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| NAMM '99 Special Report
Here's some FireWire products released or soon to be released that may be of interest to the MacRocking community. Also about to break out are NewerTech's FirePower and FireWire2Go. The former is a breakout box that looks very much like the old Radius VideoVision. In fact it is very much like Radius' breakout box, with one major exception -- it plugs into your modern Mac via FireWire. FireWire2Go looks to be a great way to add 1394 capability to your G3 PowerBook via it's PCMCIA slot(s). Let's not forget Adaptec's lead in the 1394 game. They have a pricey SCSI / 1394 combo card that could pull your old venerable PCI Mac by it's bootstraps for another go of usefulness.
Check out last month's report on IEEE-1394
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DVDS/DDS streaming tape drive from MacTell/Indigita IIndigita has cut a deal with MacTell to market & distribute their 1394 DDS/DVDS DAT drive. What's cool about this unit (other than the speedy bus) is it's usefulness as both a traditional back up & archiving device and as a streaming audio and video deck. MacTell is a 'mac clone survivor' and has made a good name for itself in the periphrial market. MacTell is also promoting a line of FireWire hard drives and has plans for an optical drive and CDRW in the coming months.
FireWire coming for the next Rev iMac? Product literature from Mac peripheral maker Orange Micro seems to indicate they know something we don't! Check it here!
The future of Mac based digital studios ? Who knows how long before all of the standards are fully cemented and products will hit mainstream market. Still the future is bright! Yamaha has won acceptance from the 1394 Trade Association for it's mLan specification and the world is one step closer to some pro and consumer audio products of substance. Yamaha has committed to mLan for it's product line, thereby committing (perhaps unwittingly) to Macintosh. Maybe, maybe not. It only makes sense that a product that hits the market with any of the non FireWire branded implementations of the IEEE-1394 specification should be compatible with any PowerMac with built in FireWire. Right? It makes so much sense that anyone who's been around the Mac block will anticipate the opposite. The fact that Sony, Yamaha and others have licensed their own brand name and use-specific standards (through 1394TA) to avoid paying Apple directly for their name brand technology -- FireWire -- should be a warning that we may still wait behind the wintel crowd for compatibility with our Macs. Much as it has been with audio cards and the Mac. One couldn't 'do' sound on a computer until there was Macintosh. Then there were two kinds of sound cards: professional Audiomedia for the NuBus Mac and soundblasters for ISA bus pee cee. Over the years manufacturers and developers took to the sheer volume of pee cee owners and gave them priority over the Mac clientele that started it all. That's fair. It's business. There's only so many professionals they can sell high dollar equipment (mostly Mac users). Could this be the case with pro audio/ studio? Not as far as Yamaha is concerned with mLan. Company spokesperson Jun-ichi Fujimori says Yamaha is ". . . developing ASIO/OMS driver for mLAN and will provide the driver with our mLAN products." With this in mind, FireWire could end up being the biggest story this year about Macs & Music. Either everything will work right out of the box, according to standards; or so begins the long, agonizing toothache of waiting for product specific drivers. Either way, big news. Why? We have to remember that 1394 has been shelved into techgeek obscurity for quite a while. Apple (er, Steve) made the bold move to do the thing or get off the pot with Yosemite. Suddenly there's a drive amongst the technogeeks and their corporate monster employers to implement this bus in a variety of product lines. The audio industry is gearing up for 1394. This includes products for home entertainment (stereo's VCRs, TV's, etc.). Recent rumors about the next revision of the iMac include FireWire in the feature set. If this is true, the necessity for some kind of USB digital audio adapter becomes irrelevant. Mark our words and keep you browsers pointed here for more about this.
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