One of the most notable technologies, represented by the updated Apple after returning to its Steve Jobs camp, was the FireWire standard (also IEEE 1394), but the steps that the company made before and after its arrival were for the high-speed data transfer protocol as a rescue , And this curse. The story written by Robert Moss from the Ars Technica website tells us about the technology of FireWire since its inception and growing up under different names by the forces of other companies until it finally comes to its present state where the connector is still used in a number of niche products that Can be counted on the fingers.

Birth.

It all began in 1987 when, in front of a group of engineers, which included Michael Jonas Tiner, the Committee on the Standards of Microcomputers set the task to develop a universal high-speed standard that combines various variants of a serial bus. Just a year later, Tiner joined Apple, just as the company was looking for a replacement for Apple Desktop Bus (ABD), which was starting to become obsolete, and wanted to implement a new protocol that allowed the transmission of sound.

By that time, the just-born new standard, which would later become FireWire, could transmit data at a speed of 12 Mbps. Apple wanted to achieve a 50 Mbit rate, so Tiner and David James, who also worked for National Semiconductor before that, set to work.

Even then it became clear that FireWire is at odds with those developments, which eventually became the basis for another standard - USB. The availability of isochronous traffic support meant that the data stream could always be transmitted at a constant rate. In this case, all consecutively transmitted data blocks were strictly mutually synchronized with high accuracy. It followed that the protocol was ideally suited for professional tasks related to the processing and transmission of audio and video content.

The desire to replace the current SCSI data interface appeared with IBM, but it aimed at a speed of 100 Mbps. In turn, for the introduction of support for coding by the DSE method, among other things, increasing the throughput of the Tiner and James tires, Apple engineers enlisted the support of STMicroelectronics. Next, it was necessary to choose a suitable connector. "Poppies" of that time had three different round ports. Conventional PCs had similar connectors. Unwilling to repeat, Tiner and James sought advice from Apple's chief engineer responsible for ports, and he advised paying attention to the network cable of the Nintendo Game Boy, a handheld console that was unlike anything else on the market. It was organized in such a way that, in the event of a breakdown, the parts installed on the cable itself, rather than inside the computer. That, in turn, greatly simplified the replacement.

Demonstration and approval.

The working name of the technology was ChefCat. Right before the computer exhibition Comdex in 1993, engineers who worked with the new standard, offered a different name - Firewire. Marketers liked it, but the first letter of the second word was decided to be written from the upper register.

Work on the 300-page specification of the standard and its ratification was completed only in 1995. The new technology made it possible to transfer data at speeds up to 400 Mb / s (why later the name was changed to FireWire 400) in both directions and the use of cables up to 4.5 meters. The bus made it possible to combine up to 63 different devices into the network and maintained a hot replacement. Connection and adjustment were made automatically (you only had to connect the cable to the port). In FireWire was built in its own microcontroller, so its transmission efficiency does not depend on the level of CPU utilization.

Many other companies immediately adapted the new technology, and the biggest ones like Texas Instruments, Yamaha, Creative and Sony decided to give it their own names: Lynx, mLAN, SB1394 and i. LINK respectively. Moreover, Sony, in addition to the name change, also replaced the connector itself, making it four-pin and without consulting with other FireWire vendors. However, it was Sony that became one of those companies that made a significant contribution to bringing the technology to the mass market, thanks to the use in their video cameras.

World glory and the beginning of the end.

The standard FireWire quickly gained recognition, and Apple began to collect compliments from a wide range of areas of industry and science. But inside the company Apple gradually began to grow the degree of tension and financial problems that sowed the grain, which eventually grew into a tombstone for FireWire.

"There was a time when the company saw a maniacal desire to surpass the PC market. The Board of Directors considered that Apple was losing market share, and therefore decided to compete due to a more loyal price policy. The next year the situation with the market share of the company improved, but then she realized that she had nothing to offer people. No innovations. Therefore, she decided to go the other way, "- says Eric Sirkin, then the director of the development department of Macintosh systems.

Sirkin realized the value of the connector and decided that the company could earn on it seriously if he licensed the technology to other manufacturers. The original licensing policy implied a one-time fee of $ 50,000. For this money, a third-party electronics manufacturer got the right to use the technology in their products, without taking into account how many devices it will use. Intel liked this approach, and it promised to provide support for FireWire by integrating a controller directly into the chipsets of motherboards for Windows PCs.

But then Steve Jobs returned to the company. For Apple itself, it was the best, and for FireWire the worst event in their lives. Despite the fact that Mac sales grew, the overall financial situation was far from being rosy, so she was looking for new ways of income.

Rise and fall.

After Jobs returned, the company began shipping Power Mac G3, the first Apple product to be equipped with a FireWire controller, eliminating the need for an additional PCI expansion card. At the same time, Jobs decided to revise the licensing policy with FireWire. Now each third-party manufacturer was given a condition that required a payment of $ 1 for each FireWire port used in their products, which actually made the technology much more expensive than using USB. In such conditions, producers had to raise prices for the final goods in order to repulse the costs of its production.

Intel immediately revised its attitude to FireWire and moved to the standard USB 2. Other companies followed suit. A month later, Apple still lowered the price to $ 0.25 per controller, but Intel was already adamant.

The desire to replace the Ethernet port.

The attempt to promote the technology and make it a replacement for an Ethernet connection has failed. Tiner believes that the key role in this was played by the refusal of the Trade Association 1394, which at that time did not want to communicate with Jobs and his "seven Fridays in the week" in licensing matters. This solution effectively put an end to the widespread support for FireWire on Windows computers.

Apple still tried to keep the standard in its iPod, but a year later it was kicked out and replaced by a new 30-pin connector. By the forces of third-party manufacturers the technology evolved in FireWire 800, 1600, and then in 3200, but each new generation required a transition to other connectors. Supplies of the latest Mac model with support for FireWire 800 were held in 2012. After that, Apple did not adapt new audits.

Was there any potential?.

Devices that use the standard FireWire 800, are present in the audio industry and now. Moreover, when customers were surprised to learn that in the 2008 Mac models there is no FireWire port, the company was hit by a whole flurry of criticism and demands to fix everything and bring it back. And, interestingly, Apple succumbed.

And yet in 2011 Apple adapts Thunderbolt, and then goes completely to USB 3.

0, which will subsequently be replaced by a faster USB-C.

"It seems to me that the situation with FireWire reflected Apple of that era. She simply stopped considering herself as an innovator. She was not sure of herself. The only option was to find another company that might be interested in the new standard. This company was Sony, with which Apple has always had a special relationship. In general, when Sony became interested in it, then Apple became interested in it, "Sirkin said..