Why Powered USB Is Needed is an informative article. Part 1 is about the history of USB and part 2 is about Powered USB, an extension to the standard that's slow in materializing.
In a few cases he compares with Firewire. I will say, I hit the issues he mentions myself. When I got my iPod for my PC (pre-Mac) it wouldn't charge from the USB port. It needed to be a powered USB port and it wasn't. I added a firewire card to the PC (it was cheap, like $15 I think) and it worked great. I backup my PowerBook to a 160GB LaCie d2 hard drive using a Firewire 800 connector. Works great and is fast, in fact I'll think I go do a backup now.
1 comment:
Apple has a poor track record when it comes to championing new standards (for hardware anyway). SCSI is the prime example. From a technology and performance view it was better than alternatives. However in the world of consumer electronics, economics trumps technology.
I expect 1394 (firewire) to remain a niche protocol with USB, a simpler single master architecture, to dominate the market of low end devices and the emerging SATA to take over for high bandwidth. Combined data/power is nice, but will consumers pay for it?
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