FireWire 800 Gaining Traction


A peer around the back of the new iMacs reveals a new port: FireWire 800 (IEEE 1394b). No consumer Mac has ever included FireWire 800.

This is evidence that FW 800 is "gaining significant momentum", the 1394 Trade Association says, as Macsimum News reports.

Many predicted the death of FireWire a few years ago, as Apple stopped, first, bundling a FireWire cable with its iPods (formerly, they were compatible with either USB 2.0 or FireWire), and then abandoned FireWire entirely for the Intel USB standard.

But Apple has kept FireWire 400 ports on all models, while retaining 800Mbps ports for its pro Macs only, like the Power Mac, Mac Pro, PowerBook G4 and MacBook Pro. Now the iMac has joined the stable.

FireWire provides connectivity for, say, consumer digital movie cameras, that can export and import footage directly to and from applications like iMovie. At the high end, there are FireWire-interface scanners, but they tend to cost top dollar.

However, an increasing range of FireWire 800 hard drive enclosures and external DVD burners make the choice easier. They're generally not as cheap as USB 2.0 devices, but FireWire 800 (with a 1600Mbps version in the works) has much more bandwidth and throughput than USB 2.0. It's also a networking protocol: for a while, Apple offered a beta of the IP over FireWire software, but withdrew it shortly afterwards. On Macs, FireWire Target mode is also an incredibly quick and useful way of hooking up Macs and having one as an external disc drive.

"Apple's decision to incorporate 1394b into all of its iMacs is another indication of increasing momentum for the 'b' version of FireWire," says James Snider, executive director of the 1394 Trade Association, who is quoted in the article. "The storage product designers set the pace by adopting FireWire 800 for hard disk drives, and now, with this announcement from Apple, 1394b is in the mainstream."