it was significantly cheaper and “good enough” for a portable device such as an iPod. All their Macs continue to have FireWire built-in.
Apple switched to USB for the iPods because they wanted the Windows users. Most PCs don’t have FireWire.
It dumped USB from iPods certainly. But that’s probably because the PC market in general still swears by USB. Considering how long it took Windows to get decent USB support and actually start putting USB into their computers (although many still are stuck with PS2 ports and such) who can blame them?
USB 3.0 is supposed to be faster than FireWire 3200.
“A Super-Speed (3.0) rate of 4.8 Gbit/s (600 MB/s). The USB 3.0 specification will be released by Intel and its partners in mid-2008, according to early reports from CNET news. According to Intel, bus speeds will be 10 times faster than USB 2.0 due to the inclusion of a fiber-optic link that works with traditional copper connectors. Products using the 3.0 specification are likely to arrive in 2009 or 2010.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus
Normally FireWire works better and faster since it is self contained, where as USB has to rely on the CPU for help, thus slowing performance.
The problem, at least from a marketing point of view (because I’m no expert on the technical merits of either), is that USB 3.0 will clock in at 4.8Gbps.
So it’ll be interesting to see if the manufacturers bother supporting FireWire.
Now all Apple have to do is change the name to something like FireWire Extreme…
amyhre,
Intel is really bad about this. They include all the old legacy crap, even on motherboards that are geared towards gaming.
It seems like only Apple has the balls to advance, no matter what the consequences.
It didn’t help that FireWire 400 and 800 have different connectors. That was the nice thing about USB; version 1.0 and 2.0 were compatible.
FireWire is such a tragedy. It’s a much better standard than USB (faster data rates, more power through the bus), but industry adoption never caught on much (probably because it’s an Apple-championed product).
@ obsolete:
You really have no idea what you are talking about, do you?
Apple dropped FW support for iPods, it’s true; but it did this only as it was trying to cross over to Windows users, whose computers only come standard with USB.
All Apple Desktops and Laptops still come with Firewire, with the one exception being the MBA.
As to the question ‘Will anyone use this” the answer is a resounding YES! All of us who do video work will. FW 800 was a godsend when it came, and this new spec is very exciting.
Firewire is superior to USB in every way, but Apple shot itself in the foot in 1999 when it tried charging others $1 for every Firewire port manufacturers put into their devices.
http://www.macobserver.com/news/99/may/990512/newfirewirelincensing.html
By the time they lowered it to $0.25 per device, it was too late–manufacturers had balked at the cost and started looking elsewhere, and USB2 R&D;got a massive boost, with the specs released in mid-2000.
One of Apple’s serious mis-steps after Jobs came back–it tried throwing its weight around long before they were in a position to do so. It would be some years before Apple had the clout to make titans like the recording industry and cell phone providers bow to Jobs’ demands.
Amen! I did a full backup using time machine last night on my new iMac (after migrating from my old one). Backed up 180GB in under an hour and a half using FW800!! I can’t imagine how long it would have taken using USB… (although I could probably just calculate it)
@ Sir Gill Bates
Intel is really bad about this. They include all the old legacy crap, even on motherboards that are geared towards gaming.
It seems like only Apple has the balls to advance, no matter what the consequences.
Apple dumping the floppy drive is another instance that comes to mind. They dumped the floppy drive with the iMac some 11 years ago. PCs kept them for years and years after. I forgot how many.
Apple only charged for the use of the FireWire name, which they own the rights to. They later dropped the charge to use the name to $0.00, Apple gave away the FireWire technology and is now being managed by the standards board called IEEE. Sony uses the same standard but they gave it their own name: iLink.
Obsolete Interfaces;
My brand new iMac has FW800.
You really ought to read up on the topic before embarrassing yourself.
Apple went USB on iPods/iPhone to support Windoze FeeCee losers.
How many FeeCees come with FireWire? Damn few.
The original iPod was essentially Mac only. To make it work with FeeCees, they had to go to USB
My trusted Pismo came with twin FireWire ports.
This MacBook has only one.
I used to have one external disk.
Now I have four.
One other reason Firewire isn’t as widespread is that it is useless to put these plugs on mice keyboards and a few other low power low speed divices that they want to make a cheep as possible. Firewire flash drives would be much appreciated though 😀 Especially as they are getting larger capacity.
I can’t wait till FW3200 becomes standard on my iTele. This will allow me to teleport at unheard of speeds.