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How FireWire came to market and ultimately fell out of favor

arstechnica.com

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Re: How FireWire came to market and ultimately fell out of favor

#71

Post by eru »

rconti wrote: post #53

My first exposure to FireWire (like many folks, I assume) was the original 5GB iPod I bought from a friend. I thought it was SO cool that you just used this one cable to connect to your computer (in my case, my first Mac, an iBook 600mhz G3), as well as to the power adapter. The charging brick was just a brick with a firewire port and flip-out prongs that could be removed from the power brick, just like today's Mac l…

I never found the American flip-out plugs to work very well---the power brick is just too heavy to be held up solidly like that.

But then, I only visit the states every once in a while, and usually run British-style or Australian connectors.

Re: How FireWire came to market and ultimately fell out of favor

#72

Post by _e »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #39
Gracana wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your interpretation of the "fail fast" mindset? This sounds like the perfect example of a big project failing catastrophically that "fail fast" intends to avoid.

On the contrary, OP is saying that Apple made the decision to bump the license fee up to a dollar, very quickly saw that it was too high and lowered it to 25 cents, but it didn't matter. That one simple failed decision that Apple quickly reversed still ended up killing FireWire.

If Apple charged 25c in the beginning and increased the price over time until they found the equilibrium then it might have been a different story.

Re: How FireWire came to market and ultimately fell out of favor

#73

Post by theandrewbailey »

throwaway91111 wrote: post #56
philsnow wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So now we've got thunderbolt.

You're not wrong. IIRC USB C is also DMA, did I hear wrong?

USB-C is a fancy USB connector. It implies nothing about the protocol or anything underneath.

Re: How FireWire came to market and ultimately fell out of favor

#75

Post by theandrewbailey »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #9

Since we're sharing our nostalgic Firewire stories... the first video camera I ever bought (almost 20 years ago) could only connect to computers via Firewire. I remember almost all digital cameras on the market only supported it. It seemed like a clear winner. It's interesting to see an article that explains why it died.

I got one of those Lacie big disks around 2006. I loved using the Firewire 400 port rather than USB. It was at least 20% faster. It's unfortunate that I never got to use the Firewire 800 ports on it.

Re: How FireWire came to market and ultimately fell out of favor

#76

Post by enjoy-your-stay »

bluedino wrote: post #5

I loved FireWire. I had an external HD and DVD-RW, I could daisy chain them and connect them to my Dell, Sony, and Apple machines. Faster than USB, only needed one port... everyone complained FireWire was more expensive but the devices performed so much better.

I loved Firewire too, I can still remember the jaw dropping speed (at the time) that it copied music to my iPod.

Re: How FireWire came to market and ultimately fell out of favor

#77

Post by pavement »

rconti wrote: post #49
jjguy wrote: post #22

> After being informed of IBM's hundreds of millions in yearly patent revenue, CEO Steve Jobs authorized a change in FireWire's licensing policy. Apple would now charge a fee of $1 per port. (So if a device has two ports, that's $2 per unit.)...Intel sent its CTO to talk to Jobs about the change, but the meeting went badly. Intel decided to withdraw its support for FireWire—to pull the plug on efforts to build FireWi…

I can't help but laugh at how much of a euphemism " ... but the meeting went badly." must be.

With legal teams on hand and millions of dollars at stake, I'd imagine it as dry and unemotional for the most part.

A read-through on some paperwork, a couple of curt refusals, double check to confirm and get clarification, maybe a phone call or two, and call it a day.

Re: How FireWire came to market and ultimately fell out of favor

#78

Post by CydeWeys »

mangix wrote: post #47
CydeWeys wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an example of a device that only uses USB 2.0 over a USB-C connector? I wasn't aware of such a thing.

All phones with type c

Not true. My phone, a Pixel, has USB 3.1 Gen 1. The Galaxy S8 is also USB 3.1 but I'm unable to find which gen it is from five minutes' Googling.

Re: How FireWire came to market and ultimately fell out of favor

#79

Post by CydeWeys »

pitaj wrote: post #48
CydeWeys wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an example of a device that only uses USB 2.0 over a USB-C connector? I wasn't aware of such a thing.

Some smartphones.

Older ones maybe. The latest generations of flagship phones use USB 3.1 over Type-C.

Re: How FireWire came to market and ultimately fell out of favor

#80

Post by bsder »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #24
jancsika wrote: post #13

> Speeds across networks of all sizes are now so high that there's also little need for something like FireWire. "The packets can arrive way before it's needed, because it's so fast," Sirkin noted. "So you don't need to worry about being synchronous any more." For use cases where reliable low-latency transport is required (i.e., Firewire's main strength), what could possibly be meant by "packets arrive way before it'…

I think it's being compared to something like 12 Mbps USB 1.1: Firewire is just so much faster that it doesn't matter. I deal with upgrading a lot of industrial electronics, and have to answer this question frequently: people are concerned about replacing Modbus RTU and similar setups with modern protocols: "But it's not real time!", "It's too high-level!" "Consumer or office network gear can't possibly work here!" N…

You might want to look into Time Sensitive Networking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-Sensitive_Networking

This is a real-time standard for ethernet that lets you reserve slots for time sensitive information.

It's primarily being driven by the automotive guys who want to be able to wire up 4 displays, 12 speakers, and a video player for an in-car entertainment system.

Before TSN, it was AVB (audio-video bridging) and, while people networking things like gigantic stadium shows loved it, it didn't have enough volume to be popular.

With automotive behind it, it's going to get cheap and ubiquitous really quickly.

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