USB 3 will crush eSata and Firewire800

[Ryan Young]

I think that Apple removed Firewire from the MacBook because they wanted to create a new way of delineating professional and consumer.

I think their whole idea behind this was "AIR". Not the DIGI related one... but everything being wireless. The MobileMe features between the iPhones and computers, getting rid of the DVD even, and using them from a networked computer... Apple TV through a wireless network. I can see this being a big part of the future, but I think Apple jumped the gun by about 5 years or so. Nobody is ready for a USB 2.0 port and no disc drive!

5Gbps?!?! Can current hard drives even handle that sort of load? What other new things are coming up if they're planning for that already? Hmm...

[Frank Kruse]

This reminds me of the discussion going on a few years ago about SoundTrackPro becoming the new ProTools-killer ;-)

frank.

[quadraphonics]

This discussion reminds me of the one almost 10 years ago when Apple got rid of the Floppy disks and Serial ports on their G3s and iMacs. A number of people were up in arms about what Apple was doing. But in the end it all worked out. The items that were not directly serviced by Apple's change were addressed by third party hardware developers (Keyspan USB - Serial adapter comes to mind). I think we will all be ok. There will be a slight period of growing pains, but then we won't think much about it.

Randall

Originally Posted by Ryan Young

I think their whole idea behind this was "AIR". Not the DIGI related one... but everything being wireless. The MobileMe features between the iPhones and computers, getting rid of the DVD even, and using them from a networked computer... Apple TV through a wireless network. I can see this being a big part of the future, but I think Apple jumped the gun by about 5 years or so. Nobody is ready for a USB 2.0 port and no disc drive!

5Gbps?!?! Can current hard drives even handle that sort of load? What other new things are coming up if they're planning for that already? Hmm...

[brentf]

What I found interesting in the article was a little tidbit that refers to the new FIREWIRE 3200 spec...

So, I did a little googling and found this:
"FireWire 3200 promises a lower transfer rate of 3.2 Gbps, but boats that its P2P architecture will deliver 97% of the theoretical rate, a number that is much higher that the master/slave architecture of USB is expected to produce. As a result, it’s possible that in real world usage FireWire may actually be faster, regardless of the fact that it isn’t on paper. As far as power output, despite the improvements made by USB, FireWire still maintains an edge. It can produce more power and will therefore be more capable when it comes to charging items or running them directly. The designers have also made FireWire 3200 backwards compatible with FireWire 800, and as an added bonus you can plug a FireWire 3200 cable/device into your old FireWire 800 port and still get the full transfer rate of 3.2 Gbps."

From:http://cooltechcheck.blogspot.com/20...wire-3200.html

I look forward to having both interfaces in my gear. Each with its own set of purposes. Just like today.

[day_tripper]

firewire 3200 / esata / usb3...


what gets me excited about all of these if the thought that I will be able to buy a HD system that does not require me to buy a powermac/pci-x/internal-card of some kind :)

how fast would these connections have to be in order for them to be a replacement for the internal card connections that HD has now?

[cmaynes]

It means nothing until people like Dane Davis and the studios start throwing out their firewire topographies.

We used to have a saying back when I was at Creative Cafe in the late 90's and Fibre Channel arrived-

Buy the Dream- Live the Nightmare.

[Postman]

Humbug. Don't care. Still using SCSI for the heavy lifting here. Still happy.

[tigas]

Allow me to be cynical:

- Mass production rules
- "Good enough" rules
- Equipment designers will find workarounds for "good enough"'s limitations.

We might get PCIe FW3200 cards, but it'll be very difficult to get FW3200 in any Apple motherboard (iMac/Portables/MacPro)

Firewire, as of now, is a nightmare. Mojos do not work reliably with FW hard disks attached in the same bus, and refuse completely to work with a 003 in the same bus. Generic DV bridges have the same problem, but since they only use 1/4 of the FW bus, they're more forgiving. But if FW3200 appears, someone will build a FW3200 1080p video interface and we'll be back to where we started.

So, if you want to use FW video and LE, you can't use anything but a Mac Pro, because you need an expansion card for another FW bus. Heck, might as well get a Blackmagic card, then!

As for eSATA, hot-plugging was never reliable enough. It seems to fail to work (necessitating a restart) or cause a kernel panic at the absolute worst possible moment.

[Chief Technician]

Originally Posted by tigas

Allow me to be cynical:
Firewire, as of now, is a nightmare. Mojos do not work reliably with FW hard disks attached in the same bus, and refuse completely to work with a 003 in the same bus.

And you're surprised by this? It's common knowledge that MOJO needs to be the only device on the CPU's firewire bus.

So, if you want to use FW video and LE, you can't use anything but a Mac Pro, because you need an expansion card for another FW bus. Heck, might as well get a Blackmagic card, then!

Might as well buy the Blackmagic card anyway. MOJO is SD only, and SD is like tape (dead).

[Eric Seaberg]

Originally Posted by Postman

Humbug. Don't care. Still using SCSI for the heavy lifting here. Still happy.

AMEN!! Ultra SCSI has a brain of its own that nothing since can compare to. Bandwidth speeds are academic if the drive doesn't know what to do with multiple requests!!