From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: October 26, 2008 11:45:57 AM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Re: Bring Back FireWire Petitions

Hi Tim;

On 26-Oct-08, at 10:22 AM, Tim wrote:

The Mac clones had to go because Apple was way to damn slow at building faster better new product, so the Clones were shipping Macs with new and faster hardware.

I remember Steve getting all bent out of shape cause DayStar and others (both clone manufacturers and upgrade cards) were introducing Faster Macs, to the point where Apple started changing software to prevent there products from working - and then denied it.

Too bad my Powerbook hasn't been so reliable!  But I wish it were

capable of running parallels and XP for these kinds of situations. 

Unfortunately, I don't think I can afford to get one of the

still-firewire Powerbooks before they disappear.

Same here. In the middle a global recession, Steve decided to increase the price, reduce the feature set and force customers to replace their FireWire hardware with slower less capable products. That doesn't sound like someone "in touch" with the real world to me.

Here's some questions:

What happens if Psystar prevails?  Or at least survives?  What about

home-built PCs running OSX?  With Astro IIDC requiring a Mac serial

number to work, these machines would not be able to run it, even if

they become "legal".

The "Mac" serial number is derived from ethernet id, which is unique. So any clone or Windows box that has built in internet would work.

There have been several commercial ventures lately offering OSX on Generic PCs too with a USB Dongle thing too.

For now, my plan is to keep my intel Mac Mini and my Powerbook G4

running as long as I can.  Even with some of the strange problems I've

had with them, particularly the powerbook, they still make this hobby

pretty fun to pursue.  

I suspect that FireWire equipped Macs will eventually sell at a premium price.

Steve Jobs ignores the real world way too much. He says USB is the same. Well Obviously Steve hasn't ever moved multi gigabyte files, as many benchmarks (including my own) show that USB 2 is 30% to 50% slower than FireWire 400. When you go FireWire 800, USB 2 looks like a Floppy drive. And then there is' the CPU usage needed for USB 2 versus intelligent FireWire.

Milton J. Aupperle