New iPods: No more FireWire? Camera Connector?

Posted by Pierre Igot in: Macintosh
February 24th, 2005 • 9:34 am

This strikes me as quite weird. According to iPodLounge, the new iPods recently announced by Apple only include a USB 2.0 cable (and a USB Power Adapter).

This means that people with Macs that don’t have USB 2.0 ports have to purchase a FireWire cable separately. It’s rather insulting to owners of older Macs on Apple’s part. My dual 1.25 GHz G4 is not even 3 years old, but it doesn’t have USB 2.0 ports, only USB 1.x ports.

In addition, I thought that FireWire was a technology patented by Apple, which would be a good reason for them to continue to promote it as a better alternative to USB 2.0. Strange.

Apple has also announced a new iPod Camera Connector accessory that will enable you to connect your digital camera directly to your iPod photo to upload photos without having to use a laptop as an intermediate.

This is good news and an obvious addition to the iPod photo’s feature set. It’s not clear, however, whether this connector will also work with “older” iPods such as the iPod photo 1st generation (like mine) or only with the newest iPods. I hope it’s the former… I don’t particularly want to have to purchase a third-party (and expensive) accessory for this.

On the other hand, since my digital camera’s USB connector is toast anyway, I might not be able to use such an accessory with it. I have to use a USB media reader to transfer my photos to my computer. Will the new iPod Camera Connector only have a mini-USB connector to connect directly to the digital camera or will it also support USB media readers? I guess we’ll see in March…


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