Photo courtesy of Apple
March 3rd, 2009 – Today Apple updated their Mac mini’s, iMac’s and Mac Pro towers. Sure, they all have more power and tonnes of USB ports, but both the iMac and Mac minis no longer, in keeping with the new Macbooks, have a FW400 port. Now when the new unibody Apple laptops came out, I could somewhat understand their omission from a design standpoint, even if it was a kick in the pants for those of us who bought FW400 devices.
However, the iMac and Mac mini’s have a lot of room to put extra ports. Heck, the Mac mini has five USB ports now. I guess all the speculation last time around on the Macbooks has been confirmed : Apple is discontinuing the FW400 format it championed. Not that this really matters to me…I’m going to build a Hackintosh next time around.
6 Comments, Comment or Ping
Sebastien Orban
FW800 is retro compatible with FW400, an adaptater will change that.
Getting the faster one on this small beast is nice ! If they were to put it away altogether it would be a blow, but here …
Mar 3rd, 2009
podarok
Agree with Sebastien Orban.
FW800 – must have at old macs. Our company bought such hardware long time ago before Apple updated their.
Mar 4th, 2009
Sean
@Sebastien Orban, Podarok : Right now I’m running a MacbookPro which has both FW400 and FW800 ports. While there are adapters out there for upstepping FW400 to FW800, my M-Audio Firewire400 interface can be bus powered, something that using a FW400 -> FW800 adapter would not support; I would still have to use a wall wart. Not that this is a big deal at home, but it means more to bring around when I’m mobile. If there were a nice FW800 device, I would upgrade but I haven’t heard of any so far. Then again, I’m not exactly at the bleeding edge of interface gear.
Mar 4th, 2009
Sebastien Orban
@Sean : I’m not sure why a change of cable would not allow bus powered. From what I’ve read, FW800 is retro compatible (as already stated), for the power too. In fact, it’s only a change in connector (because a fw800 will not work on a fw400 port and need more connections)
Of course on a laptop, the question can be harder to answer – most FW400 already can’t power a soundcard (especially on battery). Lot of laptop come with the FW400 4pin so as to not kill the battery ! But I know my soundcard (from Presonus, wich I don’t recommend) should be powered by his brick in those situation.
Mar 4th, 2009
Sean
@Sebastien Orban : I was under the impression that FW800 ports were not powered. Maybe I’m mistaken
Mar 4th, 2009
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