[FROM 2003:] What's the deal with USB 2.0?

**lonny** · April 7th, 2003, 05:06 AM

This is something that nobody seems to care about... but I see lots of new peripherals (cd burners, mp3 players...) going USB 2.0 only.

We all know that Firewire (and FW 800) is great, but we still need USB2 built in.

What's the state of the art in this technology on Macs?

**cellfish** · April 7th, 2003, 06:27 AM

While I hate the idea of USB and while I think Firewire is completely superior as a format to USB 2.0, I do agree with you that Macs should be using it anyway. I expect it to be making its way to the Mac platform by June. If not by then, then Apple seriously is going to have a bit of explaining to do, and will drive some of us back to the Windows world.

Andre

**ksv** · April 7th, 2003, 08:33 AM

If macs came with USB2 built in, more companies would drop the FireWire products, and it'd probably die a slow death. Remember, FireWire is Apple's own technology, and they have nothing to win on licensing USB2. FireWire is also faster, even though the USB2 theoretical peak is 80 Mbps above FireWire. FireWire 800, which is theoretically twice as fast as normal FireWire, will also of course be way faster than any USB standard Intel ever comes up with

**gwynarion** · April 7th, 2003, 08:41 AM

From everything I have heard Apple has very little interest in USB 2.0. From their perspective USB is what has replaced ADB and serial ports as the connection standard fro devices like keyboards, mice and printers--ie. slow things. FireWire is the technology they include for faster items like hard drives and the like. This could be reveresed, of course, if the USB 2.0 market seems to be growing in unforseen ways, but we'll just have to wait and see. For myself, I never buy anything with a USB connection if there is a version with FireWire available instead, especially if it is something I want to see talking to my computer with any sort of speed.

**lonny** · April 7th, 2003, 10:57 AM

My thought is that Apple doesn't want USB to be faster than FW, so it might just wait to embrace the 2.0 standard until FW800 is standard on every mac.
If USB2 enjoys the same success of its predecessor, we just need it to be on our macs... more like so for switchers!

**tk4two1** · April 7th, 2003, 11:27 AM

As with everything else on a PC if it is cheaper its used more. The main difference between Firewire 400 and USB2 is that FW can be used as a stand alone technology allowing audio/video and even more to communicate with each other without a negotiator in between. One main example of this is my digital camcorder, I can plug the FW cable into it and plug the other end into my brother-in-law's camcorder and transfer my data to his. This simply cannot be done with USB or USB2. Look at the Playstaion 2. It has FW and USB ports and which port is used for linking two systems together? FireWire of course. Another thing is the speed, Yes, Iknow USB2 is rated at 480Mbps but that is Max throughput and not the average speed. FireWire's Max of 400Mbps is a lot closer to its average of (Correct me if I'm wrong) somewhere around 390 Mbps. Where does USB2 stand for average? Alot lower than 390 Mbps. I think once apple gets FW800 installed as a standard in the new machines and gets a good market of new 3rd party devices, then they should put USB2 in to the Mac. But hey better hurry and work on FW1200 or 1600 or whatever the next step is for USB3 will probably be right on its tail.

**plastic** · April 7th, 2003, 02:15 PM

Kinda sad, if you remember that iMac was the first truely all USB machine that helped launch USB. Back then when iMac was launched no one in the PC world would give a damn about USB, and now it is like a standard on all PCs.

I see some PCs with FW implemented but it is still in its infancy stage.

Well, let's wait for the PC world to catch up with Macs. FW is still big, especially in the specialised field with Yamaha licensing it for MLan.

Hang in there, FW is here to stay.

**binaryDigit** · April 7th, 2003, 02:40 PM

Originally posted by tk4two1
As with everything else on a PC if it is cheaper its used more. The main difference between Firewire 400 and USB2 is that FW can be used as a stand alone technology allowing audio/video and even more to communicate with each other without a negotiator in between.

...

Excellent point. Unfortunately this is sounding a lot like IDE vs SCSI. SCSI was the faster more powerful interface. One of the things that made it more powerful was the fact that each device had to have a fair level of smarts. IDE on the other hand put much more of the smarts into the controller allowing for dumber but cheaper devices. Eventually through the relentless progress of hardware, the performance gap between the two have shrunk mightily, esp for the single disk config where the bus speeds outstrip the devices ability to get data onto the bus (and thus only really making it usuable in higher performance multi-device setups, e.g. RAID).

Lets hope that this does not follow that model and that FW can still prevail despite Intel's attempt to supplant it with USB.