Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 15 years and 5 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

It seems like just yesterday (ok, last decade!) when I got my first digital video camera and then purchased a Firewire card for my PC so I could download and edit my home movies. Since then I’ve owned a multitude of laptops and PCs with IEE 1394 built in. It was aimed primarily for high-speed data transfer situations, like digital video and hard drives … and it was king for a little bit, until USB 2.0 came out.

It’s sad, though not surprising, that Firewire’s creator, Apple, seems to have given up on the technology, admitting that USB 2.0 won the “war” for the low-end, high-speed connectivity standard. The latest round of MacBooks don’t have Firewire ports (although the higher-end MacBook Pro still includes an FW800 jack). When announced, this lack of Firewire caused quite a tizzy in the Mac community. Steve Jobs’ response: deal with it: he simply pointed out that most HD camcorders shipping today include a USB 2.0 port.

When I was shopping for a new PC last month, I was originally looking for a machine with Firewire since my current PC had it, used in conjunction with my Panasonic PV-GS250. Then the MacBook announcement and the subsequent flurry of coverage about Firewire missing happened. That prompted me to double-check my camcorder and sure enough, it had USB 2.0 connectivity (and I bought it 3 years ago this month). So I dropped the Firewire requirement from my new PC and now I’m Firewire free (not to mention PS/2, serial, and parallel port free too). Ah, legacy connections …