January 17, 1999: Transfers Go High Speed

FireWire has been dropped from the iPod much to chagrin of some Mac aficionados. Yet when it was first introduced, FireWire was an absolute necessity for Mac users. The original iPod and iMovie both depended on the blazing fast transfer rate of FireWire. In fact, FireWire was fast enough to enable users to boot their Macs from an external drive and use the computer comfortably.

USB 2.0 achieved close to the same speeds as the original incarnation of FireWire and, thanks to the backing of Intel, became much more accepted. Apple was never able to spur the wide adoption of the FireWire standard in the same manner that the original iMac helped foist USB on the world, in part because ever computer sold with FireWire put a little dough in Apple's pocket. In any event, transfer rates noticeably improved if you bought one of the first Macs to feature FireWire this month in 1999.