Goodbye, FireWire 400
By Nilay Patel 
posted November 17th 2008 3:01PM
posted November 17th 2008 3:01PM
We'll miss you.
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I am using mine right now..
I'm simply bewildered. I have never used Firewire nor have I had the desire to purchase anything based on having Firewire.
I guess this is one gadget-boat I missed entirely. Oh well, I won't miss USB 3.0.
It's fast, it doesn't slow your computer to a crawl while you copy files, and you can do awesome things like target mode with it that just can't be done with USB chipsets -- that's got me out of trouble countless times. Hell yeah I use it.
Or rather, I did, till my main machine became a new MacBook. Sigh.
I'm using my external FireWire drive right now.
Almost all DV cameras and external audio interfaces [that offer more than 4 inputs] rely solely on firewire.
To say that firewire is dead is totally absurd, because so many people that work with media content rely VERY HEAVILY on devices that connect by firewire.
Many high-end audio interfaces are firewire, although some of the newer ones like the RME ones are FW800 so I guess they're ok for now. My Motu units are FW400 though.
It is far superior to USB 2.0 for this use; all stuff to do with the chipsets and the bus not being shared and whatever stuff I don't understand. All I know that USB is fairly pants for audio, hence there aren't many interfaces that use it and those that do are cheap and nasty.
Firewire hard drives are also brilliant.
So yes, people have been using firewire, but things have superseded it. I'm guessing FW800 is the new thing for audio, and eSATA for external drives.
I couldn't help looking at my 3 external daisy chained firewire drives while watching this video. Almost brought a tear to my eye.
If you want to connect a storage device and you have access to Firewire then you should use it unless you have access to eSATA instead. Even basic Firewire 400 beats the heck out of USB 2.0, let alone the higher specifications.
I use firewire 800, which sadly, doesn't seem to be adopted much either...
I'm crying too!
ummm... no..
Why cry when its really not dead, and who the hell claimed it dead? Just because Engadget posted this up does not mean its something that really is happening.. so what if USB 3.0 is coming out? Firewire is still alive, and sure all consumer level products just shove the USB 2.0 port on their products but how do you expect to use a 20 -30 MP camera with a USB port? Transfering images would be a damn nightmare!
Idk why Engadget even posted it.. I'm still bewildered at how incorrect it is.... and what a waste of time to have an arguement about Walmart and Firewire.. what the hell..
w.e. i just found it very annoying, somewhat funny.. and seirously, whoever says Blu-Ray is dieing.. must either be living in 2050 or is having a damn fantasy about it because they're wrong..
Firewire dead? Tell that to my camcorder!
or to the millions of peripherals that use it.
Indeed.
This post is painfully short-sighted and a bit juvenile, honestly.
@Rollins: What? Engadget juvenile?
Camcorder...FireWire is dead...
I'm sorry...
I don't think its so much "Firewire is dead" I think its more like "Firewire 400" is dead.
Since Firewire 800 is back compatible and all. It's similar to USB 1.1 to USB 2.0
I think the world of semi-pro/pro audio disagrees.
SCSI here we come! Again...
people actually used FireWire? ... wow...
I'll miss that barn shaped tip... RIP
I agree, my favorite part about FireWire was describing it to a n00b over the phone: "Now look on the back of your computer and find the hole that's shaped like a barn. . . ."
FireWire's for girls...
@ loocas
Steve Jobs is always right, hes the future creator of all technology and 'i' belieave in him
I'm confused, firewire is still leading in transfering digital audio and video in the professional world. Technically, your post should say, "Firewire Will Miss you in 2010" when the new USB/Firewire specs actually are in devices that I can BUY.
Engadget might as say RIP Platter Bassed Hard Drives, Live on SSDs! Oh wait, I know... RIP LED, because OLED is new!!!
Firewire 400 is long from dead.
Only reason that Apple didn't include them in their macbooks is because they added a real graphics card and the majority of laptop users take their laptops home and hook them up to a larger monitor and external keyboard mouse. If they had firewire then they would be pretty close to being equal to the macbook pro's and no one would buy one. Myself Included.
/////////////////////
i'll always use you when capturing and editing media...forget the haters
Haaaaaahahahahaha... this is great!
What's with all the firewire hate? It streams better for media then usb 2.0 and virtually every camcorder in the consumer/prosumer market outputs to it.
So beautiful, I was mesmerised and the song! how perfect because it is so true. I will cherish my firewire cables because i have experienced what a pain using USB 2.0 is when synching my 60gig ipod photo. What made me smile was the song because it started to remind me of the time when I went to a strip joint in durban. wicked stuff. Can't get the images and the song out of my head. thanks to whoever made the video.
Anyone who...
(1) Still uses a DV or HDV video camera
(2) Does pro/semi-pro audio
(3) Wants decent performance out of their external HD/optical drive
...disagrees. FireWire is a much better designed interface than USB. With direct memory access (better performance) and daisy chaining capability (easier to setup), it is far superior to USB.
USB's biggest problem is its reliance upon the computer's CPU to handle all of the data going in and out of the port. USB controllers aren't permitted to be smart enough to send data to where it needs to go; it is reliant upon the CPU to make those decisions, taking up valuable CPU cycles, and degrading performance. It will get even worse with the higher speeds of USB 3. Has anyone noticed how your computer's CPU utilization spikes every time you transfer a lot of data over USB? Try capturing video from a USB device, saving it to an external USB hard drive and you'll see what I mean... dropped frames, sluggish computer. FireWire handles this task without any hit on the CPU at all.
The designers of USB just don't get it, and apparently the makers of peripherals and consumers don't either.
I record tv from my usb tv tuner to my usb external hdd on a daily basis, and never have had a problem with it. Fine quality recordings, computer performance not noticeably effected.
Well said. People just don't realise how ball-achingly slow USB is, because they've never had the luxury of FireWire.
I'm not sure I get why Drew Green was low ranked. I agree with him. I haven't had problems with streaming USB devices to USB drives. I'm not saying that the original comment isn't true, but in most real-world scenarios the CPU hit isn't a problem unless you have a really crappy CPU.
Oh, USB makers got it, what they got was how to make the lowest priced peripherals possible. The USB design philosophy is what gets you such gems as the USB powered dog that humps the side of your PC... without such a cheap connector and power provided over the interface, things like that would be prohibitively expensive.
Firewire is for real data transfer, but if you just pump up the USB specs to the next level, you can always move more data than last generation's firewire interface.
And, apparently, you don't get it either. USB3 doesn't poll the CPU like USB2 and 1. It has the much of the same smart routing capability of firewire.
I'd imagine the biggest hurdle to firewire was branding. Legally, no one can call their device firewire because Apple didn't want to share their copyright, so everyone else had to sell IEEE 1394 cables. How many more Wireless or WiFi routers can you sell then saying you sell 802.11 routers? As I saw it, there was a small window of opportunity when Sony came up with a name (i.Link) but they did the same damn thing Apple did.
> "USB3 doesn't poll the CPU like USB2 and 1"
USB3 doesn't do jack-shit right now. There won't be any computers or peripherals until 2010. And why would I replace my eSATA enclosures with USB3?
Maaaaaybe someday my next camcorder will be USB3. And maaaaaybe someday I'll have a need for USB3. But I've already got a bunch of peripherals that don't make full use of the speed now.
Nice to see somebody explain it from a technical perspective. I have always had trouble explaining it since USB 2.0 "says" it transfers at 480, which is "obviously" faster than 400. I normally just do a demo with USB 2 vs. FW 400. Oh well. Like one person said, people with think USB 2 is blazing fast until they have the luxury or using FW.
I'm constantly transfering gigabytes worth of data from my interal drive to my externals via USB, while I'm torrenting more stuff, browsing the internet, and playing some videos either via VLC or MPC and have yet to notice my computer stutter even once. And the files are transfering at a decent 35-40 MB/s.
@ Seneca
Oh, Apple was willing to share the name, you just had to pay for it. They didn't own the rights to the technology, it was just the name they wanted you to pay for. Manufactures could put "Firewire" on their machines, they just couldn't "call" it that unless they payed Apple to use the name. Sony tried to counteract this by coming up with their own name to use on their stuff. Either way, the "Firewire" name won out, and so the technology became known as Firewire, so device manufactures pain the royalties to avoid confusion.
@Drew: USB TV tuners record a stream around 2-20 Mbps, which is small enough to work fine with either IO.
The name "Firewire" was made royalty free at one point, so you didn't have to pay Apple for the name. Unfortunately, it was too late, damage to the brand was already done. Oops.
Apple should have made it royalty free from the beginning if they wanted to really push the brand and make a niche outside of the prosumer for it.
You still can't connect two computers (or two peripherals) together using USB like you can with Firewire. That alone makes Firewire much more practical. It also makes Firewire controllers more expensive to manufacture, which is why it must be killed, this being a race to the bottom and all.
Hmmm... I seem to remember purchasing a Belkin PC to PC USB cable when transferring files from an XP machine to a Vista machine. I believe that is an example of two computers being connected using USB.
Piuttosto che piangere, fatevi una centrale idroelettrica d'inizio secolo, no? PORCO DEMONIO!
Perché?!?!
Translation: "It's-a me, a-Mario!"
"Rather than cry, let a hydroelectric power station of the century, no? SWINE DEMON!" ? ? ? ? ? ?
ma che cazzo dici? e che cazzo centra?
se sei svizzero capisco che ti importano le centrali idroelettriche e che in svizzera ce ne sono di buone
ma se sei italiano, non hai nessun diritto di criticare
seriamente stai un po' zitto
i bought a firewire card like 3 months ago and never used the damn thing,what a waste..im glad i only spent $10 for the darn thing,lesson learned i guess
You believing in Steve Jobs?!
No way!