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The November 1995 issue of VIDEOGRAPHY had one of the industry's first stories about FireWire, a new way of connecting peripherals to computers. For that article, we spoke with Michael Teener, Apple's unofficial "FireWire Guru." Teener predicted that FireWire would be "a major factor in consumer electronics" by the end of 1996 and that by the end of 1997, there would be a "FireWire connector on the back of virtually every computer built."
It's been over three years since I wrote that story and it finally looks like FireWire is heating up, not just for video professionals, but for the prosumer and consumer markets as well. In this article, we'll look at some of the recent developments in FireWire technology and a few of the companies that are committed (or committing) to this technology.
One of the reasons for this delay is that FireWire didn't become an "open" standard until the middle of last year. That's when what is offcially known as the IEEE 1394 standard was formalized, and most computer manufacturers didn't want to commit to the technology until that standard was officially adopted.
FireWire, which is actually an Apple trademark, is still used to describe their product line. IEEE 1394 is the formal designation of the standard, and is used by many companies to describe their products. In other instances, new names are being introduced to describe products that are based on this standard; iLI,INK is Sony's designation. At this point, it looks like all these products will work together, regardless of how the companies choose to refer to them. Of course, it's always a good idea to ask.
Apple Computer
The developer of FireWire has finally joined the bandwagon. At Macworld San Francisco, in January, Apple announced the newest Power Macintosh G3 computers, which now include two FireWire ports that operate at up to 400 Mbps (megabits per second). At these speeds, FireWire definitely qualifies as a "fast networking" technology, although people probably won't be using it to replace Ethernet any time soon.
Instead, this speed and power is best used to transfer digital video information between computers and such video devices as camcorders and VCRs, which already exist as FireWire peripherals. According to Apple, more than 50 FireWire peripherals are already...