On Fri, 27 Apr 2001, Mike Hicks wrote:

> Just a random thought: Why has USB (12 Mbps) been so successful while
> FireWire (400+ Mbps) has been very slowly adopted?  Heck, I never even
> heard of USB until I saw it on a motherboard, while FireWire had been
> discussed in the trade press for years beforehand.  Was there something to
> do with licensing?  Standards?  Just the fact that Apple was a principal
> character in FireWire?

They may be a principal character, but the scuttlebutt I heard coming out
of standards committee meetings was pretty convoluted.  I suspect that it
has as much to do with pissing competitions between manufacturers as
anything else.  I could be completely wrong, but there are standards and
there's compliance; I think USB being simpler is easier to comply with in
more different implementations.

Phil M

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