New Mac Book with no firewire port???

T

tracksleepy

Registered
Hi,

I was looking into buying a mac book the new alumnin type that apple recently released for high school. And i found out that it doesn't have a firewire port so my question is if i buy the new mac book and someday i know i will need to transfer huge files like an imovie from one mac to the another mac so how would i do this? will Apple release a ethernet to firewire cable that will transfer files? I know you can use migration to transfer settings from another mac to this mac book using a ethernet cable. What will apple do about make a adapter for it or something??? Any help will be appreciated. And when you start that laptop up holding down the t key will it go into target mode or will it just boot normally? Lastly Mac os x leopard requires a firewire port to install leopard on it. I know they clone the hard drive from a huge machine before it gets into the laptop. But when the new operating system mac os x snow leopard is here i am pretty sure it will require a firewire port to install it so will i be able to upgrade it my self at home ?

Thanks
 
You can use an ethernet cable to share files between two Mac computers. It will be as fast or faster than Firewire.

You cannot use Firewire Target Disk Mode on the new Macs that lack a Firewire port.

Snow Leopard will be fully compatible with the unibody Macbooks. Leopard does not require a Firewire port in order to install -- I think you're mistaking that with Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4). Here are the system requirements for Leopard (and nowhere does it mention requiring a Firewire port):

http://www.apple.com/macosx/techspecs/
 
For those lamenting the loss of FireWire Target Disk mode (due to a lack of FireWire in the new MacBooks and MacBook Air), this USB product provides a similar means for transferring files at high speed from one computer to another without having to do any configuration or install additional software. It is price competitive with a simple FireWire cable, and...it works both Mac to Mac, and PC to Mac!

Targus High-Speed File Transfer Cable ($40)
http://www.targus.com/us/product_details.asp?sku=ACC96US


Of course, you can use Ethernet to transfer data also, it just isn't quite as easy:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3231
 
Sounds good, although it doesn't solve problems like Migration Assistant and harddrive recovery, since both systems must at least be able to run the application provided with the cable. Sadly, no Swiss distributor has them available. (I'd have liked to order some for our store here...)

Are there other products that work the same way?
 
For recovery, it is so easy to extract the HD from the new unibody macbooks that I would just invest in a 2.5" enclosure to be honest. The HD is just sitting in the same bay as the battery.

This is the best picture i can find:
3132046921_3482d6dc38.jpg

The drive is on the left and the battery on the right. Removing the battery is easy, there is even a video here - there is only one screw!

For migration i found I could migrate from my time machine backup during the installation [process, and that worked really well for me. I do kinda miss FW800 from my old MBP but the lack of FW400 doesn't seem to be too much of an issue to be honest. That said most of my external equipment has at least fw400 and USB2 connections available.
 
Erh... That's no solution for migrating an iBook G4 with Panther or Tiger to a new MacBook. The solution, currently, is an external harddrive with both USB and Firewire ports. A cable would be more simple.
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
You can use an ethernet cable to share files between two Mac computers. It will be as fast or faster than Firewire.
Click to expand...

1st of all how do you figure that? Firewire-400 @ 400mbps vs. 100Base-T @ 100mbps. Plus the data transfer rates are only as fast as the drive speeds anyhow.

The way we do it at our shop is create a .dmg of the old machine (the ibook in your case) and save it to external HD or whatever. Attach the external HD through USB to the new macbook and mount the .dmg. Fire up migration assistant and point it to the mounted image and transfer away.

If you are really worried about not having firewire and target disk mode maybe you should invest in the cheaper and still available white macbooks.
 
Randy Singer said:
Many recent Macs, even MacBooks, support gigabit (1000Base-T) Ethernet.
http://support.apple.com/kb/SP504

It depends on which model Macintosh you are upgrading from whether or not it also supports gigabit Ethernet. But some G4 PowerBooks supported gigabit ethernet.
http://support.apple.com/kb/SP38
Click to expand...

Understood. But as far as I'm aware there isn't an ibook made that supports it. And even though the new macbook supports it, the speed is only going as fast as the slowest device.

I was assuming he was transferring from a ibook, but after reading his post again he didn't specify. But odds are still against it supporting 1000Base-T. Plus just like I mentioned before the rate of transfer is only as fast as the drive speeds anyhow. I've done plenty of transfers between firewire 400 and 800 and see absolutely no difference do to drive access speeds.
 
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The current migration assistant (either 10.4, or 10.5) supports either FireWire, ethernet, or wireless. You don't even need to setup filesharing. You run the migration assistant on both macs. One will be setup to send files. The other will be for receiving files. One of the systems (usually the receiving one) will give you a key to type in the other system. Migration assistant takes over from there. Well, the wlreless transfer is hopelessly slow, so would be a last choice.
 
DeltaMac said:
The current migration assistant (either 10.4, or 10.5) supports either FireWire, ethernet, or wireless. You don't even need to setup filesharing. You run the migration assistant on both macs. One will be setup to send files. The other will be for receiving files. One of the systems (usually the receiving one) will give you a key to type in the other system. Migration assistant takes over from there. Well, the wlreless transfer is hopelessly slow, so would be a last choice.
Click to expand...

The machine setup to send will be the 10.4 machine which does not support that feature (tried last week with a clients transfer). They just will both set there and never see eachother. Both machines need to be 10.5 to do it that way.
 
You might have missed something in your setup. I have a 10.5 , and a 10.4 system here. Both are connected to the same ethernet router. I ran Migration assistant on both systems. I set it up to import a user from the 10.4 system to the 10.5 system. And got a good connection to start the transfer process. It will not work the other direction, as the 10.4 migration assistant only allows FireWire connection for importing a user account.
So Migration assistant FROM a 10.4 system TO a 10.5 system works through FireWire, ethernet, and I haven't tried the wireless, but that should work, too. Just a lot slower.
Pretty slick, I think...

Oh, the 10.4.11 system is a G3 iMac - and the 10.5.6 system is a G4 PowerBook. I wonder if it makes a difference with Intel Macs, eh?
edit - Just tested with the PowerBook on wireless, and also works as advertised. Just in only the one direction - 10.4 to 10.5 - unless using a Firewire connection, of course.
 
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I can't remember what the older machine was when I was attempting the transfer. The newer one was brand new. A newer unibody macbook if I remember correctly. I see a lot of machines being a full time Mac tech, that's why I'm hazy on what was what.
 
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