Following up an earlier post about some of the reasons Apple picked FireWire over eSATA in the new MacBook Pro range, let’s take a look at what’s in store for the future of FireWire. On the road map to succeed the current FireWire 400 and 800 standards are the aptly-named IEEE 1600 and 3200 ports. They are – you guessed it – twice as fast as the current implementations of the current IEEE 1394 interface – FireWire 400 and 800. Read more »
Posted in
FireWire,
Hardware,
Input-Output
Earlier this week we reported that Google’s Street View has come under substantial privacy-related criticism in Japan. The critics were outraged that Google’s cameras captured the insides of many Japanese backyards. In leu of the criticism (which is definitely not a first for the web-based service), Google has decided to throw away all captured footage of the 12 cities it has already captured in Japan, and start over. The company will reposition its cameras 40 centimeters lower (for a total height of 2.05 meters). Not satisfied with these minor tune-ups to its fleet of Street View vehicles, Google has taken things one step further by releasing the Google Trike. Read more »
Posted in
Hardware,
Privacy
When Apple announced its updated line-up of MacBook Pro notebooks at WWDC, I couldn’t help but notice a certain pattern in the updates: the inclusion of the FireWire 800 port and the exclusion of a much-faster eSATA port. Let’s get the facts over with: FireWire and eSATA are both I/O interfaces that handle data transfer much better than USB. In fact, they can even be called the “professional’s choice” of I/O interface, with USB being more along the lines of the average consumer/computer user. FireWire 800 transfers data at a rate of 98.25MB/s while eSATA cranks out 300MB/s. Compare that with USB 2.0′s rate of 60MB/s and it’s easy to see why USB is a consumer-level I/O interface. But why did Apple pick FireWire over the much faster eSATA and what can we expect to be the de-facto standard for powerful data transfer in future Macs? Read more »
Posted in
Apple,
Featured,
FireWire,
Input-Output,
USB
