What were they thinking?
Apple doesn’t want people talking about it… all threads on their discussion boards mentioning the lack of FireWire on the new MacBooks have been deleted. Still, there’s lots of talk about it.
Trouble for iMovie users
No firewire port means that most iMovie users won’t be able to directly connect their cameras. Funny, ’cause they ship with iMovie. And Apple invented FireWire. I guess we’ll have to buy video cameras with USB connections, or find another way to import video files.
Troubleshooting more difficult?
One of the coolest things about Macs, from my point of view as a consultant, is that I can connect a troublesome Mac in Target Mode via FireWire, and have access to the machine for diagnosis and repair using software tools. I can reinstall a system and do many repairs and maintenance tasks much more quickly than booting the Mac from a DVD and doing it that way.
It’s also a great way to remove files from dead machines, and to migrate files from an older Mac to a new one.
Update: it’s confirmed that Target Mode will not work on the new MacBook and MacBook Pro. Dan Warne wrote the following yesterday:
According to Geoff Winder, Product Manager for Hardware at Apple Australia, Target Disk Mode relied upon part of the Firewire standard, which isn’t replicated in USB.
Winder said that Apple now believes that there is no real need for Target Disk Mode anyway — there are alternative methods for everything people would want to do with it. There’s Boot Camp for backup and the Apple Migration Assistant for full-disk cloning.
Hey, Apple! Here’s a question. How am I going to migrate from my older Mac to a new MacBook??? Guess you’ll tell me, but without FW, will it be as easy?
Update: Apple today released an update to it’s Migration and DVD/CD Sharing Update, which I guess will be used to migrate to the new machines.
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