who started using USB...Apple or ?

umm, I have an IBM Aptiva desktop Pentium 133Mhz circa early 1996 that has USB built into the motherboard. So it obviously wasnt a standard across perifs, but still you say that macs didnt use them till 1998. I also own a Packard Bell Pentium 233Mhz purchased November 1997 that has 2 USB ports built in. So not to sould like a pro wintel person, but just to let everyone know.
 
Actually, Windows 95B was the version of Windows that first included USB support natively, but it took until Windows 98 SE to actually get it right without the BSODs. :D Same goes for Mac OS 8.5 (although without the crashes Windows had :p). And USB has been around since the mid 90s, but it wasn't used prevalently until the iMac and Power Mac G3 B&W came on the scene. And like all other things, the PC world followed Apple's footsteps. So I guess Apple came to Intel's rescue more than once... ;)
 
Well, people have covered this subject pretty good in this thread so far. The only thing I didn't see mentioned was that Windows NT 4.0 never had support for USB. The NT line started supporting USB with Windows 2000.

And yes, there were almost no USB devices before Apple announced that their new iMac would only have USB ports. By the time the iMac went on sale there were a ton of USB devices for it (almost all of them in some form of translucent casing).

I can remember the panic when Apple said that they were going with USB by many in the Mac community. At the time it was thought to be as bad a move as removing the floppy.

As history has shown... neither hurt iMac sales, and Apple's adoption of USB brought USB into the mainstream.
 
I recall a UK journalist (well informed as ever!) claiming when the iMac came out that Apple had boobed, because it had printer ports that were non standard! Apparently she had never heard of USB. Typical Apple she said, bringing out a computer that there are no peripherals for!
 
What concerns me seems to be Apple's near-abandonment of Firewire 400 - as seen in the iPod pack-ins - and nothing announced with Firewire Wireless even though it's been finalized a while back.

Firewire 800 is almost Mac exclusive - which sucks for places/people with multiple OS's to support or share data. And USB2, which oddly enough as stated above multiple times Intel is the biggest part behind that - seems to be catching on with Macs...
 
Well, Apple simply goes with the flow... Before Apple supported USB-2, there were tons of devices coming out for the new standard. And slowly, FW400 became a "second class" citizen in stores around the world. PCs had USB-2 on-board, but many PCs didn't have FW. For us Mac users, this meant to search longer for the right device (or not find a version of something for FW at all) or even paying more for FW-only or combo devices. Now that Macs have USB-2, this problem has been solved.
Apple hasn't pushed FW800 as much as they have FW400, and the market didn't simply pick it up as quickly. Also for most devices, FW400 and USB-2 are "good enough". And FW400 does not share the cables/connectors with FW800, which also hinders its deployment.

As for the iPods going USB-2: Same reason. They had to choose between FW400 and USB-2. For a while, they supplied both (as long as most Macs didn't have USB-2), but now that's not necessary anymore. Simple cost choice.
 
Apple has always been at the forfront of connectivity with their hardware. What about the Mini-SCSI? What about serial-VGA/DVI video standard on portables AND desktops? What about their old Duo docking systems? Apple has had all these types of connectivity in their hardware long before the rest of PC world had them. Because Apple is a progressive company, and proprietary designers, they can try new technologies without fear. USB standards on iMac not only turned the peripheral industry on it's ear, but it turned heads all over the computing industry. So did FireWire,as you'll recall. Apple's Desktop Bus was proprietary, but it was fast, and PS/2 is not much different, is it? Remember those old PhoneNet connectors that you could use to network Macs using AppleTalk and regular phone cable? Apple's engineers are just the coolest. Can't wait to see the next generation of Macintosh computers when the new chip architectures are introduced. I'm sure they'll blow us all away.
 
Whether or not Apple use it first, they definitely the first to really "use" it. Until recently nearly every major manufacturer still included P/S2 ports (and most still supplied p/s2 keyboards) whereas apple made the decision and dropped the legacy adb stuff immediately.
 
No way about ADB on laptops. I have (and am still using everyday) a 6 year old Bronze Keyboard PowerBook G3 first issued in May 99 that has USB 1.1. The iBook did not exist then, but when it was introduced in Oct 1999 it did have USB. I do have a SCSI port and was the last Apple laptop without FireWire, but despite that I have it on my PCMCIA card.
 
contoursvt said:
RacerX, its true NT4 out of the box did not support USB, but there are 3rd party USB drivers such as this one http://www.bsquare.com/products/usbwin40/
Click to expand...
Besides the fact that it is not Windows NT 4.0 supporting USB (Microsoft never fixed that), the product you linked to was released in November of 2000... that was pretty late in the NT 4.0 product life for a fix (from a third party).

So, like I said before, USB support wasn't introduced into the NT line until Windows 2000... even though there were PCs being made with USB during the time that Windows NT 4.0 was being developed at Microsoft (which shows what a friendly relationship Microsoft and Intel have if Microsoft was unwilling to add USB support in NT 4.0).

Also it should be noted that both Windows NT 4.0 and OS/2 Warp 4.0 were released about the same time (1996), and IBM released a patch to enable USB support for Warp while Microsoft never did for NT 4.0. As both of these operating systems are based on the same historical kernel, I doubt that Microsoft was having any technical issues that prevented them from adopting USB. They just decided not to support it. :confused:
 
Well, MS also only started with Windows 2000 to bring the NT-kernel "down" to consumers. This development was only finished with Windows XP, actually (Win2K, by consumers, still often was viewed as a 'business only' OS). But we don't have to defend MS here. They made some strange decisions in the past - and sure will in the future.
But Apple can't just be called a hero here. For example, we still can't just 'fill' CD-Rs over time. If you burn a CD-R in the Finder, the CD-R is 'finished', i.e. no other sessions can be added. Other OSs do a much better job here, and I'm totally unsure as to why Apple doesn't do a better job here. Maybe they think it'd confuse users? But actually, I think, people are often confused by the way it's now with OS X...
 
I remember that feeling when Win2K was introduced at the University where I was at the time - Oooh, this must be something special! Not sure where that impression came from, though.

Also, have to agree with you about the CD burning issue. As a reasonably new mac convert from Win XP, it was one thing I felt OS X could've been done better.

That said, there are many more things that OS X does better than Windows. 'Nuff said on that one!

Andy
 
USB was supported in windows 95b there wasn't alot of devices to use with it but was late 95 or early 96 that the second update to win95 made it navive to support
 
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