Apple gewoon heeft de Firewire standaard dichtgegooid (niet ongewoon voor Apple, dat doen ze met al hun 'standaarden') waardoor andere fabrikanten 1 dollar per poort moeten betalen. Daar hebben ze vanzelfsprekend niet zo zin in en de geruchten gaan dat ze bezig zijn met de ontwikkeling van een eigen alternatieve Firewire standaard, en het is nog sneller ook:
According to a report in, a number of developers are proposing what they call 1394B. Not only is the specification twice as fast as current FireWire technology but avoids relying on the Apple-patented signalling techniques that Apple is using to justify charging a licence fee.'Apple-free' 1394 would operate at 800Mbps instead of the current 400Mbps and use a signalling system borrowed from the Fibre Channel world. The next stage of the design process would be to incorporate support for current FireWire devices in a way that also eliminates the key Apple intellectual property.
However, Michael Teener, CTO of US-based Zayante, a 1394 infrastructure company, quoted in the EE Times report, reckoned it would take two years to progress the backwards-compatible 1394B specification to the point at which it could be widely deployed.
Zie The Register.
