We recently reported on the possibility of Apple acquiring Gobe Productive 3, and we suggested caution on the rumors. Yesterday, MacRumors quoted Bob Hearn regarding the issue (ex-Claris/Gobe employee), who says that the 3 ex-Gobe employees now at Apple, have nothing to do with a possible GP3 port, and they don’t even work on AppleWorks’ codebase (ex-ClarisWorks, which was also developed by Gobe back in the day as “Claris Inc”), but on other projects. Surfing around the MacRumors site, I came across an article regarding the USB-2 status on Macs. On other office suite news, OpenOffice.org 1.0.2 is available (release notes here) but no official announcement is out yet.
Apple Not Exactly After Gobe Productive 3, It Seems
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Apple would do really well, if they replaced AppleWorks with OpenOffice.org, and gradually kicked out MS-Office. They could aid in Oo’s mac port, and even iron out the handling of MS-Office files.
Have you actually used GP3? Worlds difference with OOo in usability, speed, looks, elegance, vector manipulation (which could even stand out as its own product – it is that advance that particular feature on GP3)…
I think Apple supporting USB 2.0 is rather impossible. It isn’t successful yet. They are better off sticking with supporting FireWire, there is no point helping a competing technology eat into their profit (from patent royalties).
Apple doesn’t get patent royalties anymore from FireWire. They donated the trademark, name, logo and patents to the IEEE 1394 (FireWire) Consortium a while back.
USB 2 will come to the Mac when every mac has FireWire 800, which only a few do now.
I think it is a stupid idea. Unless they are really committed to it, they are better off with Office. OpenOffice.org itself is a messed up piece of junk. It is far more cheaper for Apple to write a office suite from scratch than to use OpenOffice.org codebase.
Besides, OOo itself haven’t been all that fanstatic in terms of usability, speed, stability. They may have certain key features, but they don’t have all of Office’s features.
Oh, and to Eugenia, elegance is rather relative, don’t you think?
I disagree on this. Apple is always first to support and make available such technologies (competing or not). But this is not true for the USB-2 case. I believe that this is a major lack! Take a look around you and you will see that the GREAT MAJORITY of hardware is USB and these days, USB-2s. These devices will still work on backwards compatibility mode that they have, but they will be godawfully slow compared to both USB2 and Firewire 400 or 800. It is very limited today to find hardware that are support firewire more or better than USB. Apple should support USB 2 in my opinion, or their userbase will have hard time find new hardware (scanners, printers etc etc).
Plus, the major market that Apple is after with FireWire, the camcorder stuff, now *many* come with USB 2 and NOT with Firewire (it is cheaper for the hardware manufactures to use USB-2). Just alone for this reason, Apple should hurry with the USB 2 implementation, it is needed.
Sorry, my wrong. However, currently, there is no business case for Apple to support USB 2.0, which is my point.
>I think it is a stupid idea. Unless they are really committed to it, they are better off with Office
I agree that when it comes to Office suites, any platform _needs_ MS Office, no matter how many other office suites you might make available. MS OFfice is the standard and it can only do good to a platform, not bad.
>It is far more cheaper for Apple to write a office suite from scratch than to use OpenOffice.org codebase.
I would disagree with this. Read JoelOnSoftware please.
>elegance is rather relative, don’t you think?
To some extend. But OOo Vs GP3 is just obvious which one is the elegant and which one it is not.
Name one MiniDV camcorder that uses USB 2.0.
I can’t remember any names atm, but I and JBQ seen some new models at Frys about 2 months ago. They came only with USB-2 and not with FireWire.
I would disagree with this. Read JoelOnSoftware please.
Joel says rewriting when not needed is stupid. Like in Netscape case. Or Borland. He didn’t say anything about rewriting because of a port.
But in this case, porting OOo to Cocoa is possibly more expensive and takes longer than writing a office suite from scratch. And maintaining the port would be even more costly. Unless Apple would like to take a “Do-As-I-Say-Not-As-I-Do” stand to its developers, they are better off rewriting than porting.
And to this next quote;
I agree that when it comes to Office suites, any platform _needs_ MS Office, no matter how many other office suites you might make available. MS OFfice is the standard and it can only do good to a platform, not bad.
While I agree to a certain extend, however, what I meant was that Apple should only enter the market if they are really serious. For example, having a good Windows version, as well as possibly a Linux version. If they aren’t committed to that, their office suit would be restricted to a small and shrinking (%) market.
After a quick search on the net, here is a camcorder with only USB in it:
http://www.canon-europa.com/CEPF_DB/parser.pl?page=products&product…
At Frys we saw some more though, but that was 2 months ago.
There are some camcorders using USB, possibly USB 2.0, but they are certainly not MiniDV, the dominant standard format. MiniDV requires IEEE 1394.
It never mentioned MiniDV nor USB 2.0 on the site.
Yes, but Apple’s market is not just the MiniDV iMovie crowd. Apple sells FinalCutPro and Express for more professional video editing, so more support is needed for all cameras.
Eugenia is wrong, I think. I searched everythingusb.com plus PC Warehouse and I wasn’t able to find a sing USB 2.0 digital camcorder. Now, it may be there are some out there but I wasn’t able to find any.
It is a miniDV. Check out the “Technical Specifications” link. I think this camera is a few months ago, but newer cameras use USB-2. More and more cameras are only using USB2 these days (miniDV or not), so I believe that Apple should certainly support the standard.
I doubt for this crowd, their cameras use USB 2.0.
A few might not use these cameras TODAY, but as the time goes by, they will. Writing the USB 2 stack was an UNDERTAKING for both WindowsXP/2k and Linux. It took months of development and testing. So, until this thing might get released (if ever) people WILL have such cameras and they will seek support.
My mistake. sorry. but i can’t find on froogle nor on canon’s site any mention of a USB 2.0 camcorder.
IEEE 1390b addresses most of the problems with FireWire, including high cost in manufacturing. But I guess we would have to see. USB 2.0 is slower than FireWire and even more slower than FireWire 800. In this field, speed currently matters.
Here are two links of interest:
This one is a bit *old* (published before the releases of USB 2-only camcorders) but it is of interest:
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/usb_2_0_and_video.htm
Since the release of that article many new camcorders user now USB-2 and a few cheaper ones, actually only use USB-2 (at least as we saw at frys with my husband)
and here is another camera among the many mentioned in that site that also uses USB-2 (this one possibly also has Firewire):
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/hitachi_dvd_camcorders_01_13_0…
>USB 2.0 is slower than FireWire
Erm, that is wrong… USB 2 is faster (480 megabits per second) than Firewire 400 (400 Mbits/sec). Firewire 800 is faster than USB 2, but NO camcorder still uses it (except maybe some high-end SONY ones), because it is barely out yet (only the new PowerBooks have them), plus it is way more expensive to implement than USB 2!
So you proved me wrong :-). But then again, there is USB 2.0 to FireWire cables around…
>But then again, there is USB 2.0 to FireWire cables around…
Yeah, but this is not a clean solution. Macs should “just work”. Isn’t that what they say? 😉
The point is not JUST for camcorders. A LOT of hardware is now for USB2 that they are useless and slow when they are working in USB 1.1 compatibility mode. It is my opinion that Apple should see to that and offer USB 2, especially when consumer devices like *new* scanners and printers are hard to find as Firewire.
Name one MiniDV camcorder that uses USB 2.0.
The sony DCR-TRV19 to name one…
All the benchmarks I have seen show that FireWire is faster. USB 2.0 only have theoritical speed of 480mbps.
Maybe so. At least USB 2 is much cheaper to implement on devices though, so I see cheaper devices to actually prefer it from FireWire.
I know for a fact that USB 2.0 is cheaper to implement on external hard disks and optical drivers, but camcorders?
Accroading to here, http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/-/-/-/… – DCR-TRV19 uses i.Link (or FireWire or IEEE 1390).
USB 2.0 is certainly not faster than FireWire, it has a greater theoretical maximum of 480MBps but it tends to be slower than FireWire. Just search around for benchmarks of external hard drives and see for yourself. It also sucks in other fronts such as requiring software controller, limited cable size, client-server model instead of peer-to-peer (You can’t do IP over USB), very limited power that can be supplied to devices (only mice and the like don’t require external power supply). As usual we see better technologies being less used than crappy ones…
I just read the comments for the USB2 story on MacRumors from Mac users. At least the voice of logic:
“OK we all know that Firewire is better than USB (1 or 2). But for the most part it’s overkill, and comparatively expensive. How many scanners for under $500 have Firewire? I can only think of one, and that doesn’t come with OS X drivers. For low cost consumer level hardware USB 2 is a better bet, where as Firewire is better for DV capture and more pro-level hardware. Firewire has it’s place and so does USB 2. I don’t think they are direct competitors. Why turn your nose up at USB 2 just because Apple didn’t invent it?”
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?threadid=17483
SONY cameras might add USB2 (if they already haven’t) but they will still also use FireWire (called “iLink” in the SONY language) because SONY is one of the inventors of FireWire. They naturally try to push the standard.
Why the fuss about USB in printers? What’s the use of it? Still haven’t figured that out… Are we going to print like 5000 pages per minute with it?! Pardon me if it’s obvious but I really don’t know…
and I liked the interface a lot…I was disapointed when I got apple works for my Mac and found the interface had chaged to a floating window scheme….it just doesn’t “feel” right.
When USB 2 gets to where it is pretty much a the standard for certain types of peripherals (or one of the standards in a fairly large way), Apple will have USB 2, they would be insane if they didn’t. Apple, being mostly a digital lifestyle company now, will have to support whatever those digitial devices use.
There have been rumors for some time that, totally apart from what’s happened to GoBe, Apple is working on a re-write of AppleWorks. Even if that isn’t true – or is exaggerated – AppleWorks has many capabilities most people aren’t aware of, a world-wide User Group and great ease of use. It also hase a pretty good (for low end) database module, which GoBe lacks. The last thing I want to see GoBe die, but I don’t know where it can go.
One other idea – could the new Keynote presentation proram just released by Apple be the first part of a higher end Apple office suite? AppleWorks would come with consumer Macs, as it does now, but there would be this higher end suite that would be bundled with Power Macs and/or bought separately.
OO is a mess…I can’t see Apple geting involved it that.
As both are hot-pluggable and self-configuring, FireWire is often thought of as being similar to USB. In fact their architectures are very different and FireWire has several important advantages.
Data transfer speed.
USB 2.0 is widely promoted as having a transfer speed of 480 Mbps — a little faster than FireWire’s 400 Mbps. However, this is a theoretical maximum for bulk transfers. Interrupt or isochronous transfers, such as streamed audio and video, are limited to 192 Mbps (Section 5.9 of USB 2.0 spec.). In practice, the host controlled USB 2.0 bus is less efficient than FireWire and bulk transfer speeds are substantially lower. For a comparison, see ‘USB 2.0 Versus FireWire’:
http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/supergeek/story/0,24330,3393571,…
Quote: “Don’t be confused by the rated speeds you see emblazoned across USB 2.0 and FireWire product boxes. Despite USB 2.0’s 80 Kbps speed advantage over FireWire, our testing showed that the additional overhead of USB 2.0 made it slower than FireWire. For high-bandwidth devices such as external hard drives, the difference was as high as 70 percent.”
‘USB 2.0 against FireWire’:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/storage/usb20-fw/
Quote: “The USB 2.0 interface is utterly defeated by FireWire in all the three subtests, notwithstanding the higher theoretical bandwidth of USB 2.0 (480MB/sec) compared with that of FireWire (400MB/sec).”
Peer-to-peer operation.
FireWire is a bidirectional peer-to-peer bus where devices talk directly to each other. By contrast, USB is a host controlled bus that requires a master computer to act as an intermediary. This effectively halves the speed of inter-device transfers since data has to travel in and out via the host. FireWire enables equipment to be connected directly without the need for a computer — a key requirement for consumer electronics.
Power supply.
FireWire’s maximum current sourcing of 1.5 amp is three times higher than for USB, enabling a much wider variety of devices, such as hard disks and scanners, to be bus powered. Apple’s iPod MP3 player, for example, uses the FireWire bus to charge its internal battery.
Isochronous broadcasting.
FireWire supports isochronous operation with guaranteed bandwidth. Unlike USB, such transmissions are broadcast enabling multiple devices to receive data simultaneously.
Supported protocols.
FireWire supports a much wider variety of protocols. In addition to those for high-performance computer equipment, there are protocols for automotive and robotics connectivity. As a peer-to-peer technology it supports networking and TCP/IP as used for the Internet. FireWire has been chosen as the standard for the Home Audio-Video interoperability (HAVi) specification for digital home entertainment networking:
http://www.havi.org/about/
Scalability and compatibility.
FireWire was designed to be scalable. The original maximum transfer speed of 400 Mbps in IEEE 1394a has risen to 800 Mbps with FireWire 800 (IEEE 1394b). Since FireWire is device independent, faster devices are both backwards and forwards compatible with existing ones, allowing each to operate at its full rated speed on the same bus. With USB, adding a single USB 1.1 device to a USB 2.0 bus will force every device to operate at the lower speed unless the 1.1 device is connected via a USB 2.0 hub.
FireWire Target Disk Mode.
Modern Apple Macs can transfer files using FireWire Target Disk Mode (FTDM). After connecting via a FireWire cable, the T key of one Mac is held down during bootup to mount its drive on the other Mac. Files can then be transferred using drag and drop at full FireWire speed (only bettered by Gigabit Ethernet). For an illustration, see ‘How to Connect Two Macs using FireWire and Target Disk Mode’:
http://biochemistry.ucsf.edu/~tech/Support/MacOS9/targetdiskmode.ht…
USB 2 might be faster than Firewire 400, BUT firewire 400 has an inteligent controler that does not use the CPU AND 2 firewire devices can talk to one-another with out the help of the controler.
for the best system performence in transfering video, Firewire is the best, USB 2.0 will slow your system down while transfering 30 min of film.
The introduction of X11 by Apple makes OOo run a lot better.
Coincidence?
It also obviates the need to separately install an X server
Yes, but that is not the point of our discussion. The whole point is that USB 1/2 is cheaper to implement on devices than any FireWire, so many hardware manufacturers prefer it. Just for this reason, Apple should provide support for a USB 2 stack (the backwards compatibility of USB won’t do much good, let’s say on an external hard drive – too slow) otherwise customers will be unhappy on the level of hardware support by Apple.
Apple won’t come with a new office in the next two years. The only thing we are going to see is OO ported to OSX and Abiword-Gnumeric (Fink) and of course an updated AppleWorks (with good integration with iLife and compatible with every standard on the earth).
It’s too risky to Apple to build a complete office while there’s MSOffice on the mac and the reasons are simple; MSOffice already has alternatives on the mac (opensource or not) so the new apple office should be amazing good and innovative, extremely profitable and somehow opensource, if not they already have AppleWorks. To sum up, right now this is no a priority to invest.
However they could come out with a business model could be Lycoris OO but of course not with OO which is a complete mess. By the end of 2004 maybe there could be something GP3 or KOffice related if the economy gets better and they still have problems with processors speed.
ever thought about an expansion card with USB 2.0??
So the current (and older) G4 can easily equiped with USB 2.0 if needed – so where is the problem?
>so where is the problem?
In the iBooks, PowerBooks, eMacs and iMacs, which can’t be expanded with cards.
I have no arguments against USB 2, I mean you can use your USB 1.1 devices on it so there is no invenstment loss, I just think that for Camcorders, USB 2 is lacking in performence…..as far as hardware manufacturers, if they could get firewire cheaper (I thik FW 800 is suposed to be cheaper to impliment on hardware) they would use it, but of cource, as with any thing you buy, you get what you pay for and if you buy a cheap Camcorder, you gfet bad performence on teh system while transfering….I plan on getting a sony camcorder (the digital HI8, not the fully digital miniDV) becasue of the ‘firewire’ that comes with it.
heh….how about a USB 2 Hub that plugs into the firewire port 🙂
>>Why the fuss about USB in printers? What’s the use of it? Still haven’t figured that out… Are we going to print like 5000 pages per minute with it?! Pardon me if it’s obvious but I really don’t know…<<
I used to wonder why they made printers usb now instead of parallel, but it came down to the attempted phase out of parallel even though most printers come with both options. The thing that makes me made is now most all printers come usb or with usb option, but they don’t come with USB cables! HP will sell you a printer and not sell you any way to connect it to your computer. My friend got one of those new photo HP’s where you plug in a media card and it has a screen and stuff, expensive and no cable. My printer was a normal 100 buck deal, and then i had to spend 10-20 bucks on a cable.
Far as USB2 apple has to implement it. If they don’t have it on powerbooks in 2 years when i will by one they have problems. Like was mentioned so many things are now coming USB2, i just got a 750zip drive in usb2 and will soon get a usb2 scanner. I want to be able to plug them into a mac i intend to buy someday. I could have gotten the zip in firewire, but that would have been dumb, for that i would have to get a firewire card. And the usefull ness of being able to plug it into just about any computer would have been gone. I can use it one even a very old computer, mines 4 years old and had no issue. The reverse and forward compatability of USB is great. Firewire is just pointless for most people. People can migrate to usb2 and not even have to get a usb2 card, they can just get one later if they feel like it such as when they run out of ports. That’s the other thing. Apple has USB1 on their hardware, they just need to switch them to all usb2 since usb1 stuff can use them, unlike firewire which means they need to add more ports.
Far as speed that is a mute point as well. I have yet to see a device which can use ether at full speed. In the case of my zip drive both are equal speed (granted its a very slow peice of hardware). The hardware that ether wire is connecting is far slower than it. For external drives it’s not going to change things much ether. All those external drives are just ide or scsi drives inside with a convertor to what ever you want to connect it to the computer with. It’s still much slower than the wire.
the rating of firewire is diffrent than that of USB.
USB is a serial Bus, Firewire is a parrallel/Peer-Peer Bus.
fire wire allocates portions of its bandwidth, so you can scan an image, print, send somthing to a hard dirve and upload a recording from a camcorder all without disrupting your system performence or the performence of each device.
USB 2 requires job interuption to hub together a number of devices onto on port.
If Apple is indeed working on an AppleWorks update, it is very likely that they will completely rewrite it in Cocoa, since all the latest Apple applications (new applications, not updates) are Cocoa (iPhoto, Keynote). And even if they used Carbon, it would probably be easier to start from scratch. Otherwise Apple would have to redo the text engine (to support Quartz anti-aliasing and Unicode), the graphics engine (to support Quartz and PDF), add things like Services, iApp integration etc. So I think it’s pretty clear that no one at Apple is working on the old AppleWorks codebase.
I don’t know why this discussion became about USB2 but it’s kinda pointless right now to make digital cameras and other AV equipment into USB2.0 instead of IEEE1394.
The reason is all digital capture meathods right now for Prosumer DV devices center around IEEE1394. There are no USB2.0 capture card so it’ll be useless to have a USB2.0 DV cam, unless you don’t plan on editing it (which is kinda the point of having a DV cam to begin with).
Now with the Firewire2 coming out, it’s even more pointless. It really doesn’t matter anyway because DV specs are much lower than what firewire or USB2 offers. Pros on the otherhad rarely mess with firewire and DV anyway, and they’ll won’t even consider USB2
What a horrible idea. This would mean, since the “On The Go” Standard (opps, sorry, hack) isn’t really in wide use, you couldn’t hook up two camcorders or even a camcorder and a VCR via USB. Sort of defeats the purpose doesn’t it?
Excellent point, Fritz!
Agree, so it makes me clearer that a word processor and a spreadsheet would be a huge invest and little revenues, furthermore it’s not clear that such applications are really needed right now on the mac (office is not bad on the mac unlikely IE) so apple will keep its new cocoa office up on their sleeves as long as the MS Office romance continues (which means to me another complete Office version long).
BTW, How many developers/time do you think it would cost to apple to port natively AbiWord-Gnumeric or KOffice without adding any trick, just plain ports?
>How many developers/time do you think it would cost to apple to port natively AbiWord-Gnumeric or KOffice without adding any trick, just plain ports?
Porting any GTK+ app could be very time consuming as long as there is no GTK+ toolkit running natively. Via X11 though, it wouldn’t take more than an afternoon (but the X11 apps are not that favorite for many Mac users because they look like sh*te compared to native Aqua).
As for KOffice, it would take less time overall, I think, because there is already a *native* Qt toolkit for OSX. What it would need to get ported though is a lot of KDE’s libraries and then statically include them in the package… Quite some work, but maybe less than try to port a GTK+ app.
@Rajan
I think it is a stupid idea. Unless they are really committed to it, they are better off with Office. OpenOffice.org itself is a messed up piece of junk.
Please, these people create applications for free just so you can rubbish their efforts, i don’t think thats fair. If you think you can code better YOU DO IT and contribute something useful!
I think apple should leave USB 2 out. If they include it, that would allow developers to build devices using usb2 that runs on both mac and pc – thus leaving little incentive to build firewire2 products. If firewire 2 is to succeed, Apple should fight the USB2 standard and make any products that rely on usb 2 not work on the mac – thus putting pressure on developers to not use usb 2 and possibly build firwire 2 products. Apple can have a lot of pull in doing this since there is a market for video/audio stuff using firewire on the mac. I would hate to see firewire 2 lose to the inferior usb2 standard and, as a result, we get stuck with horrible technology that will limit us in the future.. Don’t forget that usb became successful partly because apple got rid of all the other ports and basically forced developers to use it. They need to do the same for firewire2.
OpenOffice is rather horrible to use at the moment IMO, it’s the one app that makes me wish I was using MS Office. But there are some things it does quite well, it seems to be able to open different file types and it’s got plenty of features. It seems like a good idea for Apple to use it as the basis of a more powerful Office suite for Mac OS. It could let them quickly have a product to compete with MS Office, and it would improve OpenOffice too.
I really cannot believe you people. If the majority of devices coming out (and yes even Sony has DV camcorders with USB 2) are USB 2, then we obviously need it and will reap the advantages. Right now the Mac is a second class citizen concerning new devices overall. And the speed gains are considerable, for example Epson’s new scanners with USB 2 are about 4 times faster than on USB 1.1. Why after buying something that can be 4 times faster, when plugging it in my Mac, I should lose the advantages. Besides, since now we will probably see FW800 on every new Mac, it is only natural that USB should be also upgraded. The childish attitude of Apple is again hurting all its loyal users. The iMac was one of the first USB computers in the world, now the Macs are the last ones to support USB 2.0. Silly!!
Which is what I was trying to say initially. I do respect the thousands of man-hours put into OpenOffice.org and it still is free.
becasue OEMs have not included USB 2 in any machines yet….sure windows has support for it so you can plug in a card from the store, but apple is compeating with dell and gateway and HP…anyway….saying they are not including it is a canard….darwin has support for USB 2, apple just needs to get it into the machines…chill out, it is not liek there are tons of devices yet, mostly the super new modles that are a bit on the higher end at the moment when compaired to the USB 1.1 devices.
I would disagree with this. Read JoelOnSoftware please.
Who is this Joel? And why is he the end all of people to read about porting software?
This is rediculous. If OO.o is going to compete with MS Office anytime soon, it needs a rewrite.
It’s far too slow even on my 1Ghz amd athon.
Don’t forget that usb became successful partly because apple got rid of all the other ports and basically forced developers to use it. They need to do the same for firewire2.
Huh? Come again? Apple have practically zero effect on the industry. USB was succesful because it solved a problem, and solved it well, not because Apple did anything. Considering the minimal mac marketshare, do you really think hardware makers give a damn what ports are on it?
Very well put Mike.
I’d have to take an inbetween position on that. I too certainly don’t think the all USB iMac forced developers to do anything, but it did make a big splash. All of that happened right about at the same time and there were all these USB peripherals with iMac colors and it *seemed* like Apple had done all of this.
There is a silly perception that the no 480 is bigger than 400. Well it certainly is, but that doesn’t relate to relative speed of these stds.
I have done development on USB1.1, it claime 12MBits, in practise you rarely achieve 5MBits even with no other devices on the link.
Why is this, its because it is really 1.5MBits for the header packet followed by boosted 12MBits for the data blocks. Thats why the CRRoms & HDs that use it are so much crap.
Guess what, USB2.0 is really 1.5MBs too, but with “turbo” data rate at 480MBits. I am guessing that data can only fly on the avg for 50% or so at that speed because of the protocalls involved in supporting every possible USB 1.5, 12Mb device that might come & go. The need to support mices/kbs must cripple this std.
I am always horrified that the marking guys get away with this shit.
Knowing this I still can’t say USB2.0 is faster or slower than FW400 but I believe FW is always running data & control at 400 or higher, so for performance I would choose FW, for cost USB2.
By the time FW reaches say 3200, it will have the same problem, being backwards compatible to FW 400 will mean avg data rates are far below 3200, buts thats a very long ways off.
I do believe Apple MUST support USB2 inspite of what I said, the video markets will mostly stay FW, & the commodity stuff will all be USB2. Staying away from USB2 is stupid & suicidal, and keeps the Mac in isolation for no good reason. Also it must support USB2 booting.
nuf said
Ok, still catching up on comments, looks like a few other knowledgeable people here too.
Hi Mike. I’m posting from my sidekick so its hard for me to quote you. Looking back at what I wrote, I agree that my last two lines were dumb. :owever, that does not give you the right to call me “risha.”
Anyway, I agree that USB 2 should be on all new macs… When firewire 2 is on most new pcs..
Firewire should not have that problem becasue it assigns a certainb amount of bandwidth to a device and can run multiple devices on it in tandum like SCSI. the only problem FW will have is code bloat on the controler because of the backwards compatability, but aslong as the protocols between device and controler remain the same, that should not be to bad.
Geez, what’s with all the arguments saying Apple “must” support USB 2.0 with counter-arguments trying to show why they don’t need to? The bottom line is that they don’t need to support it now, but putting it in new hardware going forward shouldn’t be that big a deal. It’s backwards compatible and the difference in price for USB chipsets between 1.0 and 2.0 is unlikely to even be a dollar in quantity.
CrackedButter: Please, these people create applications for free just so you can rubbish their efforts, i don’t think thats fair. If you think you can code better YOU DO IT and contribute something useful!
It is not developed for free. most of the developers behind OOo is from Sun, and OOo is based on the very code StarDivision build StarOffice 1.0 to 5.2 with. Besides, that doesn’t erase my point totally, why should Apple help OpenOffice.org just because it is volunteer work? They aren’t here to please some open source developers.
My point was that porting OOo to Mac is a expensive ordeal if they want to do it right, and maintaining that port would be extremely expensive. Heck, building off KOffice is way cheaper.
aesiamun: Who is this Joel?
A very good write/developer/business man, who’s commentaries that the business look on software development, not technical.
aesiamun: If OO.o is going to compete with MS Office anytime soon, it needs a rewrite.
Something rather unlikely. Sun paid a lot to buy StarDivision, and I doubt they are gonna axe it just because it sucks especially when the profit from it haven’t covered the cost in getting StarOffice.
Jay: I too certainly don’t think the all USB iMac forced developers to do anything, but it did make a big splash
Actually, it hampered the adoption for awhile because every technology reviewer taught it was stupid and said USB is bound to fail.
rishi: Anyway, I agree that USB 2 should be on all new macs… When firewire 2 is on most new pcs..
When USB 2.0 haven’t been adopted by PC makers until devices start croping out with it. The same would go for FireWire 800, especially since there is NO device that uses it, and no Mac other than PowerBooks that uses it.
Sun states in their faq that they don’t intend to support a “sun branded” version of staroffice. Instead the focus on their delivery of openoffice so 3.party developers can bring it out for mac.
Pure speculation, but this doesn’t leave out the possibility that Staroffice is being Apple-branded. Maybe Apple licenced the code? There was some statement from a Sun employee last year that Sun and Apple were working together on something, but it was later withdrawn.
But then again, it would seem more logical for Apple to produce a word processor or a spreadsheet, thereby avoiding to compete with MS directly.
No it means that Sun don’t see any business advantage holding a Mac version, especially when doing so they would be either watering down one of their “features” (consistent UI accross platforms) or doing it in such a way that Mac users couldn’t be possibly interested (consistent UI accross platforms).
Besides, Apple is working with Quark to push out XPress, does it mean that Apple would release a Apple-branded version of it?
Well I am not so familiar with FW implimentation, but even at 3200, there must be some overhead in dealing with 400, but it would be inconsequential compared with USB2 dealing with 1.5 & 12 MB devices.
As an aside, I don’t think the conversion between USB1.1 & 2 is all that difficult, the wiring is already capable if good quality cables were used, the analog interface chips get changed, and finally the controller needs upgrading but the bandwidth even at 480 burst rate is still tiny 60Mbytes/sec peak compared with all the other things going on in the mobo south bridge chips, about half a PCI bw max.
LOL rajan, that’s right! That was sort of a fun time. I remember all kinds of USB sites sprang up with links to where you could get this or get that USB product. They were almost like underground sites 🙂
usb connections on camcorders are usually meant for transferring still images.
eugenia, the camcorder you linked does have firewire (dv in/out).
usb 2.0 is meant to compete with firewire directly i can’t see apple adopting this technology early. since usb 2.0 devices are backwards compatible apple won’t be in a rush.
Just my 2 cents;
When apple ported konqueror (Safari) they also ported a lot of the underlying technologies. Wouldn’t it make sense then, since much of the underlying work has been finished, to port KOffice to Mac OS X, instead of Open Office?
How is porting KHTML and KJS “much of the underlying work”? There would be huge amounts of work, nevermind the poor UI design. (Getting an X app to conform to Aqua guidelines is extensive.) KOffice is less compatible with Office than Oo.o and AppleWorks. KOffice is also GPL instead of LGPL. The product goals would also be entirelt different. The goal of Safari was lean, fast, and quick to improve. The goals for an Office competitor are much different.
Koffice is not a good software yet. It sucks, and Appleworks probably is better than KOffice.
Anonymous: How is porting KHTML and KJS “much of the underlying work”?
The way it is written, and they way Qt is documented, it is very easy to port it to Mac OS X via a compatiblity library, compared to Gecko.
Anonymous: There would be huge amounts of work, nevermind the poor UI design.
Not a single piece of Konqueror code went into Safari. Let me tell you what happen in a brief and easy to understand way, just for you. Apple forks KHTML. Apple writes compatiblity library for it. Apple improves KHTML. Apple writes a Cocoa UI over KHTML via the compatiblity layer. Apple release Safari at MWSF. Apple release the source code and a very very long and detailed changelog.
Anonymous: (Getting an X app to conform to Aqua guidelines is extensive.)
Actually, it is easier than thought.
Anonymous: KOffice is less compatible with Office than Oo.o and AppleWorks.
I never said Apple should adopt KOffice, I’m saying using OOo is stupid for Apple. Besides, it is possible using OpenOffice.org’s documentation on Office’s format to write filters for KOffice, if that’s the only thing KOffice is lacking.
Anonymous: The goals for an Office competitor are much different.
Let me tell you a possible goal – easy to use and cost-effective to maintain. The prior can easily be taken care by Apple, but the latter using OpenOffice.org? Doubt it.
No, it makes much bigger sense if they write their own from scratch. Take Keynote for example, not based on either OOo or KPresenter. There is other problems that come with using KOffice. The biggest is that KOffice, most of it, is under the GPL. That makes it a wee bit too hard to add propreitary components and linking them with KOffice, no?
You go through my post line by line explaining how Apple’s could rework KOffice easily, and then say they aren’t going to use KOffice? For crying out loud! You’ve gotten so used to people being angry at you that you are disagreeing with yourself? Whatever.
“The way it is written, and they way Qt is documented, it is very easy to port it to Mac OS X via a compatiblity library, compared to Gecko.”
Just because Qt has been ported, doesn’t mean this is the way Apple would ever approach developing code. You just claimed in another disc. that all Apple cares about is time to market–when they’ve never built apps this way. (Some rush jobs, sure, but they usually looked more downstream than you give them credit.) A Qt bridge with a compatibility layer is not what Apple would do. It would make a poor port. And there is no idication that Safari was done this way either so bye-bye theory.
” Not a single piece of Konqueror code went into Safari”
No crap, when did I say they did. KHTML is a render engine… Does KOffice exist as solely a library of Office Suite functions that can be one hundred percent extricated from the conventions of an X app? Hmm? Different scenario entirely.
“Actually, it is easier than thought.”
No, actually it’s not. But you also probably think that UI is equal to look-and-feel rather than USER INTERFACE/INTERACTION.
” I never said Apple should adopt KOffice, I’m saying using OOo is stupid for Apple.”
I never said you did either. In fact, I never said anything to you. I never said anything to suggest to you that I was saying anything to you, nevermind that I thought you said anything. Is the whole world centered around you, Rajan? Please.
I’ve said both are completely stupid choices for Apple and provided numerous reasons.