Consumer Reports on iPhone; Apple snags another Delicious staffer

It all depends what you use Firewire for. SATA still uses the CPU as the controller, whereas Firewire has an independent controller. This is important for systems that are already loaded doing other things. At the same time SATA is only good for storage, whereas Firewire does a whole lot more.

As fore the Delicious Monster developers being sucked up by Apple that sucks, for DM. Delicious Library is a great tool and every time they lose someone it means that the development gets delayed. As a shareware developer there isn't really much in the way of icentives to keep someone from accepting a job at Apple.

Firewire might do a lot more, but very few people care about that (we are on a Mac forum, not discussing the latest video rendering hardware or something).

On the mac, Firewire is generally (if not solely?) used for external storage connectivity and some video cameras (unless you count the excitement that is Firewire networking). So that's how most look at it. Unfortunately, even now, because firewire requires, as you say, its own controller, firewire devices tend to cost more than USB devices, and, as such, will stay as a limited option.

For PCs, it's worse, since most desktops don't come with the port, if or they do, it's the slower 400 type.

But it doesn't matter. It's doubtful Apple will implement it (they barely care as it is) and it would be better if they went eSATA anyway, which is more likely to become the defacto standard (as USB is the defacto standard now).

Add on to that Apple's wonderful decision to only allow a select few machines (MacPros and MBPs) to have the ability to add in PCI cards to gain new functionality (most people won't even be able to take advantage of it for years to come, anyway).

BTW, when they say "the same port", I'm assuming they mean same as in "Firewire 800", not "firewire 400". Or perhaps the Firewire 4-pin port.

I'm pretty sure SATA transfers are done by DMA. It really shouldn't take much CPU, I really doubt that Firewire's more CPU efficient to make any difference in anything. Even FW800 has a speed bottleneck compared to SATA. An eSATA link has one less drive controller as well, and it looks like eSATA enclosures are getting to be less expensive because it doesn't require that controller.

The only other thing done with consumer use of Firewire is DV deck control, and that's going away as DV camcorders are declining in prominence. They're being pushed out by hard drive, optical and solid state recorders.