Mac OS® X Leopard™ All‐in‐One Desk Reference For Dummies®

Chapter 3. Port‐o‐rama: Using USB and FireWire

In This Chapter

• Using FireWire under Mac OS X

• Using USB under Mac OS X

• Adding a USB or FireWire hub

• Troubleshooting FireWire and USB connections

• Adding and updating drivers

Apple's list of successes continues to grow over the years — hardware, applications, and (of course) Mac OS X — but the FireWire standard for connecting computers to all sorts of different devices is in a class by itself. That's because FireWire has been universally accepted all over the world as the port of choice for all sorts of digital devices that need a high‐speed connection. Even Windows owners have grudgingly admitted that FireWire just plain rocks. Ya gotta love it.

In this chapter, I discuss the importance of FireWire to the digital hub that I discuss in Book III, and I compare it with both version 1.1 and version 2.0 of Intel's Universal Serial Bus (USB) connection technology. I also talk troubleshooting and expansion using a hub.

Appreciating the Advantage of a FireWire Connection

So what's so special about FireWire, anyway? Why does Apple stuff at least one (and usually two) FireWire ports in all its current Macintosh models? Heck, even the iPod (Apple's MP3 player, which you can read more about in Book III, Chapter 2) originally used only a FireWire connection. (Its official name is IEEE 1394, but even the Cupertino crew doesn't call it that — at least very often.)

First things first. As countless racing fans will tell you, it's all about the speed, my friend. ...