Of course, one expensive, niche machine is never going to turn Thunderbolt into a mainstream protocol, or create a flood of mass-market peripherals.
#Thunderbolt vs firewire ieee 1394 pro#
The new Mac Pro seems to be that machine, and Thunderbolt 2 one of the key elements of its appeal, supporting both the displays and the drives. They want a machine that is lightning-fast, that will drive multiple 4k displays and which provides high-speed access to lots of external drives. So far, that segment looks to be video editors. Given that each one can drive six Thunderbolt devices, Apple clearly believes that at least one segment of the market is going to share its enthusiasm for the interface. That has not just one Thunderbolt 2 port, but six. The new Superspeed USB protocol matching the 10Gbps throughput of standard Thunderbolt adds to the pressure, and Thunderbolt 2 – like Firewire 800 before it – is unlikely to be enough to sway the market.īut there are two glimmers of hope. I think it’s no exaggeration to say that without Apple, Thunderbolt would already be dead.
#Thunderbolt vs firewire ieee 1394 windows#
You can virtually count on one hand the number of Windows PCs out there with a Thunderbolt port. Optical thunderbolt was supposed to take over from copper, and there was supposed to be a Thunderbolt port in every PC. Thunderbolt currently looks to be heading the same way. But it definitely became a niche product, with even Apple eventually dropping the port from its MacBooks. It’s still in use in many high-end setups, and you can still buy Firewire drives today. Partly because consumers buy numbers without necessarily knowing what they mean, but mostly because it was cheaper.įirewire didn’t die. And Firewire 800 left USB for dead.īut we all know that technological superiority is no guarantee of commercial success. Firewire 400’s delivery of 400Mbps was consistent, making it significantly faster in real-life use. While USB 2 claimed peak speeds of 480Mbps, it rarely delivered them. It’s all looking rather reminiscent of Firewire …įirewire was far superior to USB. Sadly, there’s so far not much sign of this happening. It’s impressive stuff.Ī fast, clever technology developed by Intel and enthusiastically marketed by Apple ought to stand a fighting chance at mass-market adoption. Thunderbolt 2 takes this approach one step further, combining two 10Gbit/s channels into a single 20Gbit/s connection, with the the Thunderbolt controller again doing all the work. The reason you can daisy-chain up to six separate devices is because Thunderbolt automatically multiplexes and de-multiplexes the signals as needed. A single wire carrying both DisplayPort and high-speed PCIe data is an incredibly elegant approach to minimising cable clutter even if you don’t need the blistering speed, especially when you can use an Apple Thunderbolt Display as a hub for your USB devices. Save the files and send to your new computer.I’m a huge fan of Thunderbolt. Many laptops from the mid-2000s had them. You could see if you can borrow a computer that has a 1394 port. Also it is very rare to find an HDMI input port, which is what you would need. BTW, HDMI would be even more difficult since HDMI transmits uncompressed video and 1394 uses MPEG2 compressed video. Some active device/card must translate 1394 data into something your computer can understand. If it had been a 6-pin 1394 connector there would be a chance that this cable would damage equipment, as well as not working. Luckily the 1394 side is only a 4-pin connector.
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Secondly the speeds between 1394 and USB are different, so the devices won't even recognize the 1s and 0s.įinally, the voltage levels used can be different. It's kind of like someone speaking English to someone who only knows Russian.
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So when the Firewire port sends its 1s and 0s across to the USB port, the USB port won't know what to do with the 1s and 0s since they are in the wrong format. Let's discuss why this is such a very very bad idea.įirst of all, the protocols used by USB and IEEE-1394 (Firewire) are completely different.