On Wednesday, May 1, 2002, at 02:11 PM, Jeff Drummond wrote:
> Kyle Hansen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> Kevin Ady wrote:
>>
>>> on 4/30/02 4:04 PM, Kaufman, Charles at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> wrote:
>>>> Why don't the new iMac and eMac use USB 2 (instead of USB 1.1)? Is
>>>> it just
>>>> pre-planned obsolesces? Or the desire to save $5 or $10?
>>>
>>> I agree that Apple should be shipping USB 2.0 ports. They don't
>>> because USB
>>> 2.0 competes with FireWire and as I understand it Apple controls the
>>> FireWire standard. USB 2.0 is actually a little faster than FireWire
>>> and
>>> fully backwards compatible with 1.1. Given that every machine I own
>>> has USB
>>> 1.1 ports I would much prefer buying a 2.0 device that would work,
>>> all be it
>>> slower, on my other machines, than a firewire device that can only be
>>> used
>>> on the iBook. Quite simply Apple wants to encourage the FireWire
>>> market,
>>> not it's competitor.
>>
>> You *are* aware that there is a new revision of Firewire coming out
>> soon that
>> will absolutely destroy USB 2 right?
>
> Hehe... and USB 3 will destroy FireWire 2.
>
> It's SCSI vs. ATA/IDE all over again... :/
IEEE 1394 was jointly developed by Sony and Apple (and, I think, someone
else). "Firewire" is Apple's trademark for 1394, "iLink" is Sony's;
given that it's now an IEEE standard, it's mostly "controlled" by the
IEEE standards board, though I would hazard a guess that since Sony and
Apple are still doing most of the research (and footing most of the bill
for that research), these companies still play a significant role in
determining the future of 1394.
USB is developed by Intel. IIRC, there were some news stories a few
months ago about Intel scaling back on USB 2.0 (and future versions)
after Microsoft withdrew a substantial portion of it's support.
Lots of USB 2 devices will not actually be backwards compatible. The
"backwards compatible" part of USB 2 is mostly that USB 1.x devices will
work on USB 2.0 machines. The same is true, to a lesser degree, in
reverse, but it will not be universal. There also aren't many USB 2
devices out there, and a lot of the planned USB 2 devices have already
proven to be vaporware, and many new PCs are shipping with IEEE 1394
("firewire") onboard.
The industry has pretty much settled down into a "USB for low bandwidth,
Firewire for high bandwidth" mentality, at least on the part of the
device manufacturers themselves. The digital video market is so
thoroughly penetrated by IEEE 1394 (thanks mostly to Sony) and the
complete and utter dominance of 1394 in the storage market, I think
Intel (correctly) determined that they weren't going to be able to
compete against 1394 where it counts.
The question is... where will "medium" bandwidth devices wind up......
things like scanners and printers, that require more bandwidth than do
mice, but not nearly as much as digital video.
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