Did Apple drop FireWire support in macOS Tahoe?

The title of the thread asks "Did Apple drop Firewire support in macOS Tahoe?" The answer to that is Yes.

As to why, you'd have to ask them, but Apple has been dropping FireWire support piecemeal for a long time.

• Apple never supported FireWire 1600 or FireWire 3200. (I'm not sure if those were ever standardized, or were simply proposed standards. Either way, Apple did not pursue them.)
• No Macs with a hardware model year of 2013 or later have FireWire ports. Only a few Macs that have USB 3.0 also have FireWire ports.
• The Thunderbolt-to-FireWire adapter was only for the old-style Thunderbolt 1/2 ports. Apple never came out with one for Thunderbolt 3/4/5, forcing people to daisy-chain two expensive Apple adapters to go from one of those modern forms of Thunderbolt, to FireWire.
• Apple dropped that adapter some months ago, much to the dismay of people with old digital tape camcorders (MiniDV, Digital8), old pro audio gear, and old professional-quality slide scanners.
• Even before Tahoe dropped FireWire support completely, Apple removed support for "plug-and-play" FireWire audio devices from macOS.
• Apple dropped support for iDVD (a nice application for authoring home DVD-Video discs) a long, long time ago. Another blow to people whose use of FireWire had to do with supporting MiniDV and Digital8 camcorders.

Recently, Other World Computing discontinued their FireWire + USB drives and drive enclosures. As far as I know, they were the last vendor to offer any of those.

Many iPods will sync either through FireWire or through USB – although the very earliest ones do not support USB, and USB (1.0 or 2.0) would be slower than FireWire (400) for the others.

kennynawotniak wrote:

Why did Apple drop support for FireWire in MacOS Tahoe? We use FireWire a LOT and Tahoe no longer supporting connectivity is a huge blow to our productivity. My church utilizes audio equipment that only interacts through FireWire, and we use FireWire T-Mode a fair bit to move old sermons to our newer machines and storage mediums…

Others have answered the FireWire component of this, so I’m going to look more at how you’re doing what you’re doing…

Options? Revert to macOS 10.13 or whatever works with the existing gear, lock down changes, completely secure and isolate the network, freeze all changes, and stop trying to incrementally upgrade pieces and parts. Well, not without a modicum of a plan for upgrades. This production freeze and isolation is not a panacea, you will have those about folks wanting to connect their gear and particularly around security and compatibility and related risks. You will have issues with this production-frozen approach elsewhere too, but piecemeal component upgrades such as you’re here trying are going to be more problems and more work.

I’ve worked in a number of environments where this has been necessary, whether because replacing the million-dollars-a-minute-outage-costs production, or replacing the whole warehouse, or replacing the elevator or the scanner or whatever hardware, was too expensive or too disruptive or too risky. Lock it down, and provide your own spares.

When (if) you decide to upgrade the existing hardware gear, design and (maybe?) bid the path for the whole thing together, or over some years, and then start working on your planned incremental or wholesale upgrade.

I’d probably look at the Ubiquiti audio components among other fine choices for instance, and that combined with the Ubiquiti wired and Wi-Fi networking gear, digital signage, security cameras, access control, and other pieces. That maybe combined with Apple TV 4K gear, though the Ubiquiti gear and other gear supports AirPlay. Ubiquiti allows network components to be incrementally upgraded and replaced (e.g. Wi-Fi access points, PoE audio, etc), and doesn’t have subscription costs for most of their features.

There really undoubtedly folks that provide turn-key services for churches and church requirements including audio hardware and networking and apps, too.

kennynawotniak wrote:

Why did Apple drop support for FireWire in MacOS Tahoe? We use FireWire a LOT and Tahoe no longer supporting connectivity is a huge blow to our productivity. My church utilizes audio equipment that only interacts through FireWire, and we use FireWire T-Mode a fair bit to move old sermons to our newer machines and storage mediums. Not to mention my older iPods are no longer compatible as they only sync through FireWire. Guess my 2012 MacBook Pro running Catalina won’t be going anywhere anytime soon…

It was done because by today's standards FireWire is an extremely slow data transfer method and a dead (if not buried) technology that the world is moving on from. It really is as simple as that.

IEEE-1394 (FireWire) was designed forty (!) years ago, and standardized over thirty years ago. It's robust, but old and slow.

Your 2012 MBP is as vintage as it sounds as fourteen (!) year old computers go. The same goes for your church's audio equipment that only interacts through FireWire. Sounds like your church should be considering moving up the time schedule for moving those old sermons to the newer machines and storage.

Technology moves on due to technological improvements, competition and market factors. Firewire lost the race a long time ago. Apple phased out Firewire hardware in 2012 - your MBPro is the last model that had it; and the Thunderbolt-to-Firewire adapter was discontinued almost 3 years ago. I hung on to my FW drives for a very long time but finally retired all of them because USB became so much faster, reliable and ubiquitous.

It would appear from your description that you are using very old equipment. All that Firewire gear, even if it continues to work, is obsolete by today's standards. Even Thunderbolt 1 & 2 are history. You can choose to stick with what you have in its present state or begin a replacement process.

kennynawotniak wrote:

... we use FireWire T-Mode a fair bit to move old sermons to our newer machines and storage mediums.

What is that? Target Disk Mode to another old Mac? A Firewire-to-Thunderbolt adapter? Something else?

FWIW, most "Firewire drives" were/are SATA drives in Firewire-capable enclosures. The drives can usually be removed and put into up-to-date USB enclosures (at least USB 3.0, preferably USB 3.2 Gen 2). You do not necessarily have to buy entirely new drives. Although if your drives are 10+ year old HDDs it's time to replace them anyway.

kennynawotniak wrote:

Why did Apple drop support for FireWire in MacOS Tahoe?

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: Why drop FireWire Support?

Gone the way of the Dodo bird I am afraid.

ref:

USB 2.0 = 12 Mbps

Firewire 400 = 400 Mbps

Hi-speed USB 2.0 = 480 Mbps

Firewire 800 = 800 Mbps

eSATA = 3 Gbps

USB 3.0 = 5 Gbps

Thunderbolt = 10 Gbps

Thunderbolt 2 = 20 Gbps

Thunderbolt 4 (40 Gbps)

Thunderbolt 5 (80 Gbps w/ peak speeds up to 120 Gbps)

https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/06/19/firewire-may-finally-be-dead-in-macos-26-apple-isnt-looking-back

gomersall wrote:

The unilateral dropping of firewire support is shameful. Thousand of users have been deprived of access to legacy devices and the media they NEED to access. Was an alternative offered prior to making this ill-advised move? I protest!

Protesting here, other than perhaps being cathartic, serves little purpose. Tell Apple:

Product Feedback - Apple

Servant of Cats wrote:

• The title of the thread asks "Did Apple drop Firewire support in macOS Tahoe?" The answer to that is Yes.

As to why, you'd have to ask them, but Apple has been dropping FireWire support piecemeal for a long time.

Firewire (IEEE 1394) is a 40 year old standard that is as obsolete as floppy disks and 5 MB hard drives. There is no point in continuing support for it.

kennynawotniak wrote:

Thanks for the feedback. To be honest, just offering the option to be able to have that support would be great. Like when Microsoft dropped support for 360 controllers and you could simply reinstall the drivers. Then it’s not necessarily rolled out to everyone, just people who want it.

I am guessing it was a business decision. Maintaining backwards compatibility costs companies money and I expect that maybe 0.001% of users utilize Firewire, maybe less. Also, it is virtually impossible to obtain Firewire devices, peripherals, etc. anymore so the market simply continues to shrink and there is no growth potential.

ElCartoonist wrote:

What can I say? Scummy move on Apple's part.

No. Firewire was on the way out - industry wide - for more than 15 years. The last Mac that had a Firewire port was released back in 2012. None have had it since. A 2018 MacBookPro does not have a Firewire port although you can use the combo of the Apple Thunderbolt-to-Firewire adapter + Apple Thunderbolt 3-to-Thunderbolt 2 adapter.

Firewire was overtaken by USB 3 and Thunderbolt long ago. Technology moves on.

No one here in this user-to-user forum would know why Apple does anything unless Apple has specifically stated why. Also, Apple doesn't read here in this user-to-user forum for feedback or suggestions.

You can let Apple know your thoughts here:

Product Feedback - Apple

It's also been twenty years since Apple released an iPod with FireWire. I think youu've had a good run with that piece of kit.

During the twentieth century photography and film making barely changed . . . colour was added and also sound but by the end of the century the ubiquitous use of computers heralded in a new age of increasingly accelerating development so now we are seeing decades of improvement (by twentieth century standards) every year.

Great for people who want to push on but quite disastrous for those who wish to stick with what they have got.

The unilateral dropping of firewire support is shameful. Thousand of users have been deprived of access to legacy devices and the media they NEED to access. Was an alternative offered prior to making this ill-advised move? I protest!

This is yet another reason I hate macOS Tahoe compared to Sonoma. I still have Hi8 and Digital8 family tapes from the 90s and 2000s that I have to digitize. My old 2016 MacBook Pro running Monterey is dying, so I'd better work fast before I lose everything. Tahoe has been an absolute train wreck for so many reasons!