Apple, FireWire, and USB

At 4:33 AM -0800 3/3/05, Grant Symon wrote:

Well ... that may not seem like they're dropping it to you ... but it certainly looks like it to me. The announced camera connector for example, is USB.

The vast majority of digital cameras use USB. That has nothing to do with Apple's support for Firewire.

more than just music ... like photos for instance. I'm not suggesting that they simply stick a FW-800 plug on the iPod, but that they increase it's capabilities to provide useful FW-800 performance.

Doing that is not free. So the question becomes how much more would people pay for FW-800. Then Apple has to factor in how may machines in the world have FW-800, which is a lot less than FW-400 or USB 2 and how many of those customers would pay more for a FW-800 iPod.

In an ideal world, Apple could make a FW-800 iPod knowing it's sales would be a fraction of other iPods. Or package an iPod with only a FW cable. But there's always some fixed overhead and logistic issues to shipping a new product.

I understand the economic model ... but I would nevertheless like to see Apple driving FW forward. It is a superior technology.

To some extent, not paying attention to the economic model is what hurt Apple with the Mac originally. It's not going to make that mistake again. Instead, Apple is trying to stay ahead of the competition by bringing down its prices. Part of that involves unbundling the various pieces.

-- Larry Rosenstein lrosensteincatsincharge.com

On 3/3/05 at 5:12 PM, GrantGrantSymon.com (Grant Symon) wrote:

> > Well, y'know, I haven't seen a single digital still camera that uses > > Firewire. Every one uses USB. Doesn't do much good to make a camera > > connector that can't actually connect to anything, does it? > > There are quite a number ... I have one in fact, the Fuji S2.

The Fuji S2 ranges from $1,000 to $1,700. That's pretty steep for a consumer camera. That's up in the amateur/pro range to me. I would expect firewire on those.

The ipod is a $500 consumer device -- less for the iPod mini's. As long as apple keeps firewire support in the device itself I'm happy. Hopefully they don't change the dock connector, then I can move the cable I already have to the next device. I bet Belkin or Dr. Bott or Kensington comes out with a cheaper, or more feature-ridden cable anyway.

> But what you're saying is rather my point anyway. No camera > manufacturer will bother to include them in their cameras if there > aren't any devices to use them. Apple has to come first, which is > exactly what started to happen with FW, but now Apple appear to be > shying away from FW and camera manufacturers will stop including it.

If the Mac mini had shipped without Firewire I'd agree, but it's got it (I wish it had FW800 too, but I like paying $500 better).

I don't need to connect my digital camera to an iPod via firewire, but I'd need a special cable or hub to do that anyway as the iPods have a non-standard firewire port. Same for the USB people, they'll have to buy a special USB cable to use that functionality. Perhaps Belkin or Dr. Bott or Kensington will come out with an iPod Photo Firewire Camera cable -- I just don't see a market big enough that apple should toss one in for free with every iPod.

On 3/3/05, Travis Butler wrote:

Um... this makes no sense. Macs with Firewire ports have been available since January 1999. Sony computers with i.Link (four-pin Firewire 400) have been available almost as long.

All our Toshiba Tecra computers have the little firewire connectors built in. All the Dell workstation class machines have them too. Many HD TV's and HDTV cable boxes have firewire built in -- supposedly there is an FCC mandate that all cable providers offer a firewire connector to customers (can anyone verify this is true?). Instructions for interfacing Mac OS X into an HDTV cable box are pretty easy to find:

<http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?threadid=386740>

At risk of spouting blasphemy, I would much prefer a single connectivity standard so that all my peripherals were permanently plugged into a hub; and the hub plugged into the Macintosh.

USB and FireWire originally had rather different target uses: USB was intended as a lower-speed bus to connect peripherals like keyboards, mice, graphic tablets, etc. to a computer, so you can consider it the successor to the PS/2 keyboard connector on PCs and the ADB connector on older Macs. FireWire, in contrast, was intended as a high-speed network for media exchange. As a result, there is a key difference between these two that has a major impact on their applications: USB has a hierarchical architecture, while FireWire is symmetrical.

If you connect devices via USB, they form a tree hierarchy quite similar to the folder structure on a hard drive, with a host at the root of that tree. This host usually is a computer. Every FireWire device, however, can be both host and client, so to speak. This means, that you can directly connect two FireWire-equipped devices with each other with just a simple FW cable; but you must have a computer "at hand" to connect two USB-equipped devices. This is also reflected by the fact that FireWire cables have the same plug at each end, whereas a USB cable has two different plugs.

Of course, just connecting two hard drives via FireWire will not do much at all ;), but consider two digital cameras: if you wanted to copy footage from one movie camera to the other, you could simply connect the two via a FireWire cable and, if both cams support this mode, just start copying away. If both cameras only had USB connectors, you would have to have a computer plugged between the cams to serve as the USB hub.

My favorite example for the undisputed superiority of FireWire over USB for media applications (you didn't expect me to be un-biased, did you? ;) ) is Yamaha's mLAN technology ("m" for "music"). mLAN is a FireWire-based network for connecting audio studio equipment: where, without mLAN, you would use half a dozen cables to connect a synth's MIDI and audio I/O, you now need just a single FireWire cable. Due to FireWire's symmetrical architecture, you can connect two synths that way, or a synth and a mixer, or a synth and a computer, etc. etc., with just one cable per device. With USB's hierarchical architecture, this is impossible to implement.

<http://www.mlancentral.com/> <http://www.yamahasynth.com/products/mlan/>

Therefore, I'm convinced that the basic differentiation between FW and USB will remain: you'll use USB to connect low- to mid-speed computer peripherals, and you'll use FireWire to connect high-speed audio and video devices. As a matter of fact, even Intel agrees completely (how embarrassing ;) ):

<http://www.intel.com/technology/usb/faq.htm#usb7>

The best solution in your specific case would probably be to buy a FireWire hub, too, so you'd have the best of both worlds!

Jochen.

On 3/7/05 6:46 AM, "Chris Pepper" <pepperreppep.com> wrote:

>> Could you post that URL? I've noticed how much slower my 1GB shuffle is >> too, though would never consider returning it!!! >> Actually I am a bit disappointed with USB 2 all round. The performance >> downloading large files off a PVR is awful using USB2 and a Powerbook >> G4.

Sorry, I didn't get the URL. I explained I understood the difference between flash and hard disks, and he said they'd take it back, so I didn't go any farther down that route.

One thing to remember with USB2 is that not all data transfers are created equal.

Unless you use burst mode, high speed data transfers are limited to 192Mbps.

-- John C. Welch Writer/Analyst Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions jwelchbynkii.com

On 3/7/05 6:54 AM, "Curtis Wilcox" <cwilcoxesm.rochester.edu> wrote:

> So would I, it should be Firewire. Firewire is a better technology in almost
> every way for almost every use beyond mice & keyboards. But USB was Intel's
> baby, they included it in their chipsets and ensured that every PC had the
> ports. Firewire's superiority is not going to convince enough people that
> it's worth figuring out how to install a PCI card or shopping with enough
> care to purchase a PC with Firewire (I would bet Apple sells more Macs than
> all the Firewire equipped PCs combined, at least in the U.S.).

Actually, USB is a fine technology, and quite useful just like firewire. FW
is a better choice when you need high-speed transfers and need to not have
them interrupted by CPU interrupts or other external factors, something that
USB is vulnerable to. However on a digital still camera, space is limited,
and outside of the rather high-end cameras that start at a thousand dollars
US or more, the data requirements simply don't justify FW. Technical
requirements DO occasionally play a part in such things.

As well, *every* computer manufactured in the last 5 or so years has USB,
(or darned close to it...say 99.999% to be on the safe side). If you're
selling a consumer model camera, what is the better choice technically: a
port that a significant part of your users won't have, or one that, even if
they don't have the newest version, will still work.

Sure, on the pro end, they'll put FW in still cameras, and they'll also put
USB, and they'll happily charge up the wazoo for them. Pro stuff isn't
cheap. But consumer - grade stuff has to be cheap, and that means the
minimal number of ports to get the job done. Like it or not, in that case,
USB wins.

>
> This is why something as small as not including a Firewire cable is
> troubling. It's like wearing a "we lost" t-shirt. And it's one less piece of
> "infrastructure" people have when they compare Firewire & USB devices ("Oh,
> I can use that cable for this, too"). They should at least let people trade
> USB cables for Firewire cables at Apple Stores and to select a Firewire
> cable in lieu of USB when ordering iPods online.

Oh that's a little bit of an exaggeration, considering that Apple is still
the best, most consistent supporter of USB in the biz. Even though I have a
nice, high-end enterprise-class KVM that supports different connection
types, for the PC servers, using USB is a crap shoot. They may support USB
as the sole keyboard and mouse connection, they may not. Even if the
support's in the BIOS, doesn't mean you can trust it. So, for now, Wintel
boxes, if they have PS/2 ports, that's what I use for the KVM.

On a Mac, it's a non-issue. The USB support is always there, and it's always
excellent. I never have to worry. I don't need to deal with drivers, or any
of the idiocy that keeps me in PS/2 for my Intel servers.

Apple has done more than anyone, including Intel, to make USB as ubiquitous
as it is, and I've seen and heard personally, numerous comments from Intel
engineers at just how grateful they are that Apple took that leadership
position. Apple has supported USB longer than FW in their hardware, but they
support both quite well. For the iPod, it makes more sense on everything but
an emotional level to make USB the shipping dock cable. On the other hand, I
just bought a dual end Dock connector for the same price, so I get my choice
for the price of one. Whee!

>
> (Going more off-topic.)
>
> It's what kills me about them not putting Firewire 800 is more Macs. *No
> one* is saying "the only reason I chose the Power-whatever over the
> i-whatever is Firewire 800." I'm pretty sure you can hook Firewire 400
> equipment to a Firewire 800 with a simple adapter so there's little reason
> not to make Firewire 800 the standard on today's Macs.

Sure there is. Cost, and market differentiation. FW800 is more expensive
than 400, and will be for some time. As well, if an iMac has all the same
features as a G5 tower, save the PCI slots, why would you pay the extra
freight for the G5 tower? Answer: You wouldn't. In time, FW800 will probably
leak down to the non-pro hardware, but for now, it's not there.

> If home video is
> really going to be a big thing (Jobs is the one calling it the year of HD),
> people will want Firewire and Firewire 800 will be even better. People can
> already compare Macs & PCs and see Macs have great software and Firewire
> built-in (though too many don't know how good FireWire is). If the i-models
> had FireWire 800 they could feel they're not only purchasing for today but
> also purchasing for tomorrow. Since the i-models aren't really upgradeable,
> it's especially important that they not seem like they're fill with
> yesterday's technology. Maybe the mini's price point changes that somewhat
> but with its 2.5" hard drive it's a problematic choice for video editing
> anyway.

The size of the drive isn't the issue. I know a lot of folks doing real work
on laptops, don't kid yourself. It's the drive speed, and you can get faster
2.5" drives. But right now, the cheapest HD camera costs more than a Mini
and an iMac put together. That's not something you're going to see at the
home level anytime soon. In a couple years, probably, but not now.

As well, no computer manufacturer in their right mind wants you holding onto
hardware for 5 or more years. They stop making money at that point, and you
effectively stopped being a customer. Emotion aside, "Customer" is best
equated to "person I make money from". If I only see you every 5 years or
so, you're not much of a customer. If I give you a reason to come in every 2
years, or even every three years, or even more often, you're a much better
customer.

There's almost no point in making FW800 standard until the hardware that can
best use it comes down in price. Right now, the only FW 800 peripheral I use
is a $2500 1U tape library. How many folks are running out to buy one? Yeah,
that's what I thought.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

On 7 Mar 2005, at 19:00, <tidbits-talktidbits.com> wrote:

> The Fuji S2 ranges from $1,000 to $1,700. That's pretty steep for a
> consumer camera. That's up in the amateur/pro range to me. I would
> expect
> firewire on those.

Why?? Personally, I don't really see the point of ANY sort of connector
on a higher-end digital camera. If you shoot a lot of pictures you'll
probably have several memory cards, and what's easier, finding the
right cable, hooking everything together, swapping cards while you
download everything, or just putting your cards in a memory card reader
that's already attached to your computer??

My D70 has never been attached to a computer in the 10 months I've had
it, and I don't really ever see that changing... [and if I do go
somewhere where I'll want a camera/data transfer cable of some
description, I'll take my firewire card reader in preference to
anything else... it takes up just as much space as the USB cable that
came with the camera after all...!]
Dave

(Reading my last message and this one I think I'm coming across as more
impassioned and argumentative about this than I mean to be. I think it's a
by-product of writing and searching for answers at the same time rather than
knowing where I'm coming from before I start to write.)

On 3/7/05 6:09 PM, "John C. Welch" <jwelchbynkii.com> wrote:

> On 3/7/05 6:54 AM, "Curtis Wilcox" <cwilcoxesm.rochester.edu> wrote:
>
>> So would I, it should be Firewire. Firewire is a better technology in almost
>> every way for almost every use beyond mice & keyboards. But USB was Intel's
>> baby, they included it in their chipsets and ensured that every PC had the
>> ports. Firewire's superiority is not going to convince enough people that
>> it's worth figuring out how to install a PCI card or shopping with enough
>> care to purchase a PC with Firewire (I would bet Apple sells more Macs than
>> all the Firewire equipped PCs combined, at least in the U.S.).
>
> Actually, USB is a fine technology, and quite useful just like firewire. FW
> is a better choice when you need high-speed transfers and need to not have
> them interrupted by CPU interrupts or other external factors, something that
> USB is vulnerable to.

I don't think we're disagreeing. I never said USB was bad and as you say, if
the point is high-speed, FW is the better choice. That was the point I was
trying to make. One product type where High Speed USB seems like the better
choice is flash drives. They're tiny, cheap & dumb and probably can't even
saturate High Speed USB so in that case FireWire is a bit much.

> However on a digital still camera, space is limited,
> and outside of the rather high-end cameras that start at a thousand dollars
> US or more, the data requirements simply don't justify FW. Technical
> requirements DO occasionally play a part in such things.

If they don't justify FW, then they don't justify High Speed USB either.

> As well, *every* computer manufactured in the last 5 or so years has USB,
> (or darned close to it...say 99.999% to be on the safe side). If you're
> selling a consumer model camera, what is the better choice technically: a
> port that a significant part of your users won't have, or one that, even if
> they don't have the newest version, will still work.

That is not a technical decision, that is a business decision. A technical
decision would be choosing the technology that's faster & more efficient and
is designed to make it a lot easier to do neat things like connecting the
camera directly to a photo printer. Kodak made a custom dock interface for
its EasyShare printer but if FireWire was common on digital cameras there
would be a bunch of photo printers to choose from that would work without a
computer. Instead, we have photo printers with numerous different media
slots and no interface to see what your picture will look like before
printing.

> Oh that's a little bit of an exaggeration, considering that Apple is still
> the best, most consistent supporter of USB in the biz. Even though I have a
> nice, high-end enterprise-class KVM that supports different connection
> types, for the PC servers, using USB is a crap shoot. They may support USB
> as the sole keyboard and mouse connection, they may not. Even if the
> support's in the BIOS, doesn't mean you can trust it. So, for now, Wintel
> boxes, if they have PS/2 ports, that's what I use for the KVM.

I'm not sure why you're bringing this up. I thought it was pretty clear that
the topic at hand was not USB 1.1 but High Speed USB, the standard that is
meant to compete with FireWire. Believe me, I've had enough experience with
flawed USB support on PCs, even on legacy-free PCs.

>> (Going more off-topic.)
>>
>> It's what kills me about them not putting Firewire 800 is more Macs. *No
>> one* is saying "the only reason I chose the Power-whatever over the
>> i-whatever is Firewire 800." I'm pretty sure you can hook Firewire 400
>> equipment to a Firewire 800 with a simple adapter so there's little reason
>> not to make Firewire 800 the standard on today's Macs.
>
> Sure there is. Cost, and market differentiation. FW800 is more expensive
> than 400, and will be for some time.

Is it inherently more expensive to make FW800 chips or is it more expensive
because the demand doesn't justify the kind of mass production (or
manufacturer competition) that brings per unit costs down? I suspect the
latter is closer to the truth so if Apple chose to make FW800 standard on
its product line this year, the cost difference between FW800 and FW400
would go away.

> As well, if an iMac has all the same
> features as a G5 tower, save the PCI slots, why would you pay the extra
> freight for the G5 tower? Answer: You wouldn't.

PowerMacs have a *many* other exclusive features and as I said, anyone who
didn't care about any of those features *except* FW800 would not pay the
difference just for that one feature. PowerBooks don't have as many
exclusive features compared to the iBook but again, I'm sure processor
speed, screen size, and even the CardBus slot are more often the deciding
factors, not FW800. FW400 started off as a market differentiation feature
but became standard pretty quickly.

Firewire 400 - differentiator to standard:
(Blue & White) PowerMac - Jan '99
iMac (DV, Special Edition) Sept. '99
PowerBook G3 (Firewire) Apr. '00
[clamshell] iBook (FireWire) Sept. '00
All iMacs Feb. '01

> In time, FW800 will probably
> leak down to the non-pro hardware, but for now, it's not there.

It's been over two years, why the wait?

Power Macintosh (FW 800) Feb. '03
PowerBook G4 (15-inch FW 800) Sept. '03

I was surprised that the G5 iMac (Sept. '04, 19 months later) didn't have
FireWire 800 and I'll be disappointed if they don't add it to the iMac this
year. Apple should be more concerned about using FireWire 800 as a market
differentiator between Macs and PCs rather than within their own product
lines. Apple had a commanding lead in the video area, including home video,
but I think the plethora of video apps for Windows and PC CPU performance
improvements have eaten a lot of that up. Even if the reality is that video
editing and DVD authoring are substantially easier with Macs & Mac apps, I
think the fact that there is a wide selection of software leads Windows folk
to assume that at least one of them is good, that it's just a matter of
finding it.

> The size of the drive isn't the issue. I know a lot of folks doing real work
> on laptops, don't kid yourself. It's the drive speed, and you can get faster
> 2.5" drives. But right now, the cheapest HD camera costs more than a Mini
> and an iMac put together. That's not something you're going to see at the
> home level anytime soon. In a couple years, probably, but not now.

I intentionally used '2.5" hard drive' to cover both its smaller capacity
and slower speed. Yes, there are faster 2.5" drives but that doesn't matter
because that's not what Apple put in the mini. Also, DV files are already
pretty huge so it's already easy to fill up a a mini's drive with video.
Sure, you can get more room by attaching a FireWire (400) drive but the
performance of it won't be any better and many people are really bad at file
management so having something other than the Movies folder to look in leads
to trouble.

> As well, no computer manufacturer in their right mind wants you holding onto
> hardware for 5 or more years. They stop making money at that point, and you
> effectively stopped being a customer. Emotion aside, "Customer" is best
> equated to "person I make money from". If I only see you every 5 years or
> so, you're not much of a customer. If I give you a reason to come in every 2
> years, or even every three years, or even more often, you're a much better
> customer.

I'm not talking about 5 years, *I am* talking about 2 years. People don't
like buying new computers every 2 years and every time they're are faced
with the prospect of buying a new computer its another opportunity for Apple
to gain *or lose* a customer.

Here's what I'm picturing; someone buys an iMac G5 today (the whizziest
consumer Mac), the video thing really hits it big in '06 but this guy
doesn't get interested until this time in '07 when the HD cameras he's
looking at have FW800. His PC buddies bought FW800 upgrade cards or whole
new computers in '06 with FW800 and the cost of their last computer and the
new one still add up to less than the iMac G5 (they didn't need to get a new
monitor). iMac guy discovers his relatively expensive, 2yr. old computer
lacks FW800 (which was already a 2 year old technology when he bought it)
and can't be upgraded. He's liked his iMac pretty well, put up with the
ribbing from his pals, but has to wonder that if he gets a new iMac (which
now has FW800) what 2yr. old technology will it be lacking this time?

Many (most?) people had FireWire 400 on their Mac before they had a use for
it. The relative cost of Macs, lack of upgradeability, and their owners'
expectations (we expect them to last longer) strongly suggest that Apple
should incorporate enabling technologies sooner rather than later.

> There's almost no point in making FW800 standard until the hardware that can
> best use it comes down in price. Right now, the only FW 800 peripheral I use
> is a $2500 1U tape library. How many folks are running out to buy one? Yeah,
> that's what I thought.

FW400 (3.5") hard drives perform about as well as a 2.5" internal hard drive
so I'm just assuming a FW800 hard drive would perform better. If more people
had FW800 ports, more would be buying FW800 hard drives.

On 3/7/05 9:08 PM, "Curtis Wilcox" <cwilcoxesm.rochester.edu> wrote:

>> However on a digital still camera, space is limited,
>> and outside of the rather high-end cameras that start at a thousand dollars
>> US or more, the data requirements simply don't justify FW. Technical
>> requirements DO occasionally play a part in such things.
>
> If they don't justify FW, then they don't justify High Speed USB either.

Certainly they do. You have room for one port. If you choose firewire, you
get one advantage...faster transfers under the right conditions. However,
most digital still cameras aren't using high-speed flash RAM. So the chances
of you saturating FW400 are slim and none. Meanwhile, you have technical
issues in that most of your user base can't use your camera without an
additional interface card. You've now created a technical barrier to usage.

>
>> As well, *every* computer manufactured in the last 5 or so years has USB,
>> (or darned close to it...say 99.999% to be on the safe side). If you're
>> selling a consumer model camera, what is the better choice technically: a
>> port that a significant part of your users won't have, or one that, even if
>> they don't have the newest version, will still work.
>
> That is not a technical decision, that is a business decision. A technical
> decision would be choosing the technology that's faster & more efficient and
> is designed to make it a lot easier to do neat things like connecting the
> camera directly to a photo printer. Kodak made a custom dock interface for
> its EasyShare printer but if FireWire was common on digital cameras there
> would be a bunch of photo printers to choose from that would work without a
> computer. Instead, we have photo printers with numerous different media
> slots and no interface to see what your picture will look like before
> printing.

That has nothing to do with USB, and in fact, there's been a lot of work on
host-less USB. They could have used 802.11g and not needed a physical
connection at all. Of course that would jack the price by about 50 bucks US
per component, and mean you had to worry about wireless networks, but it
would have plenty of speed and connectors would be a non-issue.

"Faster" is one of those terms that only means something when you have all
the facts. Again, I've yet to see where FW400 speed gives you anything over
USB2 for things like consumer-grade still cameras. Even with a PC Card
adaptor, those things are not speed demons by a long shot. When you get up
into the realm where they are speed demons, lo, you start to see FW. Seems
to me the camera manufacturers are judging what tech is the best fit quite
well.

>
>> Oh that's a little bit of an exaggeration, considering that Apple is still
>> the best, most consistent supporter of USB in the biz. Even though I have a
>> nice, high-end enterprise-class KVM that supports different connection
>> types, for the PC servers, using USB is a crap shoot. They may support USB
>> as the sole keyboard and mouse connection, they may not. Even if the
>> support's in the BIOS, doesn't mean you can trust it. So, for now, Wintel
>> boxes, if they have PS/2 ports, that's what I use for the KVM.
>
> I'm not sure why you're bringing this up. I thought it was pretty clear that
> the topic at hand was not USB 1.1 but High Speed USB, the standard that is
> meant to compete with FireWire. Believe me, I've had enough experience with
> flawed USB support on PCs, even on legacy-free PCs.


The point is, this whole "Apple is FW, not USB" is silly. They've done tons
for both USB and FW, and I have yet to see any *real* evidence that they're
retreating from FireWire. Panic over a cable in a box doesn't constitute
proof of a new corporate direction.


>> Sure there is. Cost, and market differentiation. FW800 is more expensive
>> than 400, and will be for some time.
>
> Is it inherently more expensive to make FW800 chips or is it more expensive
> because the demand doesn't justify the kind of mass production (or
> manufacturer competition) that brings per unit costs down? I suspect the
> latter is closer to the truth so if Apple chose to make FW800 standard on
> its product line this year, the cost difference between FW800 and FW400
> would go away.

Both. But that's less important. FW800 == Pro.

>
>> As well, if an iMac has all the same
>> features as a G5 tower, save the PCI slots, why would you pay the extra
>> freight for the G5 tower? Answer: You wouldn't.
>
> PowerMacs have a *many* other exclusive features and as I said, anyone who
> didn't care about any of those features *except* FW800 would not pay the
> difference just for that one feature. PowerBooks don't have as many
> exclusive features compared to the iBook but again, I'm sure processor
> speed, screen size, and even the CardBus slot are more often the deciding
> factors, not FW800. FW400 started off as a market differentiation feature
> but became standard pretty quickly.

Again...FW800 == Pro.

Repetition snipped.
>
> I intentionally used '2.5" hard drive' to cover both its smaller capacity
> and slower speed. Yes, there are faster 2.5" drives but that doesn't matter
> because that's not what Apple put in the mini. Also, DV files are already
> pretty huge so it's already easy to fill up a a mini's drive with video.
> Sure, you can get more room by attaching a FireWire (400) drive but the
> performance of it won't be any better and many people are really bad at file
> management so having something other than the Movies folder to look in leads
> to trouble.

The Mini is a cheap computer. Why are you surprised that Apple put cheap
components in it?

>
>> As well, no computer manufacturer in their right mind wants you holding onto
>> hardware for 5 or more years. They stop making money at that point, and you
>> effectively stopped being a customer. Emotion aside, "Customer" is best
>> equated to "person I make money from". If I only see you every 5 years or
>> so, you're not much of a customer. If I give you a reason to come in every 2
>> years, or even every three years, or even more often, you're a much better
>> customer.
>
> I'm not talking about 5 years, *I am* talking about 2 years. People don't
> like buying new computers every 2 years and every time they're are faced
> with the prospect of buying a new computer its another opportunity for Apple
> to gain *or lose* a customer.

Like has nothing to do with it. Mac users who hold on to hardware for ten
years and never buy anything new in the meantime are horrible customers.

>
> Here's what I'm picturing; someone buys an iMac G5 today (the whizziest
> consumer Mac), the video thing really hits it big in '06 but this guy
> doesn't get interested until this time in '07 when the HD cameras he's
> looking at have FW800. His PC buddies bought FW800 upgrade cards or whole
> new computers in '06 with FW800 and the cost of their last computer and the
> new one still add up to less than the iMac G5 (they didn't need to get a new
> monitor). iMac guy discovers his relatively expensive, 2yr. old computer
> lacks FW800 (which was already a 2 year old technology when he bought it)
> and can't be upgraded. He's liked his iMac pretty well, put up with the
> ribbing from his pals, but has to wonder that if he gets a new iMac (which
> now has FW800) what 2yr. old technology will it be lacking this time?

Welcome to the computer age. Two minutes after you buy the high end, it will
suck. You get what you pay for when you buy it. That's nothing new. In fact,
that's the way it is with everything. If you want upgradeability, don't get
the iMac. If you don't care, get the iMac. If you only care about cost, get
an eMachines. 'Course, you aren't upgrading or improving those any at the
low low end, but they are indeed cheap. You want more, you pay more. That's
everything, why are computers supposed to be different.

>
> Many (most?) people had FireWire 400 on their Mac before they had a use for
> it. The relative cost of Macs, lack of upgradeability, and their owners'
> expectations (we expect them to last longer) strongly suggest that Apple
> should incorporate enabling technologies sooner rather than later.

They have. Pro models.

>
>> There's almost no point in making FW800 standard until the hardware that can
>> best use it comes down in price. Right now, the only FW 800 peripheral I use
>> is a $2500 1U tape library. How many folks are running out to buy one? Yeah,
>> that's what I thought.
>
> FW400 (3.5") hard drives perform about as well as a 2.5" internal hard drive
> so I'm just assuming a FW800 hard drive would perform better. If more people
> had FW800 ports, more would be buying FW800 hard drives.

That's incorrect, at least in my testing. There's a marginal difference
unless you have a VERY fast drive. But right now, the kinds of (S)ATA drives
that can saturate a FW800 bus aren't cheap. If all you change is the bus,
then you aren't going to see much, if any speed increase.

john

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

Same here. I've never connected my A75 to a computer. Since I got my
15" PowerBook I use a CF adapter for the PC card slot. Previously, I
used a USB card reader. Connecting the camera directly to the computer
wastes battery life and is *usually* slower than using a card reader.

On Mar 7, 2005, at 6:09 PM, Dave Fitch wrote:

> On 7 Mar 2005, at 19:00, <tidbits-talktidbits.com> wrote:
>
>> The Fuji S2 ranges from $1,000 to $1,700. That's pretty steep for a
>> consumer camera. That's up in the amateur/pro range to me. I would
>> expect
>> firewire on those.
>
> Why?? Personally, I don't really see the point of ANY sort of connector
> on a higher-end digital camera. If you shoot a lot of pictures you'll
> probably have several memory cards, and what's easier, finding the
> right cable, hooking everything together, swapping cards while you
> download everything, or just putting your cards in a memory card reader
> that's already attached to your computer??
>
> My D70 has never been attached to a computer in the 10 months I've had
> it, and I don't really ever see that changing... [and if I do go
> somewhere where I'll want a camera/data transfer cable of some
> description, I'll take my firewire card reader in preference to
> anything else... it takes up just as much space as the USB cable that
> came with the camera after all...!]
> Dave
>

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On 8.3.2005, space aliens observed Dave saying:
>>The Fuji S2 ranges from $1,000 to $1,700. (...) I would expect
>>firewire on those.
>Why?? Personally, I don't really see the point of ANY sort of
>connector on a higher-end digital camera. If you shoot a lot of
>pictures you'll probably have several memory cards (...)

That may be a bit off-topic, but when taking pictures in a studio,
photographers often keep the camera connected to a computer and download
pictures directly to the computer instead of keeping them on the camera.
That way, they can look at the image in high-res immediately.

lucas

- --
"The future sucks. Change it."
"I'm way cool Beavis, but I cannot change the future."
  -- Beavis & Butthead

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At 3:09 PM -0800 3/7/05, Dave Fitch wrote:
>On 7 Mar 2005, at 19:00, <tidbits-talktidbits.com> wrote:
>> The Fuji S2 ranges from $1,000 to $1,700. That's pretty steep for a
>> consumer camera. That's up in the amateur/pro range to me. I would
>> expect
>> firewire on those.
>
>Why?? Personally, I don't really see the point of ANY sort of connector
>on a higher-end digital camera. If you shoot a lot of pictures you'll
>probably have several memory cards, and what's easier, finding the
>right cable, hooking everything together, swapping cards while you
>download everything, or just putting your cards in a memory card reader
>that's already attached to your computer??

Simple, greater compatibility. While its not completely likely that
the issue will come up in every instance I have an example. I was
working at el Uber-copy shop, had a customer try to use our photo
printing machine by moving her memory card from her camera to our
machine. The machine refused to read it, although the camera could
read it fine. We fiddled, then she grabbed her camera's USB cable, I
hooked it up to the Dell (POS) and copied her pictures to the hard
drive then burnt her a CD. If we only had the choice of relying on
the memory card, she would not have been able to make her prints.

The moral is simple, having more options allows you to get the job
done even if one of the options fails.

Nick

At 4:54 AM -0800 3/7/05, Curtis Wilcox wrote:
>They should at least let people trade
>USB cables for Firewire cables at Apple Stores and to select a Firewire
>cable in lieu of USB when ordering iPods online.

I thought of this too. But from a logistical standpoint it is a
mess. The iPod has the distinction of being Apple's product with the
widest distribution location variety. (I won't list the locations,
but I'm sure I've almost seen more places selling iPods than I have
seen selling milk.)

Apple has several options for handling this issue:
1. Apple could allow cable exchanges at Apple stores. While it this
would encourage people to traffic Apple stores, which would result in
yet another lawsuit from Apple's retailers. This also brings up the
issue of what to do with the traded cables? Even if there was a
requirement that the cable was in its factory sealed bag, those
cables would have to be shipped back to Asia to be put into another
iPod box. This is an additional cost to bear that doesn't make
sense, and could result in the same cable racking up excessive
frequent flyer miles.
2. Apple could differentiate between Firewire and USB2. (i.e. Mac
iPod vs. Windows iPod) This would introduce supply chain issues and
making sure that the Firewire vs. USB2 models have adequate stock.
This is an unnecessary complexity, and could result in unsold
inventory. Additionally, Apple has made great leaps and bounds in
driving complexity out of their product mix (and by extension their
supply chain), to step backwards on this makes no sense. (Case and
point, the iMac no longer comes in miscellaneous colors, I'm very
sure there was an argument going back to supply chain issues with the
iMac G3 when Apple was considering making the color iPod minis.
Marketing won the iPod mini argument (rightfully so) but won't be
able to win the FW vs USB2 argument.). Furthermore, if Apple
introduced a product that did not sell as quickly it would also lower
their product turn rate, and could frustrate Wall Street, etc...
3. Apple could pull an HP (printers) and bundle no cable, requiring
people to buy one with the iPod. This quite frankly is un-Apple.
Their laptops come with charged batteries, Apple would not require
the purchase of a cable. The additional supply chain reasons above
apply to adding in two extra SKUs at any retailer that carries an
iPod.

So Apple choosing to go only USB2 is as much a logistical reason as
anything else. I don't want Apple to diversity their product mix for
the sake of diversifying their product mix. If they do that again
we'll have two pieces of hardware that are identical except for their
model number and that one was sold at a large department store chain,
and the other was sold somewhere else. Apple did that in the bad
middle days.

Nick

On 3/8/05 at 11:07 AM, cwilcoxesm.rochester.edu (Curtis Wilcox)
wrote:

>Is it inherently more expensive to make FW800 chips or is it more
>expensive because the demand doesn't justify the kind of mass
>production (or manufacturer competition) that brings per unit costs
>down? I suspect the latter is closer to the truth so if Apple chose
>to make FW800 standard on its product line this year, the cost
>difference between FW800 and FW400 would go away.

Actually, it is a little of both. Once designed, there is almost certainly no significant difference in the manufacturing cost of FW800 chips and FW400 chips. So, the cost of the chips themselves is largely driven by demand not manufacturing costs.

OTOH, as speeds increase the cost of designing and manufacturing hardware to take advantage of the faster chips does increase. PWB layout and design becomes a much more critical part of the hardware as speed increases. These costs also will decrease as demand increases but not as rapidly as chip costs decrease with increasing demand.

But beyond the techical aspects of what drives cost there is still marketing. Anytime something is perceived better it will generally cost a bit more if for no other reason than you can get people to pay more for something they think is better. So, the cost difference between FW400 and FW800 will shrink but probably not go away entirely.

Just a suggestion to pass around the world over the net--why not get MANY iPod owners to send the following message as an e-mail comment/request to:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipod.html

as I did today:

Subject: Firewire or USB? (Pick One)

Dear Apple,

Could you PLEASE at least let people trade USB cables for Firewire cables at Apple stores, OR select either when ordering iPods on-line? Since I know you're keen on giving your customers what they really want.

Just an idea...

Patricia :)

On 3/9/2005 7:38, "Bill Rowe" <bitreaderearthlink.net> wrote:

> Actually, it is a little of both. Once designed, there is almost certainly no
> significant difference in the manufacturing cost of FW800 chips and FW400
> chips. So, the cost of the chips themselves is largely driven by demand not
> manufacturing costs.

Has anyone looked at the Firewire chips in recent FW800 and FW400 products?
It's not impossible that the chips are the same, with different
jumpers/unwired pins differentiating the speed. I'd probably do that if I
were designing the beast today. (I can't do the looking...I only have a
FW400 in a four+ year old design.)

  --John

Hi all ....

Iıve read with some interest all the stuff about Apple dropping FW cables from iPod boxes, the market reasons, the FW vs USB performance and religious debate, etc. etc. Iıd like to add a bit to this, as I have a unique perspective: I was the tech lead for the FW project at Apple in the Œ90s, the chair of the IEEE committee(s), founder and CTO of Zayante (a FW tech provider), etc., etc. (see http://www.teener.com/)

So...

Technology first:

1) FW400 is significantly faster than USB 2.0 High Speed for two reasons:

a) Lower overhead ... it's hard to believe sometimes, but FW actually has less overhead than USB. The theoretical transfer rate for actual information for a FW400 disk is about 42-43Mbyte/sec (and real implementations get this), while the equivalent for USB 2.0 HS is about 39Mbyte/s (with real disks getting about 36MByte/sec). There are lots of reasons for this, but primarily it's because USB is a polled interface (the disk can't talk unless the CPU says it can), while FW is a real peer-to-peer system.

b) FW is actually a *memory bus* ... that is, devices have a 48-bit address space that is visible to other devices, and another device can do block reads and writes into this space. On a Mac and most PCs this is done via the "OHCI" which provides a memory bridge function (and lots of other useful stuff). In the G5 Macs, this bridging is virtual (which means the addresses in the Mac and on FW are not the same, and that Mac memory is protected from a rogue FW device) ... in older Macs and in PCs the mapping is direct.

Now, why is that good? Because it allows each disk drive to provide its own rather sophisticated DMA controller. The procedure followed by FW-based systems is as follows: the CPU creates a list of commands in its own memory, then writes the starting address into a register in a disk's memory space. The disk uses that write as a trigger to start reading commands out of CPU memory and start executing them. The commands include the address(es) of the buffer(s) in CPU space, so the disk can start the memory transfer on its own, using its own timing. When the transfer is over, the disk can interrupt the CPU by writing to special addresses in the CPU address space intended for that purpose.

Advantages? The CPU only gets ONE interrupt for a whole transfer. It is not involved in actually moving any data. The cost to the CPU performance is some memory contention. In a modern CPUs interrupts are death! They cause massive pipeline stalls, OS rescheduling, etc., etc. You can see this when you measure the CPU utilization for a Windows PC doing the same "fast as possible" transfer for disks on USB 2 and FW. A couple of years ago the numbers for a 2.8Ghz P4 were 40% to get 32Mbyte/sec for USB 2 and 4% to get similar rates for FW400.

2) FW provides a real amount of power. Powerbooks, eMacs, old iMacs all provide about 7W per system, PowerMacs about 15W. Theoretically you can provide 45W per *port* (I designed just such a "superhub" a while ago ... http://homepage.mac.com/mteener/PhotoAlbum9.html). USB can only provide 2.5W max per port, and frequently implementations do less.

Marketing:

1) Frankly, it's a good idea for the iPod group to drop the FW cable for low-end iPods ... any iPod that can recharge reasonably well using USB power, and strictly for economics. Forcing everyone to pay a FW "tax" is silly.

2) The real problem is that Apple does not understand "Technology Marketing". Apple is fabulous at Product Marketing, but the management doesn't seem understand that technology ... as technology ... can confer a marketing advantage. This has to be done carefully and strategically, but it can have real advantages. The ONLY company that does this well now is Intel.

What are those advantages? Well, *if* the technology has real advantages for the user (and I believe FW did, and continues to), you can use it as a selling point, especially if your competition is behind you in implementation. Apple should pick a few technologies and run with them

hard*.

Here's where the difference lies between technology and product marketing. With product marketing, you want to keep your competition behind ... as far behind as possible. With technology marketing, you want your competition to be *just* behind you, but following you nonetheless. If Apple uses FW, they should want EVERYONE to use FW ... if Apple uses Rendezvous, they should want EVERYONE to use Rendezvous. Unfortunately, Apple treats technical advantages as something like a product, and tries to sell it. The problem is, no one wants to buy ... they expect you to *give* it, and support them in the process. After all, that's what Intel does!

What happens if you don't do this? Well, you end up *following* the competition in everything. And if the competition doesn't quite play fair (like adding features that are better than what your technology providers can match ... hence Apple's USB 2 implementation sucks green weenies compared to Intel's. If it weren't for FW, the word on the street would be "Macs have terrible I/O performance").

So whqt did Apple do with FW? a) Charged an amazing amount of money for the first FW IC designs (and got away with it in the early/mid '90s) (probably OK for early adopters when there is no competition, but would have been MUCH better to *give* it away), b) Helped define a common IC architectural model for PC FW interfaces ... "OHCI" (very good). c) Starting putting FW into high end systems (very good) d) Tried to get $1/port licensing fee for the patents (Really, really bad idea ... and an *amazing* bit of gall, since Apple only held about half the patents, and they had already been licensed out during my watch for $2000 per company, with a discount if you gave some money to the IEEE scholarship fund. This last bit so offended Intel and HP (among others) that they withdrew from FW development (and killed some contracts that were in negotiations with my old company) and restarted the moribund USB 2.0 project). e) Gave up on the $1/port idea and helped form the 1394LA patent pool that licenses out FW patents at $0.25 per system (OK ... same as is done for MPEG, but really should have done the Intel-style "throw the patents into a pool and agree not to sue each other") f) Put FW into all systems (very good). g) Provided better and better developer support for FW (very good). h) Put FW800 into high end systems (very good). i) Declared victory and decided future FW development is a "3rd party opportunity" (oops).

So Apple did pretty well, except when it came to encouraging their competition follow along. The result is that FW, while reasonably successful, is not the kind of "universal" interface we intended it to be. Frankly, the only really awful thing Apple did was (d). That gave Intel the excuse it needed to pull away from FW, and the motivation to try to kill it.

With only Apple as a major backer, the various major technology providers slowly started putting fewer and fewer development resources into FW ... hence, the very slow and halting development of FW800 ICs from TI (the TI team was starved of resources), and I'm not certain when we will see FW1600 and FW3200 parts.

The future:

So, is FW dead? Not hardly, even though it's nowhere as "universal" as it could have been. It's growth rate in consumer electronics is huge (it's the only really good network for DTV, for instance), and it's growing into pro audio with the same uptake that we've seen in pro video.

As a disk drive interface, however, it will not grow much unless Apple pushes on with FW1600 and (even better) FW3200 and starts taking advantage of FW's power sourcing and currently untapped other performance advantages ... something that would cost it little (and I KNOW what I'm talking about here), but would require a level of intent that I just don't see.

-- Michael D. Johas Teener -- http://public.xdi.org/=Michael.Johas.Teener --- PGP ID 0x3179D202

At 3:09 PM -0800 2005/03/07, Dave Fitch wrote:
>On 7 Mar 2005, at 19:00, <tidbits-talktidbits.com> wrote:
>
>>The Fuji S2 ranges from $1,000 to $1,700. That's pretty steep for a
>> consumer camera. That's up in the amateur/pro range to me. I would
>>expect
>> firewire on those.
>
>Why?? Personally, I don't really see the point of ANY sort of connector
>on a higher-end digital camera. If you shoot a lot of pictures you'll
>probably have several memory cards, and what's easier, finding the
>right cable, hooking everything together, swapping cards while you
>download everything, or just putting your cards in a memory card reader
>that's already attached to your computer??
>
>My D70 has never been attached to a computer in the 10 months I've had
>it, and I don't really ever see that changing... [and if I do go
>somewhere where I'll want a camera/data transfer cable of some
>description, I'll take my firewire card reader in preference to
>anything else... it takes up just as much space as the USB cable that
>came with the camera after all...!]

        My USB cable is a bit smaller, but I need a USB cable for the
flash reader, so I can either connect 2 ends of one cable, or open
the camera, pop the card, load the card, then connect the same cable
between PB & flash reader. When done, proceed in reverse. Any speed
advantage in transferring 3-20 pictures is eaten by the time to move
the card, and the battery life drained during transfer is trivial.

        If I had a PC Card reader, I might feel a bit differently, but I don't.


                                                Chris
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

At 11:07 AM -0800 2005/03/08, Curtis Wilcox wrote:

>On 3/7/05 6:09 PM, "John C. Welch" <jwelchbynkii.com> wrote:
>
> > On 3/7/05 6:54 AM, "Curtis Wilcox" <cwilcoxesm.rochester.edu> wrote:

> > However on a digital still camera, space is limited,
>> and outside of the rather high-end cameras that start at a thousand dollars
>> US or more, the data requirements simply don't justify FW. Technical
>> requirements DO occasionally play a part in such things.
>
>If they don't justify FW, then they don't justify High Speed USB either.

        But the jump for a camera manufacturer, in terms of
simplicity, cable inventory, and backwards compatibility with USB 1.1
would be much higher, so HS USB doesn't need as much justification to
be worthwhile.

> > As well, *every* computer manufactured in the last 5 or so years has USB,
>> (or darned close to it...say 99.999% to be on the safe side). If you're
>> selling a consumer model camera, what is the better choice technically: a
>> port that a significant part of your users won't have, or one that, even if
>> they don't have the newest version, will still work.
>
>That is not a technical decision, that is a business decision. A technical
>decision would be choosing the technology that's faster & more efficient and
>is designed to make it a lot easier to do neat things like connecting the
>camera directly to a photo printer. Kodak made a custom dock interface for
>its EasyShare printer but if FireWire was common on digital cameras there
>would be a bunch of photo printers to choose from that would work without a
>computer. Instead, we have photo printers with numerous different media
>slots and no interface to see what your picture will look like before
>printing.

        I don't agree with your very narrow version of technical. On
the other end, I often make technical decisions about what the best
thing to buy given our budget is, and a camera engineer who made
"technical" decisions while ignoring the business issues would be a
very bad engineer.

        Actually, my father has a very nice silver HP printer (I
think it's a 7700 series
<http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF25a/18972-236251-64340-15100-64340-305374.html>),
which has a 2" LCD to show the picture before printing. It has a
built-in multiformat flash reader.

        Granted, if it was a FireWire device you'd be able to plug a
camera into it via USB (I don't know if that's supported) and drive
the printer from the camera, instead of just using the camera's
flashcard, but I don't see this as a major issue.


> >> (Going more off-topic.)
>>>
>>> It's what kills me about them not putting Firewire 800 is more Macs. *No
>>> one* is saying "the only reason I chose the Power-whatever over the
>>> i-whatever is Firewire 800." I'm pretty sure you can hook Firewire 400
>>> equipment to a Firewire 800 with a simple adapter so there's little reason
>>> not to make Firewire 800 the standard on today's Macs.
>>
>> Sure there is. Cost, and market differentiation. FW800 is more expensive
>> than 400, and will be for some time.
>
>Is it inherently more expensive to make FW800 chips or is it more expensive
>because the demand doesn't justify the kind of mass production (or
>manufacturer competition) that brings per unit costs down? I suspect the
>latter is closer to the truth so if Apple chose to make FW800 standard on
>its product line this year, the cost difference between FW800 and FW400
>would go away.

        After Apple (and we, the customers) paid it for 2 years,
perhaps. The real issue is the effect on Power* sales.

> > As well, if an iMac has all the same
>> features as a G5 tower, save the PCI slots, why would you pay the extra
>> freight for the G5 tower? Answer: You wouldn't.
>
>PowerMacs have a *many* other exclusive features and as I said, anyone who
>didn't care about any of those features *except* FW800 would not pay the
>difference just for that one feature. PowerBooks don't have as many
>exclusive features compared to the iBook but again, I'm sure processor
>speed, screen size, and even the CardBus slot are more often the deciding
>factors, not FW800. FW400 started off as a market differentiation feature
>but became standard pretty quickly.

        Frankly, I'm sure less than 5% of Mac buyers care about FW800
vs. FW400, and less than 10% know what the difference is. It's still
important to Apple for differentiation, though.


> > In time, FW800 will probably
>> leak down to the non-pro hardware, but for now, it's not there.
>
>It's been over two years, why the wait?

        Because few people care, and few devices would show any difference.


                                                Chris Pepper
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

Saying that FW800 == Pro, is analogous to saying that iMacs and iBooks
don't need VGA ports. Having external displays is a "Pro" feature; get
a PowerMac, or PowerBook instead. Oh yes, that did happen a while ago,
and such arguments were made then too.

My suspicion is that Apple is using the FW800 on Pro products purely
for product differentiation reasons. And at this stage feels that
those benefits outweigh the benefits of wider FW800 adoption.

I just ordered a FW800/USB2 external harddisk enclosure. It cost 40%
more than an equivalent FW400/UWB2 enclosure. I rationalised that my
external 3.5" HD house both my rapidly expanding iPhoto collection,
and my backups (everyone keeps nagging!). As I use those quite
regularly, hopefully accessing them off a faster interface will make
noticeable difference. To also be honest, I also got curious as to
what the constantly unused FW800 port was good for.

At 11:38 AM -0800 3/11/05, George Wade wrote:
>Don't the cargo planes fly empty, back to Asia? I mean that the
>designs; order forms and greenbacks go by internet and the hardware
>comes back airfreight.
>
>We haven't started selling anything to Asia yet, have we?

In the industry this is known as a backhaul. (The fronthaul being
the primary Asia->US run)

While a good idea in theory there are always costs involved. Lets
assume that Apple did this, having all of the cables in the US
shipped to one central location for consolation. Cost one - Package
service to a central location. Lets assume after packaging and
shipping that they're getting this for $5/case (I quoted Fedex Ground
at about $4/case, leave $1 for packaging etc..)

Then you'd have to pay someone to consolidate these and get the
paperwork all filled out. (Remember customs paperwork has to be
done.) Then airfreight it back. FedEx Economy runs $42.77 for a one
pound package to Singapore or $101.12 for 10 pounds or $243.68 for 50
pounds.

So lets stop at this point and count costs. 117 stores times $5 per
store equals $585.00. Then add the air freight in at say 10 pounds
this comes to $686.12. Lets assume we do this once a week. That'll
come to $35,678.24 per year. Keep in mind I've ballparked these
figures at the low end. Plus, I haven't even touched labor and other
non-direct costs. All this added up is not chump change.

Additionally the US does sell items to Asia, such as beef, poultry,
fruit, and I'm sure there are huge categories that I've missed. (We
have a trade imbalance because the value of what we export to what we
import is imbalanced. The physical space does have an imbalance but
it is not as pronounced as the fiscal imbalance.)

Figuring out what your backhaul is means moving outside your own
product lines. My company, a fruit distribution and marketing
organization, has long had a backhaul business for our ships, we move
everything from cars, resin, and paper to apples and onions back to
South America. Additionally, we've started filling our domestic
trucking backhaul capacity with paint and frozen chickens. If we
didn't do things like this your fruit would cost you more.

While I'm at it, computers have made finding these things much, much
easier, managing the number of trucks we have hired on the road would
be nearly impossible without computers or additional staff.

One more random related asside: Supply chain costs have gone from
over 30% of the economy down to 15% or lower.

Bottom line: Just because it looks cheap initially doesn't mean it is.

Nick