What Happened to FireWire? The Dollar That Killed a Faster Standard

Throughout the 1990s, almost every serious video editing setup in the world ran through a single six-pin socket. FireWire, ratified as IEEE 1394 in 1995, moved data at 400 Mbps at a moment when the fastest connector on a mainstream PC managed about 2 MB/s. It carried its own power, it let two devices talk with no computer switched on, and Sony built it into the first consumer DV camcorder in 1995, a $4,199 machine that put real video editing on ordinary desks. Then, in January 1999, Apple asked chip and system makers for $1 per FireWire port. EE Times reported that a three-port chip selling for under $5 would owe Apple a $3 royalty. Intel, which had put years of engineering into the standard, walked away from it. On 31 August 1999 Intel announced that USB 2.0 would run at 360-480 Mbps rather than the 120-240 Mbps previously estimated, and because the USB controller already sat inside Intel's own chipsets, fitting it cost a PC maker two connectors and nothing else. The faster bus needed a separate chip and a licence. By November 1999 the royalty had been cut to 25 cents per system, but by then the decision was made and the sockets were gone. In this video, we tell the story of the USB and FireWire standards war - nine connectors, climbed in the order they lost, from the serial port to Thunderbolt 5. What you will learn in this video: 1. Why unplugging a keyboard could physically damage an early Macintosh 2. How SCSI chains, ID numbers and terminators turned storage into a puzzle 3. What FireWire could do in 1995 that USB 2.0 still could not do in 2000 4. Why Apple's $1-per-port demand turned Intel against a standard it helped build 5. How the 4-pin camcorder connector destroyed cameras instead of cables 6. Why Apple removed FireWire from the MacBook in October 2008 7. What a Thunderbolt 5 cable costs today, and why almost nobody needs one FireWire never ran out of speed. It ran out of sockets. So which kind of victory was that - did the better design lose, or was the cheaper one always going to win? Disclaimer: The voiceover used in this video was generated using AI.