Mac Mondays: Macs and their limited I/O
Apple made a decision in 1997 to include USB as the primary I/O on their iMac and abandon the floppy drive. Today, my iBook has Ethernet, modem, USB, Firewire, VGA out and a headphone jack. The PCs in the same price range have 4 USB ports; 4-port firewire, full size VGA and they usually have infrared and a form of LPT or serial port. The icing on the cake is a card reader, PS/2 ports and a PCMCIA card. I must agree that many of these ports I would never use but there are occasions when I would like to have infrared, a card reader and especially a serial port. It would also be nice to have digital audio out so I can truly output 5.1 surrounds to my speaker system. Do Mac users get the short straw when it comes to I/O?
Steve Jobs touts the amazing I/O on the back of its Powerhouse G4 notebooks but I beg to differ and as I snap photos with my camera I wish I had a card reader built in and when I need to telnet into a Cisco 24 port gigabit router to verify the config files a serial port compatible with the Cisco console interface would be a nice addition. If Apple could offer a docking station for its notebooks that added some PC only ports as an option there would surely be users to purchase this item. Infrared PS/2 and LPT ports are outdated and old but the fact that PCs were sporting USB 2.0 ports a year before the Mac counterparts is poor for a company that usually leads the way with its connectivity options.
You have to wonder Apple’s motives behind decisions to adopt or abandon ports. Is it an executive roulette around the board room where Steve is Firewire, Rubinstein is USB, Oppenheimer is Bluetooth and as the Pringles can spins to a stop and points to Ron Johnson who is wearing the HD-DVD shirt they all sigh? A sign to prove this theory is Apple’s slow migration to USB2 as the only connectivity option for its iPod line. Beginning with the iPod shuffle and now the 5th generation iPod will only charge over firewire but will not sync. Websites like Powerpage.org are claiming Apple may be throwing Firewire 400 out on the bottom line Intel computers and if true, I won’t be upgrading for a while. My iPod, iSight, EyeTV and two of my hard drives rely on firewire and just because Intel wants Apple to be completely USB dependent is no reason for them to comply. Or is there something wrong with Firewire we were never told?
Either way, Apple’s configurations are that of the future; sometimes so far ahead of the curve it is difficult to do work on your Mac with those still using “today’s� systems. Should I wholeheartedly invest in USB 2.0 products when Apple may be adopting something right around the corner that makes all of those devices obsolete if I buy a new system? Of course, I have 20 devices across three USB 2 hubs plugged into my iBook but a little word up from my favorite company would be nice.
My point after all is said and done is IT managers need Infrared, Serial and full size VGA output. FreeBSD and Darwin support it natively in the OS and there is still an Infrared menu item located in the Core Services folder of your Mac but for some reason Apple has moved beyond that. The Firewire 800 adoption is still slow and I still want console connectivity to my servers. I won’t be getting a Dell. I’d rather bitch at Apple than stoop to a low of that sort.
Adam Jackson is a freelance writer with over five years experience that focuses Macintosh technology. You can always contact him at support@mypersonalgetaway.com
