Firewire
Mac Tip #221/16-November-2005

Firewire has such a great name; you’d pretty much expect it to be a really potent drink or to perhaps shoot rockets into the sky, but in fact it’s a bit more prosaic.

Its scientific name is IEEE 1394, but it’s sometimes also known as i.Link.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1394

IEEE refers to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association.

Firewire is nothing more than an interface which allows you to send and receive data very fast through a suitable cable. Its most common use (probably) on Macs is to connect a digital video camera, certain iPods or perhaps a backup drive.

Firewire can carry data much faster than version 1 of USB and also a lot faster than older kinds of interfaces such as the old serial, SCSI and the like.

Macs have had Firewire ports for years now. The port on your computer is a rectangle with a rounded end and there will be a y-shaped symbol beside it.

The other end may be the same size and shape or it may be a tiny, almost u-shaped port, small enough to fit on a digital movie camera.

Older Macs may have Firewire 400 which is slower than the Firewire 800 many newer Macs use.

Apart from connecting devices such as backup drives with Firewire you can actually use it to connect two Macs together. Apple gives us some great software and instructions for when you upgrade to a new Mac and have to copy across all your files.

When you bring the new Mac home and start it up it asks if you want to transfer information from another computer. If you answer Yes then you see instructions for connecting the two machines with a Firewire cable and then the software does the rest.