FireWire

August 22, 2001: Apple takes home a technical Emmy Award for developing FireWire, the high-speed serial port that allows users to transfer data quickly between a Macintosh and another device, such as a digital camera.

“Apple enabled the desktop video revolution with its invention of FireWire,” says Jon Rubinstein, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, in a press release about the Emmy win.

FireWire plays a key role in Apple CEO Steve Jobs‘ “digital hub” strategy for the company. However, the technology’s origins go back much further than that.

My 13-inch MacBook Air is a fantastic portable computer – fast, light, crazy battery life and with a “bigger” screen than my old 13-inch aluminum MacBook[1]. But as a desktop computer it sucks: only two USB ports, no Ethernet, and a tiny amount of storage.

Which is exactly why the Landing Zone exists. It’s a dock that stays on your desk, hooked up to all your peripherals, and which grabs onto your MacBook like a facehugger grabs onto, uh, a face.

I’ve been using one for a while now, and it’s almost entirely excellent.

External hard drives: super handy, but oh-so-slow, especially since Apple put a bullet in the back of FireWire’s head. Thankfully, Western Digital has once again come to the rescue with a neat new addition to its My Passport line of portable drives: The Edge.

These new versions not only look way more high-tech than the previous curvy plastic models, they also support MacBook-friendly USB 3.0.

FileWave launched a new free app called Lightning this week. The new app makes quick and easy work of deploying Mountain Lion (and Lion) to multiple Macs, particularly recent Macs with Thunderbolt. It can be used to roll out existing master images that a business or school has already created as well as a base OS X install that can be customized with a range of files and applications.

After a short will they/won’t they moment last week, Apple has finally made the Thumderbolt to FireWire adapter officially official. Despite last week’s hesitations, you can now buy the adapter for – you guessed it – $29.

Early this morning, Apple put up a product page for a Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter cable on the online Apple Store. Selling for $29.00, the cable would allow Mac owners to run their old Firewire accessories through Apple’s new Thunderbolt standard.

It appears, however, that Apple wasn’t ready for this product to be announced quite yet, as after the new product broke, the page was quietly pulled for unknown reasons. It also doesn’t show up in store search results.

It’s probably a matter of one of Apple’s web monkeys pushing the “go live” button a few hours prematurely, but we’ll let you know when the Thunderbolt to Firewire cable goes back on sale.

Update: It’s back!

Source: Apple
Via: Apple Insider

It’s time for me to sign off my tipster post here at Cult of Mac. For my final tip, here’s one of my absolute favorites from my book. It describes how to turn any USB memory stick or storage device into an ultra-secure filestore. When inserted into any Mac, a password prompt will appear, just like with expensive ‘government grade secure’ memory sticks, and the contents will be as equally inaccessible to anybody else.

OS X Lion is being hailed by many as the most secure operating system yet, not just from Apple, but in total. In particular, its FileVault encryption rewrite is being widely hailed as one of the most secure, low-overhead ways yet to keep your data safe.

But behind all the talk, there’s a huge security hole in OS X Lion that has been present at least since Snow Leopard. Any Mac with a Firewire port is vulnerable to it, and it’s so easy to exploit that any hacker with physical access to your computer can get your password within minutes.

As we’re probably all aware by now, Apple’s Thunderbolt I/O debuted earlier this year with the new generation of MacBook Pros and threatened to make all other interfaces, like USB and FireWire, seem like stone-age relics — and at the same time, make obsolescent all current external HDDs. All, that is, except Seagate’s line of GoFlex drives.

Intel was quick to clarify reports yesterday that Apple had secretly filed for the Thunderbolt trademark in Jamaica a year before the chipmaker unveiled their next-gen technology, and in doing so, have put some fears to ease: Thunderbolt is not another FireWire.

Iomega has just released a new slate of eGo portable external hard drives, and at least a couple happily have support for Apple’s own Firewire standard.

The first Mac-friendly eGo is the 1TB eGo BlackBelt Mac Edition, which has both FireWire 400.800 and USB 2.0 connections, as well as Iomega Drop Guard protection and a Power Grip band around the casing which will protect your data against falls of up to seven feet. It’s a pricy drive, though, at $229.99.

Iomega’s second Mac-happy eGo is the Mac Edition eGo Desktop Hard drive, which comes in flavors between 1TB and 2TB, and again comes with FireWire 400/800 and USB 2.0 support. It costs between $149.99 and $229.99.

Additionally, all drives come with a complimentary 12 month subscription to Trend Micro Smart Surfing software for Mac, Iomega QuikProtect backup software, EMC Retrospect Express backup software and MozyHome Online Backup service. That’s a pretty impressive list of software extras.

You should be able to find both drives at Apple stores later this month.