Actually, the speed of the USB connection *on the machine in
question* (a G3 iMac without USB 2.0) is, in fact, the reason Apple
did not include support from booting from USB hard drives.
The _continued_ lack of boot support for USB drives on Macs is
clearly a legacy issue: Apple invented FireWire and included it on
every Mac since the introduction 2nd-gen iMac (1998), while USB 2.0
did not come along for several years after that. During that time,
the only viable technology for booting from an external drive was
FireWire, so that's what Apple supported, and that's what they still
support.
Apple was also slow in adopting USB 2.0, because they wanted to
promote FireWire (which, to be fair, *is* superior technology). But
now that Apple has abandoned FireWire support in the latest iPods --
you used to be able to install OS X on your iPod and boot from it,
but with the latest models, this is no longer possible -- I expect
support for booting from a USB 2.0 drive will be coming soon.
- Darcy
-----
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://secretsociety.typepad.com
Brooklyn, NY
On 13 Jun 2006, at 3:28 PM, David W. Fenton wrote:
On 13 Jun 2006 at 15:10, Darcy James Argue wrote:
Also, while David is correct -- on paper, the transfer rate of USB
2.0 is 480 Mb/sec vs. 400 Mb/sec for FireWire -- in most real-world
tests, FireWire hard drives outperform the equivalent USB 2.0 hard
drive (due to the superior chipset).
Not to mention that if you put multiple USB 2.0 devices on a hub,
they must all share the port's 480 Mb/sec bandwidth, whereas daisy-
chained FireWire devices don't have that problem.
All true, but the point is that speed of the USB connection is not a
reason for prohibiting USB bootability.
--
David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
_______________________________________________
Finale mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
