Apple picks FireWire, PC does eSATA, and what I/O we can expect in future MacBooks

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