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from the collaboration-what-collaboration? dept.
The rise and fall of FireWire—IEEE 1394, an interface standard boasting high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer—is one of the most tragic tales in the history of computer technology. The standard was forged in the fires of collaboration. A joint effort from several competitors including Apple, IBM, and Sony, it was a triumph of design for the greater good. FireWire represented a unified standard across the whole industry, one serial bus to rule them all. Realized to the fullest, FireWire could replace SCSI and the unwieldy mess of ports and cables at the back of a desktop computer.
Yet FireWire's principal creator, Apple, nearly killed it before it could appear in a single device. And eventually the Cupertino company effectively did kill FireWire, just as it seemed poised to dominate the industry.
The story of how FireWire came to market and ultimately fell out of favor serves today as a fine reminder that no technology, however promising, well-engineered, or well-liked, is immune to inter- and intra-company politics or to our reluctance to step outside our comfort zone.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Friday June 23 2017, @07:38AM (1 child)
Power was one of the reasons that Firewire failed.
For a start it was variable voltage. If you were building a Firewire device you had to accept a variety of voltages, which added cost to your design, and regulate them to something useful. The USB version of any device was always going to be cheaper and "fast enough".
On the host end (the computer) you had to provide at least 12V with significant current, or you could just be cheap and provide no power but then half the Firewire devices wouldn't work... It was a mess.
The cables were more expensive for little gain too. The extra shielding was just additional cost that USB didn't need, because it uses a more robust signalling system.
And the security insanity of having an external DMA port on your computer...
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday June 23 2017, @04:12PM
USB uses single ended shielding for some out of band messaging.