I must admit that this irked me at first. But I can sort of see their reasoning.
Pretty much EVERYTHING you buy off the shelf these days is USB 2. Go into any Circus City, Beast Buy, etc. - or even Wally World - and I dare you to find a Firewire device on the shelves. Probably can't. From hard drives to flash keys to card readers to digital cameras, everything is USB 2. Even iPods are now USB 2.
"But what about video?" you might say. Yeah, a lot of DV camcorders still use FireWire. But I have noticed a trend in the industry that is basically marginalizing tape-based MiniDV camcorders. The "new thing" these days in CONSUMER-GRADE camera equipment seems to be either Flash/SD based camcorders (such as the Samsung Xacti, or the wildly popular Flip Video) or hard drive based units (such as the JVC Everios).
Are they going to completely ditch Firewire? No. It's still on the professional grade machines (MacBook Pro), as well as ALL desktops (Even the Mac mini). The way I see it, they are transitioning Firewire into a "Pro" feature. It only makes sense to get rid of it on the "consumer" grade machines, to push people who really need it to "go pro." (Remember, the MacBooks are considered the CONSUMER line of laptops.) Pro equipment, such as RAID arrays, pro video cameras, etc. still use Firewire, and will continue to do so for quite some time.
I have both Firewire and USB2 ports on my MacBook Pro. Even I, a self-proclaimed "power user" use them only a faction of the time. USB2 on the other hand, I use 99.9% of the time. Until recently, the only thing I used Firewire for was my DV camera; and since upgrading to a JVC Everio hard drive based unit, I'm not even using it for that any more. Heck, even my fancy-pants "RAID" array (a Drobo) is a USB2 device, and works just fine as such.
So... where's the SD slot?happypickleOctober 15 2008, 08:42:05 UTC
Seriously I see consumer grade camcorders being entirely SD based within 2-3 years, at least as long as SD prices keep falling as they've been.
But that's not enough reason to remove 1394 from a freaking $1295 laptop.
And that's the real problem. $1295 is far too much for a consumer laptop when the rest of the basically-taiwanese competition is in the $600-800 range. Sure the laptops aren't as good, but... they're good enough out of the box for pretty much all non-gaming PC users.
Pretty much EVERYTHING you buy off the shelf these days is USB 2. Go into any Circus City, Beast Buy, etc. - or even Wally World - and I dare you to find a Firewire device on the shelves. Probably can't. From hard drives to flash keys to card readers to digital cameras, everything is USB 2. Even iPods are now USB 2.
"But what about video?" you might say. Yeah, a lot of DV camcorders still use FireWire. But I have noticed a trend in the industry that is basically marginalizing tape-based MiniDV camcorders. The "new thing" these days in CONSUMER-GRADE camera equipment seems to be either Flash/SD based camcorders (such as the Samsung Xacti, or the wildly popular Flip Video) or hard drive based units (such as the JVC Everios).
Are they going to completely ditch Firewire? No. It's still on the professional grade machines (MacBook Pro), as well as ALL desktops (Even the Mac mini). The way I see it, they are transitioning Firewire into a "Pro" feature. It only makes sense to get rid of it on the "consumer" grade machines, to push people who really need it to "go pro." (Remember, the MacBooks are considered the CONSUMER line of laptops.) Pro equipment, such as RAID arrays, pro video cameras, etc. still use Firewire, and will continue to do so for quite some time.
I have both Firewire and USB2 ports on my MacBook Pro. Even I, a self-proclaimed "power user" use them only a faction of the time. USB2 on the other hand, I use 99.9% of the time. Until recently, the only thing I used Firewire for was my DV camera; and since upgrading to a JVC Everio hard drive based unit, I'm not even using it for that any more. Heck, even my fancy-pants "RAID" array (a Drobo) is a USB2 device, and works just fine as such.
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But that's not enough reason to remove 1394 from a freaking $1295 laptop.
And that's the real problem. $1295 is far too much for a consumer laptop when the rest of the basically-taiwanese competition is in the $600-800 range. Sure the laptops aren't as good, but... they're good enough out of the box for pretty much all non-gaming PC users.
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