The 6-pin FireWire 400 port made its way into every Apple laptop released between January 2003 and October 2008, with the exception of the MacBook Air. With a greater sustained throughput than USB 2.0, more power supplied to connected devices, and less reliance on the host CPU, it quickly became the standard for high-performance peripherals - particularly in storage, audio, video and imaging.
For many, the MacBook was the media students perfect laptop - with software support from the entry-level iMovie and Garageband included with iLife, through the mid-range Final Cut Express and Logic Express, to the high-end Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro. And of course, connectivity to a vast majority of consumer, prosumer and professional audio/visual equipment like HD video cameras and audio interfaces using the FireWire port.
A majority of PowerBook and MacBook Pro models also featured a 9-pin FireWire 800 port with twice the speed of its predecessor, allowing transfers of close to 100 megabytes per second. The difference that this kind of connectivity makes to an older machine is obvious - and it's not uncommon to see PowerBooks still in operation with life support from one or more FireWire devices as a result.
Another feature on board FireWire-equipped Macs is Target Disk Mode. Mention those three words to a long-time Mac user and they'll likely tell you it's saved their life on one or more occasions - some might say it's one of the features that makes a Mac a Mac. If your Mac won't boot, just plug it into another Mac with a FireWire cable and hold the T key while booting. The internal hard drive mounts as a drive on the other machine, allowing you to diagnose and repair the issue, reapply a working image of the drive, or rescue your vital data before a reformat.
...and then
Then came the October 2008 models. The MacBook arrived with a mere two USB 2.0 ports - and no ExpressCard or FireWire 400. The MacBook Pro came out better off, but still crippled - losing the FireWire 400 port of its predecessors and left with a single FireWire 800 port.
What this means for the MacBook
No Target Disk Mode
No connectivity to high-performance portable hard drives
No connectivity to DV/HDV video cameras
No connectivity to a vast majority of audio interfaces, including the entry-levelApogee Duet designed specifically for Logic Studio (and by extension, Apple computers)
What this means for the MacBook Pro (aka Daisy-chaining 101)
With the previous models equipped with both FireWire 800 and 400 ports, one could very easily use two FireWire devices of different nature - and bus power both of them (if supported by the device itself). A hard drive and a DV camera, or an audio interface and a DSP card.
With a single FireWire 800 port, users are forced to connect multiple devices together in a daisy-chain. Being part of the FireWire specification, it sounds fine in theory, but there's a number of caveats. For starters, certain hard drives and audio interfaces simply will not function in a daisy-chain. If the device has two FireWire 400 ports there is a decent chance it will, but it comes down to the particular make and model.
According to LaCie (warning: PDF), adding a FireWire 400 device to a chain of FireWire 800 devices will drop the speed of the entire chain to FireWire 400 speeds. Additionally, certain video cameras use the low speed FireWire 100 specification, and may drop the speed of the entire chain to FireWire 100 speeds.
While in my own testing I found that daisy-chaining a powered FireWire 400 hard drive to a bus powered MOTU Traveler audio interface worked fine, this tech note from MOTU warns that daisy-chaining bus powered devices "is not recommended" - which sounded ominous enough to me to decide not to try it again. Your mileage may vary.
Why this isn't progress
Historians will likely bring up the fact that Apple has often pioneered in the omission of legacy devices/ports from their computers. FireWire, however, is nothing like a missing modem, floppy drive, or RS-232 port - all of which could be replaced by inexpensive USB devices or adapters.
The new MacBook has no "FireWire 400 beater" - no FireWire 800, no eSATA and no ExpressCard slot. Without ExpressCard, available as standard in 13.3" PC laptops running as low as US$750, there is no adapter available to connect a FireWire 400 device. There's not even an extra USB port. This is not progress!
What Apple says
We contacted Apple for a response but had not heard back at the time of publishing.
A TUAW reader named David, however, sent an e-mail to sjobs@apple.com explaining that he can't recommend the new MacBook to his friends anymore, as not all camcorders will connect to it.
The reply, while highly unlikely to have originated from Steve Jobs, remains an indication of the official stance. "Actually, all the new HD camcorders of the past few years use USB 2".
David replied, mentioning the cost of a USB 2.0 camera. The second reply reads simply "The new HD camcorders start around $500".
