[GeekyBear]

> Yes and?

At the time, USB was still limited to 12 megabits per second and transferring that same 5 Gigs of MP3 files would have taken over an hour. The firewire iPod did it in a couple of minutes.

USB was cheaper, but dog slow.

Gigabit Ethernet was faster but WAY more expensive.

[FirmwareBurner]

I see you keep ignoring my arguments so this is the last time I say it.

Again, only the first gen iPod was firewire exclusive and it was not yet a maisntream product since it was still Mac only, so avergae consumer demand at home computers for Firewire was lackluster and the iPod didn't change that.

Firewire was niche or non existent in the home PC space and it died completley with the launch of USB 2.0 remaining alive only in the pro-sumer space.

>Gigabit Ethernet was faster but WAY more expensive.

Please show me where I mentioned Gigabit ethernet as an argument. I said 100 Ethernet which was dirt cheap and almost every PC and Mac had it, as opposed to Firewire, so if you needed a fast cross platform transfer it was your best bet at the time in terms of cost and mass availability over firewire before USB 2.0 and gigabit hit the market.

[GeekyBear]

Your claim was that Firewire "was very expensive compared to USB and Ethernet".

Which completely ignores the speed and the costs of the various data transfer standards as they existed at the time.

The cheap 1.2 megabit USB standard that existed at the time couldn't transfer 5 Gigs of MP3 files in less than an hour.

The cheaper 10 megabit version of Ethernet they sold at the time also would need more than a hour to transfer enough MP3 files to fill an iPod and wouldn't have been cheaper than a Firewire port.

Ethernet with faster speeds than 400 megabit Firewire existed, but was MUCH more expensive.

Speed AND cost both matter.

> I said 100 Ethernet which was dirt cheap

Back then? It wasn't.