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Firewire was an originally open standard, but there came Apple and demanded to exact a symbolic 1$ per device payment.What? Firewire was a project initiated by Apple in mid-1980s, which then was further developed by the IEEE P1394 Working Group. Patents and pooling was part of it from the very beginning, with the primary drivers being Apple, Panasonic, Philips, and Sony (there were also a half-dozen odd smaller contributors). I don't remember there being any sort of "originally open standard" part to it whatsoever. Yeah, Apple owned the trademarked name "Firewire" for IEEE 1394, while Sony and TI used "i.LINK" and "Lynx" respectively, and Apple initially tried charging extra for that which was really stupid (but late 90s Apple was pretty dysfunctional). But even without that wasn't there still the standard $0.25/unit manufacturer royalty?
If you've got some other sources I'd be happy for the trip down memory lane because it's been a really, really long time since that particular battle. I'm not disagreeing that Apple's charge definitely harmed momentum, just that it's not like they came out of nowhere. Though it's worth noting that Firewire was inherently more costly anyway since it required dedicated silicon rather than handing everything off to the CPU. At the time that also gave it vastly more reliable real performance and latency vs USB, and Firewire 400 would typically obliterate USB 2 despite the latter having a sticker speed of 480 Mbps. But it was more inherently costly IIRC.