Apple’s latest FireWire SDK makes some major improvements to FireWire Audio. Well, major in terms of FireWire developments. Leopard’s FireWire Audio API from what I’ve seen doing a bit of research has dramatically improved under-the-hood.
Now, there are some Pro FireWire uses for audio, but it’s pretty limited. If you recall Asteroid, it was Apple’s planned FireWire breakout box, meant to give pro-grade audio connectivity over a single FireWire port. No need to hunt down a card that will work for Mac, and no more MacBook Pro users left out in the cold. Asteroid has yet to materialize in the marketplace, but there are several theories as to why.
I personally don’t care why, I think that Mac’s ability to reign supreme in creating content will only increase as it gets easier to do so. The more you can take the studio out of the studio, and into prosumer’s hands… the more people will evangelize the platform.
Oh, and no, I don’t buy the theory that Asteroid was a fake product, conjured up to catch leaks inside Apple. There’s technical evidence inside products like GarageBand which dispute that, and, Apple would not have needed costly litigation (which they ultimately lost) to seek out who did the leaking.
So, with that, here’s hoping to a Macworld that will finally deliver something to use that FireWire 800 port for. No promises, no rumors, just a hope that Asteroid might come back, purely based on Apple’s attention to their (largely unused) FireWire Audio APIs in Leopard.