Apple to Boost FireWire Speed?

SAN FRANCISCO -- Apple may be planning to announce FireWire2, or FireWire 800, a new high-speed 800-megabits-per-second FireWire standard, at the Macworld Conference & Expo opening here Tuesday.

The hint surfaced when hard-drive vendor SmartDisk--several hours after announcing its introduction of desktop drives that connect to Apple systems using the new 800-mbps FireWire standard--asked that the news be "killed due to premature release."

The aborted news suggests what Steve Jobs, chief executive officer of Apple, may be announcing in his keynote speech at Macworld Expo Tuesday.

Unnecessary Speed?

FireWire2 is the next generation of the Apple-invented standard. Besides the greater speed, it is backward-compatible with computers and peripherals that support the first version of FireWire. It also works with USB 2.0-equipped Windows PCs.

Neither SmartDisk nor Apple was immediately available to comment on the announcement and its subsequent withdrawal. Though Jobs typically unveils new products at the event, little is known about pending announcements this year.

Apple is being "extremely tight" in advance of Tuesday's keynote, and analysts are in the dark about what will be announced, IDC analyst Roger Kay says.

Kay is unimpressed with the promise of FireWire2. "I don't know what we need it for. FireWire is really fast already, and data is only as fast as your slowest link--your PC or your modem or cable line." However, its high transfer speeds are likely to be useful in storage and backup products, he says.

FirePower Specs

SmartDisk FirePower will be demonstrated both at SmartDisk's booth at Macworld Expo and at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, the company said in its original release. With a capacity of 200GB, FirePower will be able to store large files, such as those used in digital video authoring and other multimedia applications, the company said.

FirePower will have an 8MB cache for faster data retrieval and will be available in March. It will work with FireWire 800 and 400-equipped Macintosh computers, as well as with Windows-based USB 2.0 PCs, the statement said.