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Users Rage Over Missing FireWire On New MacBooks
Posted by
kdawson
on Fri Oct 17, 2008 09:58 AM
from the liar-liar-pants-not-wired dept.
from the liar-liar-pants-not-wired dept.
CWmike writes "Apple customers, unhappy that the company dropped FireWire from its new MacBook (not the Pro), are venting their frustrations on the company's support forum in hundreds of messages. Within minutes of Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrapping up a launch event in Cupertino, Calif., users started several threads to vent over the omission. 'Apple really screwed up with no FireWire port,' said Russ Tolman, who inaugurated a thread that by Thursday has collected more than 300 messages and been viewed over 8,000 times. 'No MacBook with [FireWire] — no new MacBook for me,' added Simon Meyer in a message posted yesterday. Several mentioned that FireWire's disappearance means that the new MacBooks could not be connected to other Macs using Target Disk Mode, and one noted that iMovie will have no way to connect to new MacBooks. Others pointed out that the previous-generation MacBook, which Apple is still selling at a reduced price of $999, includes a FireWire port. Apple introduced FireWire into its product lines in 1999 and championed the standard."
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A Brief History of Features Apple Has Killed 461 comments
Technologizer writes "Some folks are outraged over the lack of FireWire in the new MacBook released this week. But Apple wouldn't be Apple if it didn't move faster than any other computer company to kill technologies that may be past their prime. And history usually validates its decisions. We've posted a decade's worth of examples that prove the point."
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Drat you Steve! (Score:5, Funny)
Now I won't have anywhere to hookup my HD-DVD drive!
Re:Drat you Steve! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Mod parent up (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Drat you Steve! (Score:5, Informative)
An external adapter would still require somewhere to plug into. The MacBook doesn't have an ExpressCard slot like the MBPro does.
The only ports available are 2xUSB2 and Gigabit Ethernet. USB2 can't keep up with FW400 (even though the theoretical max is slightly higher) and doesn't transfer in the realtime mode needed by DV cams. There is talk of Firewire over Ethernet, but there is no known compatible adapter.
If the Ethernet adapter in the MacBook supports this (but possibly not until Snow Leopard is released, then come out and say so now. That would likely shut a number of people up.
I was planning on switching to a MacBook because the video card in the old one wouldn't work properly with Blender (Apple's OpenGL problems, as the same card works with Win/Linux and Blender) ... but the lack of a FW400 port means I can't hook in my DV camera, and using iMovie/iDVD was one of the reasons to want to switch to a Mac to begin with.
Having to capture on another computer and then move the video to the Mac means having to have a system around specifically for when I want to capture. Not very elegant at all. Now, I'm thinking I'll probably get a ThinkPad.
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Re:Drat you Steve! (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's face it:
FireWire is on its way out due to USB's huge dominance... if it's not discontinued now, it will be eventually. It will join the ranks of all the other discontinued proprietary formats like Atari, Commodore, Amiga, VHS, Betamax, DivX, HD DVD, and so on.
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Re:Drat you Steve! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Drat you Steve! (Score:5, Interesting)
The major gripe for ordinary users is the loss of Target Disk Mode [wikipedia.org]. I can't count the number of times my ass has been saved by being able to boot my powerbook/ibook/macbook as a firewire drive.
It's not as big of a deal these days as it used to be, but back in the day target disk mode was the only way of getting to the contents of your powerbook's hard drive without disassembling the entire machine. On the macbooks now, it's easy - take out the battery, unscrew three screws and pull a tab - but it's STILL not as easy as restarting your computer, holding down the "T" button and plugging in a cable.
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Re:Drat you Steve! (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, Macs have NICs that can automatically detect crossed pairs in ethernet cables, so you don't even need a special crossover cable to connect two computers directly, as long as one of them is a Mac.
Every Gigibit Ethernet NIC needs to be able to do that, it's not Mac-specific. It's required by the Gigabit Ethernet standard.
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Re:Drat you Steve! (Score:5, Informative)
IEEE Std 802.3-2005 clause 40.4.4 Automatic MDI/MDI-X Configuration
Automatic MDI/MDI-X Configuration is intended to eliminate the need for crossover cables between similar devices. Implementation of an automatic MDI/MDI-X configuration is optional for 1000BASE-T devices. If an automatic configuration method is used, it shall comply with the following specifications...
I'm not an IEEE expert but the above appears fairly unambiguous. What I do know is that if it isn't required then you can be certain someone, somewhere omitted it. Heck, it would be found missing even if it were required. Crappy hardware abounds.
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Re:Drat you Steve! (Score:5, Informative)
While new devices that use firewire might be rare, I have no intention of replacing my camcorder just because Apple says I should.
Apple is saying no such thing. It's so silly that people get worked up about a product that doesn't support their particular need, especially when there's an alternative product that does.
FireWire is only required for older DV cameras, some high-end video production equipment, certain musical equipment, target disk mode, and certain aerospace applications which really have nothing to do with personal computers.
1. Older DV cameras (dwindling market) - Get a new one, or don't get a new MacBook. If you still want a Mac, there are both cheaper and more expensive Macs that will do what you need. However, if you are thinking of buying a MacBook Pro just for FireWire, and would actually prefer a smaller screen, you can buy a MacBook and a new video camera for the same or less than a MacBook Pro.
2. High-end video equipment (niche market) - tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in video equipment, with the level of income that goes with it, and you can't afford a MacBook Pro?
3. Musical equipment (niche, but potentially low-end market) - This is really the best case for FireWire on the non-high end MacBooks, and it's still pretty lame. It's an extremely niche market, and it's silly to cater to them at the expense of the average person on the specific model targeted directly at mass consumer.
4. TDM (not niche, but relatively geeky) - The hard drives are insanely easy to get to. A $20 enclosure and an extra 10 minutes tops.
5. Aerospace - Added for completeness.
The mass market has moved to USB. The MacBook is the mass market Mac notebook. You can still buy a higher end, and even a lower end Mac notebook with FireWire.
This does not signal the end of FireWire on Macs. It just signals the end of FireWire as standard on all Macs. If you want both a Mac and FireWire, there are still, and will be for some time to come, plenty of options.
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Re:Drat you Steve! (Score:5, Informative)
not in the audio world it isn't... try finding a multichannel professional usb sound card...
there are many differences between firewire and usb that make firewire far better for audio work (and video too, but that isn't my area) and it isn't just better speed (although that helps).
porl
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Re:Drat you Steve! (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly. FireWire is great for pumping high-bandwidth data like multiple audio streams (think mixing board) into the computer for processing. Firewire's biggest advantage is that it's designed to do all of this while bypassing the CPU as much as possible, freeing the CPU's cycles for audio effects processing. USB's theoretical speed is higher, but the architecture relies on the CPU to a much greater extent than FireWire.
Maybe we will get to the point soon where USB's CPU-intensive nature won't matter, but as someone who still occasionally overloads the USB input using only a MIDI controller, I can authoritatively say that we're not there yet.
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Re:Drat you Steve! (Score:5, Informative)
A couple of points:
DV cameras (and associated transports such as HDV, DVCPRO, etc.) actually operate at S100 (100mbps). It should be possible to construct an interface that lets these low-speed firewire devices operate over USB2. Plus, the protocols themselves are robust enough to deal with a bus problem. Older ibooks often had trouble keeping up capturing firewire video and they recovered just fine. An occasional hiccup shouldnt be a big deal.
I believe this is what apple or a third party vendor should do. It would be a VERY good product. There are readily available USB2 PCI bridge chipsets and PCI firewire chipsets. Such a product coould probably sell for around $100. While it wouldn't work very well for firewire hard drives, USB2 should be able to keep up with S100 if its the only demanding thing on the bus.
Secondly the IEEE1394c draft specifying an RJ45 connector is *not* Firewire over Ethernet. It's Firewire over UTP/Cat5e with some additional tricks that would allow ports to detect either standard and switch between gigabit ethernet and firewire as needed. I have been hoping for this standard to take off for a long time (It could be really neat in low end storage networks), but I'm not going to hold my breath.
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I have to say, this seems a bit overblown ..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Note, I'm saying this as someone who still uses both firewire audio gear (I have an M-Audio Firewire 410 unit) AND a Sony Digital 8 camcorder with firewire ... so I *do* get the need for the connector at times.
But still, I think all this "outrage" is overblown. For starters, firewire is a slowly dying standard. No, it's not dead yet - but it's been struggling for years. The music industry is the biggest proponent of it still, but they're always SLOW to adopt changes - so that shouldn't come as much of a surprise. (Remember when Windows XP was released, and for years afterwards, you still had big-name audio apps that only officially supported Win '95/'98? Look how long music synthesizer/workstation makers hung onto SCSI ports as the answer for attaching your CD/DVD-ROM drives and external storage. They only started moving to memory card slots and USB ports after they exhausted their list of drive makers willing to re-brand external SCSI drives for them!)
As for camcorders? Apple's iMovie '08 total rewrite should have been the first clue on that! The main reason it was done was to support "AVCHD" video formats, as used on all the cameras popping up with built-in hard drives or flash drive storage. All of these were using USB interfaces, which older iMovie versions didn't even recognize. Go to any retail store today, and count how many camcorders on sale still use firewire! I bet it's no more than 1 in 5, and would be even less if it weren't for Sony's clinging to firewire (i.link) on their products.
Apple is known for a rather "minimalist" attitude with their products, and will delete options any time they think one is getting "old in the tooth". They were the first to ditch the 3.5" floppy drive, and go to great lengths just to eliminate switches and buttons on their products (iPhone, iPods, their very basic wireless remote control, slot-loading drives on portables with no eject button to be found on them, etc. etc.).
Obviously, they recognize that true "Pro" type users (who generally earn an income from the work they do on their computer) could still need firewire, so it's there on the Macbook Pro. It's there on all currently shipping Mac Pros too, and at least for the time being, even on consumer iMacs. (But I bet it disappears off the next revision of those too.)
Bottom line? A lot of people just wanted to try to do things with Apple's cheaper "consumer focused" portable that go a little beyond what that core market would ever care to do with one. Apple pushed back, and is forcing you to choose a "Pro" version of their machine if you're doing "Pro" things with it. Either go along with this thinking, or don't -- and use a last generation notebook that you can pick up cheaper than ever right now. By the time IT wears out, firewire will be much less attractive an option for you anyway, I suspect.
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Re:I have to say, this seems a bit overblown ..... (Score:5, Informative)
I don't want to seem like an ass, but the fact that you are using M-Audio gear indicates to me that you're really not working "pro" audio interfaces (particularly on Mac, since the OS X support for M-Audio is awful).
While you are probably correct that Apple is further straying down the road of "consumer appliance" for their sub-2000$ computing devices and they can be served by USB2 ports, what it says to me even more is that Apple is happy abandoning some of the creative folks who are frequently the traditional standard bearers for OS X (video and audio creative folks). There's a lot of audio editing and composing, for example, that doesn't need a $2000 MBP.
But, as I said on Ars, that's fine. The audio folks will eventually just move to an alternate OS platform.
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Re:I have to say, this seems a bit overblown ..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I think the main problem with the audio industry and USB is that USB is completely, absolutely horrible for audio. Really, that standard seems to have been designed by retards. It works OK for low-quality, low-bitrate things like speakers and microphones and headsets. However, the streaming model is terrible, and almost completely unsuited to professional audio. There is no way to reserve bandwidth (except in isochronous mode, which doesn't have error detection or recovery), it's very hard to use asynchronous clocks, and it's almost impossible to have low latency (due to the previous issue). Therefore, most USB soundcards run in synchronous mode, where the sample clock of the soundcard is locked to the USB clock. This, of course, is completely unsuitable for professional audio.
I think Apple has royally shot themselves in the foot with this. The people who buy Macbooks are disproportionate users of Firewire, since many of them do A/V type stuff. Considering there's no Expresscard slot, those people are basically fucked. I'm sure many of them will just switch to a Windows laptop, or get the older Macbook.
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Re:I have to say, this seems a bit overblown ..... (Score:5, Informative)
The vast majority of portable audio interfaces are firewire... because at this point there is no alternative. USB2 for audio pretty much sucks. All of the portable plugin hosts are firewire. It has nothing to do w/ "audio is slow to adopt to standards". Firewire is the proven low latency interface for audio.
Apple is being Apple... they try to force their users - being the fanboys they are - to shell out more money for the "Pro" series. So much for their 'warning' to the market about slimmer margins. I don't know where that was coming from or referring to.
If I didn't already have a huge amount of money invested in Mac audio software, I'd flee.
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Re:Drat you Steve! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Drat you Steve! (Score:5, Informative)
the original macbook pros lacked a firewire 800 port, which was added to the next refresh on them. I expect to see a fw800 port added to the first refresh on these new macbooks.
Yes, no firewire sucks. I do mac repair work, and I use the firewire port a LOT. This is going to make it a lot harder for me to get my job done. I hate working on the slot load imacs that lack the firewire port.
I use to pity the PC service tech as he always had to disassemble machines and pull the HD out to work on certain things.
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Re:Drat you Steve! (Score:5, Funny)
I do mac repair work
Stop spreading lies. Everyone knows that Apple products do not break down. Any issues you may be experiencing with your Apple product are merely a result of insufficient faith.
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Re:Drat you Steve! (Score:5, Funny)
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Not quite (Score:5, Insightful)
The white macbook is still being sold in the Apple store, and will be for the foreseeable future, having just been made Apple's "cheap" notebook. And white macbooks still have firewire400. Which is exactly what these whiny people are screaming that they want.
It seems to me that a few very loud people quite badly aren't going to shut up until Jobs give each and every single one of them their own free, customized mac.
Steve Jobs' take. . . (Score:5, Informative)
Sigh, I'm probably picking up a MBP, but I know plenty of folks that use firewire for things other than camcorders (particularly good external HDs)
FireWire has DMA, not USB! (Score:5, Informative)
If I remember correctly, USB2 is controllerless and requires CPU overhead and therefore the latency of USB2 sucks badly compared to FireWire (IEEE 1394x) with its controller and DMA (Direct Memory Access) channel.
This just makes sense if you have ever tried it.
FireWire 800 is even better than FireWire 400 for most anything and it is backward compatible. I believe it is much much faster than USB2 could ever hope to be and it is here NOW. (USB3 is still a LONG way off)
This is really about MONEY and Apple's either being greedy or cheap or both. Apparently they did this specifically on purpose as other 'new' models have FireWire... So, Why?
Apple is not wanting to pay the FireWire licensing fees and they are apparently wanting to push their user base into buying an affordable Hackintosh laptop (what many will likely do) or er.., will, uh... I mean Apple intends for their FireWire needing users to just pay many hundreds more for the "Pro" model that has FireWire.
As I understand it, there are also many cool things you can do with hard disk (and DVD and CD) 1-to-1 disk imaging with FireWire on the OSX macs too.. Not anymore. It's a Feature!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FireWire [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus [wikipedia.org]
Seems like it would just be a lot cheaper to just add a FireWire CardBus 54 (PCIe) notebook controller card?
Firewire Common on PC Notebooks (Score:5, Insightful)
Firewire is actually fairly common on even budget PC notebooks, including Dells, so this omission by Apple is all the more perplexing. And Apple still doesn't offer Blu-ray drives or 3G wireless at any price on any model. (No 3G wireless option from the iPhone company!) It also amazes me that their latest hardware refresh still caps RAM at 4G maximum. Even Dell has figured out how to go to 8G max on a notebook.
That said, there is some great design in these new MacBooks. But Apple engineers waxing eloquently about "unibody" construction (it isn't, by the way) when they forgot the damn Firewire port is a bit too much to stomach.
No worries (Score:5, Funny)
Boo effing Hoo (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, Steve was right, most new if not all HD recorders are USB.
Hell, I could not tell what they whining was loudest about, the fire wire or that the base aluminum macbook doesn't have a back lit keyboard (no macbook before this offered that feature anyway)
Fact is, people feel the need to be a victim or otherwise justify a decision for them. In other words, instead of admitting they had no wish to buy the new one (or means to) they can not blame Apple for not doing it. Very nice and tidy and common practice on message boards world wide. Besides getting to portray themselves as the victim they can get a sense of belonging with a possibly valid aggrieved party. It is always easier if you can blame someone else, regardless of the truth.
Yeah, it would nice nice if Firewire was there. However Firewire has always been associated with "Professional" and it has become an artifact of days gone by. Apple sunk FW themselves when they pushed USB to the forefront on iMacs and even with iPods now.
You want firewire, its easy to get, but the PRO line. It is only $400 more to the bottom end of the Pro line from the top of the "consumer" mac line.
Frankly, the new MacBooks are great. Some of the best integrated graphics seen on an Apple laptop. In fact the 9400M series removes a major reason people always held over Apple's head for not buying one before.
The real fault with the 13" Macbook is the viewing angles and color reproduction of that panel are horrible. Really cheaped out. So if you want your firewire and a great display get a Pro. After all if your buying an Apple laptop for more than sitting around Starbucks to look cool you would have gotten the Pro and never bitched
Firewire is a standard, not a luxury (Score:5, Interesting)
The average audio/video hobbyist/artist is not going to shell out 2 grand for a firewire port so they can record their music and capture their video.
And yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet Apple will still probably sell a metric assload of new MacBooks.
Saying that hundreds of users are pissed off just means there is a small but vocal minority who are annoyed.
The vast majority of MacBook users and potential buyers couldn't care less what FW is, and probably don't even know what it is.
As a number of commentators have pointed out, the vast majority of consumer grade video cameras now use USB. Seriously, if you don't like the product, don't buy it. Is it really that hard?
Recording (Score:5, Interesting)
Firewire is absolutely key when recording audio (in my case, guitar, bass, vocals, etc). USB pushes the CPU too hard and doesn't leave it free for realtime sound processing - amp simulation, etc. Currently I'm doing it on a 2 year old MacBook, but at this point my only upgrade option is a MBP. After factoring in the cost of replacing my Firewire hardware, the MBP isn't much more expensive anyway.
Then again, I guess that's what Apple wants.
Something to think about (Score:5, Informative)
If you want choices, why are you buying Apple? (Score:5, Interesting)
Matte screens
Hi-res screens
BluRay
2 hard drives installed
VGA or DVI output without an adapter
A quality keyboard (yeah, I said it)
Actual mouse buttons
TrackPoint style navigation
Fingerprint Reader
Built-in 3G/WWAN networking
Built-in Wireless USB
Tablets (x61t, x200t)
Subnotebooks (12" x200 models, etc.)
Hotswap between 2nd hard disk, dvd-rom, bluray devices
The list is pretty huge. Point is, there are a TON of very worthwhile hardware features that you can't get on the new Mac laptops. How relevant is the OS at this point anyway? Start thinking about functionality more than design aesthetics.
Re:is that still around? (Score:5, Informative)
The complaint is because the Macbook makes all their firewire accesories useless. (Duh).
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Re:is that still around? (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, you can bet I'm still pissed about the iMac, with their switch from ADB to USB, making my WACOM tablet obsolete.
(in fact, the fucker's still working JUST FINE on my beige G3 - wish I could connect this $600 monstrosity to my Pro.)
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Re:is that still around? (Score:5, Informative)
They both have the same specifications, but the marathoner can keep it up much longer.
USB does it in bursts and firewire is continuous transfer - thats why its better for movies.
(Aren't you glad I didn't use a car analogy? :-))
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Re:is that still around? (Score:5, Funny)
(Aren't you glad I didn't use a car analogy? :-))
No. You suck. I hate you.
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Re:is that still around? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm REALLY glad you didn't use a sex analogy.
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Re:is that still around? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:is that still around? (Score:5, Interesting)
Speed isn't the issue, at least for me.
USB doesn't let you use the Mac in Target mode, turning it into an HD without needing any OS to boot. It's great for system recovery.
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Re:is that still around? (Score:5, Informative)
Come on. With Target mode you can use you Mac as a HD anywhere, anytime, without opening the case. That's great for a lot of stuff, not just recovery.
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Re:is that still around? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's SOOOO much easier than holding down some keys, plugging into a running computer and editing files.
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Re:They will buy one anyways... (Score:4, Funny)
Hey look, I can generalize too!
The person who mindlessly criticizes Mac fans is the same person who cannot open his mouth without looking like an ass.
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Re:Moi aussi (Score:5, Funny)
Fuck Yeah! Like, do you know how many ISA cards I have sitting in a box at home?
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Re:Moi aussi (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Moi aussi (Score:5, Interesting)
The criterion used to determine whether a technology is outdated is not how long it has been around or if other technologies are superior. The single criterion used is whether the technology is still NEEDED--that is to say, no other reasonable alternative, either economically or technologically, exists.
Since FireWire (IEEE 1394) is a commonly used interface for external HDs, and more importantly, DV cameras, and iMovie uses this interface to read digital video from such a camera, it is still necessary because the loss of the interface means significant functionality is lost. USB is not an adequate replacement for this purpose, and the same is true for Target Disk Mode (otherwise Apple would have implemented it over USB but that has clearly not come to pass). Therefore FireWire is not outdated.
That is it not widely used outside the Mac market is irrelevant. The MacBook used to be able to do at least two things (as described above) that many users consider important, that the newest iteration cannot. Moreover, there is no known workaround, no effort by Apple to find a reasonable alternative. That is why so many are upset. I personally believe it reflects a poor design and planning choice. The MacBook is not the MacBook Air. It is the entry-level laptop, some users' only machine. Many of them are educational users.
FWIW I own a MacBook Pro. I personally think 13" is too small and wouldn't get a MacBook anyway. But should Apple ever get rid of FireWire across the entire laptop line (without furnishing a viable alternative), I think you'd have a reaction 100 times worse than what's happening now. It would effectively kill laptop sales. That is how accepted FireWire is in the "Pro" and Mac market as a whole.
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Re:Moi aussi (Score:5, Insightful)
But sadly, there is no BBQ. Apple pushed FW on us as a superior solution and championed it, encouraging us to adopt it. We do. Then they drop it, leaving us with a load of FW enabled devices. Is that not clear enough to you? Hence the outrage. HENCE!
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Re:Moi aussi (Score:5, Insightful)
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various uses of feces (Score:5, Funny)
"Yeah, I'm fucking bullshit about that."
I believe you used the wrong metaphor there. You should have used "apeshit"
apeshit = animated with rage
bullshit = expression of astonishment, or declaration of falsehoods.
horseshit = also a declaration of falsehoods
batshit = crazy
dogshit = indication of subpar behavior or characteristics. "My Yaris is dogshit slow with a body in the trunk"
gooseshit = excessive coolness - this comes roundabout from the way one slips on goose droppings and the slang word slick=cool "That Aptera EV is slicker than gooseshit!"
I'm sure there are many others, this is just short list I came up with quickly to illustrate.
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Re:Maybe they were forced to drop it? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Mine has two (Score:5, Funny)
What does the Robotech Defense Force have to do with this? Are you Rick Hunter in disguise?
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