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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 23 2017, @05:04PM (1 child)
Sure, they should poll faster. 1000 Hz is borderline for music.
The UHCI interface is also kind of defective. The polling should happen fully in hardware, without needing to involve the OS.
6250 Hz, 8000 Hz, or 8192 Hz, or 10000 Hz, or 11025 Hz, or 12000 Hz, or 12500 Hz, would have been much nicer. (with various different clock compatibility tradeoffs)
But of course affordable chips (like mice and keyboard chips) were slow back in the day, so the sort-of-acceptable 1000 Hz was chosen.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday June 25 2017, @02:16AM
They could have allowed an option to specify faster polling speed. But then Winteloys and foresight are incompatible as proven by history..