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Is FW going to disappear from the MacBook Pro range?

Jay Emm

Member
From TechCrunch, and only a rumour - but there's no mention of Firewire 800 here - which would be a bad thing for tethered shooting.

>The MacBook Pro redesign we’ve heard about before. Other sources have it rolling out in March, but supply line data is unreliable unless bulk orders are indicated. The flatter, more Air-like redesign is practically a certainty at this point. The question is a few of the system details: storage (I’m guessing hybrid), processor (Ivy Bridge and a discrete GPU), ports (two Thunderbolts, one USB, one Ethernet, one SD), and optical drive (none).

Here's the original TechCrunch article

Hope this rumour is wrong, or simply missed mention of FW in error.
 

da_eltsch

Well-known member
Don't worry! Thunderbolt as the new port is much more powerful and there already exist adapter to turn the thunderbolt into a firewire-port - both: 400 and 800.

Though it might be a little inconvenient to have that extra adaper. Thunderbolt is much more powerful and part of "the" future ..

Regards,
Helge
 

Jay Emm

Member
Adaptor is good news thanks Helge. And it's all that matters to me. Found one here.

Even if there was a thunderbolt ported camera, I wouldn't want to feel "forced" to change to that just to be able to keep shooting tethered on the next MacBook Pro. I imagine that would be the same for a lot of people - too many FW devices out there to not have some kind of connectivity solution.
 

Lee Love

New member
Jay keep in mind Apple is a very innovative company and believe in pushing for better and better technology. Their history is to lead not follow. They did this with the floppy disk, CD's and I suspect they are leading the charge with thunderbolt.

Apple developed FireWire in 1995 so I think it is safe to say this is a legacy technology.
 

Terry

New member
Jay keep in mind Apple is a very innovative company and believe in pushing for better and better technology. Their history is to lead not follow. They did this with the floppy disk, CD's and I suspect they are leading the charge with thunderbolt.

Apple developed FireWire in 1995 so I think it is safe to say this is a legacy technology.
Yes,
That is all well and good but the digital backs don't have Thunderbolt. Digital backs that can't be tethered would be a problem and a lot more expensive to upgrade.
 

dougpeterson

Workshop Member
Just FYI we're keeping a close eye on the availability/performance of the announced Thunderbolt-to-Firewire Adapter.

For a variety of technical and business reasons I believe very strongly that these announced adapters WILL end up as real products and will perform easily (plug and play) BUT it should absolutely be noted that - as far as we've been able to tell (and PLEASE jump in if you KNOW for sure otherwise) - none of the announced adapters have begun shipping.

I'm always a bit skeptical about such things until I have one in my hand and have TESTED it. Which we (Capture Integration) certainly will the moment we can actually get one delivered.

The eventual demise of firewire is almost guaranteed by the "march of progress". That's one reason why Phase chose USB3 as a secondary connection type on the IQ series. It's extremely likely that Apple will continue to include at least one USB port (USB3 is backwards compatible to any USB port) for a good long while.

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JonMo

New member
I know its silly to point it out but,
Apple initiated the concept of Fire wire (1394) in 1986.
It was conceived and released as a product in 1995 but as a collaborative effort between many parties; IBM, Texas Instruments, Sony, and others.
All of which are paid a royalty for use of the standard.
Apple (by order of Steve) asked for a royalty of $1 per connection. The others got upset and added in their cost of royalty bringing it to a whopping total of $15 per connection.
I still believe this was the true "death knell" of 1394 AKA Fire wire, AKA I-Link (Sony) etc.

Intel has created a great new interface; Thunderbolt ( once known as Light peak ) brought forward with technical collaboration with Apple.
It will be great when mature.

But I for one am thoroughly frustrated by the fact we have;
1. no adapters for modern products with Thunderbolt for legacy fire wire that actually exist yet.
2. that the latest backs do not have a currently working alternative ( USB 3.0 teaser plug.)

I know we are promised they are coming but WOW!
Other tech is speeding forward and these two items are crawling.

OK, done my inarticulate rant for the day :)
 

Lee Love

New member
Aren't you guys getting a little ahead of yourself. Didn't Apple just release the only Thunderbold product two months ago ?

Also, if you want to get on someone's case it should be Intel. As far as I know Apple is not making the chipset or components. If there are going to be converters it will be driven by Intel and their OEM's.
 

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Of course, you could always get yourself an Apple Thunderbolt monitor and tether via FireWire to that :D

I use this as my office monitor with my MBP and it works well. I would concede that it is not exactly portable though ...
 
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