October 17th, 2008
All new HD camcorders use USB? Really?
Peter Kirn from Create Digital Music disagrees with Steve Jobs alleged statement that “all new HD camcorders use USB” in response to the death of Firewire kerfuffle.
Whether Jobs said it or not, isn’t the point — the point it that it’s wrong.
All HDV cameras I know of rely on FireWire for transfers, including some Canon models that are wildly popular with indie producers.
The installed base of FireWire camcorders is still enormous — even for HD.
Most pro and semi-pro cameras continue to use FireWire, because HDV remains preferred over AVCHD. And many pros, in turn, buy non-Pro MacBooks and use them for on-the-road capture, especially as they have lots of other gear to budget for and invest in and may use Mac Pros in the studio.
FireWire is the *preferred* format for multichannel audio interfaces.
Many people have vast investments in FireWire-only storage, which still typically outperforms (even FW400) USB2 drives. And Apple didn’t offer the logical alternative, eSATA, even on the Pro — despite the popularity of eSATA over FW800 for high-end drives.
Apple just pushed FireWire by working with Apogee on the Duet audio interface, and Apogee made it Mac-only. (Hey, Apogee — maybe time to work on Windows drivers?)
In other words, this is all pretty much BS.
Well said, Peter.
It looks like my prediction from 2005 may be coming true, after all.
Jason D. O'Grady is the editor of PowerPage.org, which has been publishing daily mobile technology news since December 1995. For disclosures on Jason's industry affiliations, click here or to view Jason's full profile click here.
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