It was great in design but too few peripherals made use of it. The lack of input devices (e.g. mice, joystick, keyboards) meant that for most people it was far less useful than USB.
Still pretty cool that you could (and still can) use it for networking in a pinch, not to mention the decades worth of video devices that will happily dump their contents to DV video as long as you have a FireWire port. Finding a VCR with DV output is one of the best ways to digitize old VHS recordings if you can't set up VHS-decode.
I remember reading that one reason firewire was so great was that every device had a controller chip or something like that, whereas USB used the system processor for a lot of stuff.
So the cheaper option won the mainstream market over the better option. Now where have I heard that before other than all of the times?
Oh I’m an engineer that works on physical products (embedded software) and you will get zero disagreement from me there, lol. That is the case even with expensive stuff that’s sold to other businesses rather than cheap consumer tech.
And the way I meant “better” was more like “superior specs / technically better.” I mean, as far as “good enough” and “meeting user needs at lowest cost > exceeding needs at higher cost” you cannot argue with the success of USB. It has succeeded beyond the scope of its own name.
yukichigai@kbin.earth 3 weeks ago
It was great in design but too few peripherals made use of it. The lack of input devices (e.g. mice, joystick, keyboards) meant that for most people it was far less useful than USB.
Still pretty cool that you could (and still can) use it for networking in a pinch, not to mention the decades worth of video devices that will happily dump their contents to DV video as long as you have a FireWire port. Finding a VCR with DV output is one of the best ways to digitize old VHS recordings if you can't set up VHS-decode.
Zink@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
I remember reading that one reason firewire was so great was that every device had a controller chip or something like that, whereas USB used the system processor for a lot of stuff.
So the cheaper option won the mainstream market over the better option. Now where have I heard that before other than all of the times?
Bluewing@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Eh, it’s less about which is the “better choice” and more about “how good does good enough need to be”. With a dash of the 80/20 rule.
Zink@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Oh I’m an engineer that works on physical products (embedded software) and you will get zero disagreement from me there, lol. That is the case even with expensive stuff that’s sold to other businesses rather than cheap consumer tech.
And the way I meant “better” was more like “superior specs / technically better.” I mean, as far as “good enough” and “meeting user needs at lowest cost > exceeding needs at higher cost” you cannot argue with the success of USB. It has succeeded beyond the scope of its own name.