IIRC from the 5gen onward Apple kindly decided to drop firewire support in favour of the inferior but more universal USB 2.0
I was slightly cheesed off when I got mine to replace my old 3gen, as I didn't want yet another usb cable daisy chained. Nothing you can do about it I'm afraid.
SO let me get this straight. There is really nothing you can do to get this off the ipod. I mean it is really annoying to have that diplayed all the time when your trying to scroll for a song or something.
You really need to start your own thread about your problem and state whether you are getting this message while using a firewire cable or if you are using a USB cable.
This is ******** (the way of thinking), why would Apple drop FireWire support when on Macs, FireWire is faster. They're clearly giving everyone but actual Mac users, what they want. I'm going to try not to complain because Apple has all the right to do so, but there must be something we can do.
I was pretty cheesed off when this happened too, as I remember when I bought my first Gen iPod 5 GB, the HUGE advantage was the high speed Firewire. Unfortunately, as they expended and allowed Windows users in, the complained about the need for a Firewire port, which is really only standard on high end PC's. Apple then fixed the problem by allowing USB to Sync, great. They included both cables. Then they said "Well, how can we save $2" so the pulled out the Firewire cable, and made us Mac users shell out something like $20 for one. Then in the pursuit to slim down the devices, they got rid of Firewire altogether. Firewire is clearly faster and a superior technology, again ruined by our wonderful Windows users. To tell you the truth, I would be willing to spend extra to have an iPod with Firewire included. Hopefully with USB 3.0 the USB standard will at least somewhat compare to Firewire. We can only hope Apple included USB 3.0 in the latest iPods, iPhones and Macs, which they did not do with USB 2.0. My brother still has to suffer USB 1.1 speeds with his not very old iBook because Apple was slow to jump on USB 2.0 with Firewire being the future. Heck, Apple killed Firewire. I still use Firewire as much as I can, Ironically, the only two devices in which I can not use firewire are my iPod and iPhone.
As far as your problem, I assume you are looking through the songs and such WHILE you have your iPod being charged via Firewire via your Mac. I would suggest you do what they say, use the USB cable. There is really little point to plug in the iPod to your mac via Firewire anymore unless you jsut don't have a USB cable. I have an old Firewire charging brick from my first few iPods that I still use to charge, but thats about it.
It is more than $2 to include a firewire chip in the iPod, and it does result in a thinner device, which most people like. I'm not clear why anyone had to shell out $20 for a cable, if you bought an iPod which was USB it came with the cable. I do agree I like having Firewire on my earlier iPods, but I understand the reason for the change on the part of Apple. I only really notice the lack of speed when having to fully resync my iPods, and that isn't very often. And the speed difference between FW400 and USB 2.0 when resyncing is a matter of a few minutes and not a major inconvenience.
It depends on when USB 3.0 is released as to whether they will be in future iPods, iPhones, etc. "Plans" are for "mid-2008", as for when it is actually released, who knows? And 3.0 should exceed FW 400, but not 800. Then again there never was a FW 800 iPod, and even some current Macs don't have FW400. Have not idea what you are talking about saying 2.0 was not included in iPods, iPhones, Macs etc. My last 3 Macs have had 2.0 and all of the "USB" ipods have been 2.0.
